First Lensman

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Authors: E. E. (Doc) Smith
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surprise, that neither elaboration nor emphasis was necessary.
    "Ouch!" came the almost instantaneous answer, long before his thought was complete. "Don't think so hard, Dad, it hurts—I almost missed a step." Virgilia was actually there with him; inside his own mind; in closer touch with him than she had ever before been. "Back so soon? Shall we report now, or aren't you ready to go to work yet?"
    "Skipping for the moment your aspersions on my present activities—not quite." Samms moderated the intensity of his thought to a conversational level. "Just wanted to check with you. Come in, Rod." In flashing thoughts be brought her up to date. "Jill, do you agree with what Rod here has just told me?"
    "Yes. Fully. So do the boys."
    "That settles it, then—unless, of course, I can find a more capable substitute."
    "Of course—but we will believe that when we see it."
    "Where are you and what are you doing?"
    "Washington, D.C. European Embassy. Dancing with Herkimer Herkimer Third, Senator Morgan's Number One secretary. I was going to make passes at him—in a perfectly lady-like way, of course—but it wasn't necessary. He thinks he can break down my resistance."
    "Careful, Jill! That kind of stuff ..."
    "Is very old stuff indeed, Daddy dear. Simple. And Herkimer Herkimer Third isn't really a menace; he just thinks he is. Take a look—you can, can't you, with your Lens?"
    "Perhaps … Oh, yes. I see him as well as you do." Fully en rapport with the girl as he was, so that his mind received simultaneously with hers any stimulus which she was willing to share, it seemed as though a keen handsome, deeply tanned face bent down from a distance of inches toward his own. "But I don't like it a bit—and him even less."
    "That's because you aren't a girl." Jill giggled mentally. "This is fun; and it won't hurt him a bit except maybe for a slightly bruised vanity, when I don't fall down flat at his feet. And I'm learning a lot that he hasn't any suspicion he's giving away."
    "Knowing you, I believe that. But don't … that is … well, be very careful not to get your fingers burned. The job isn't worth it—yet."
    "Don't worry, Dad." She laughed unaffectedly. "When it comes to playboys like this one, I've got millions and skillions and whillions of ohms of resistance. But here comes Senator Morgan himself, with a fat and repulsive Venerian—he's calling my boy-friend away from me, with what he thinks is an imperceptible high-sign, into a huddle—and my olfactory nerves perceive a rich and fruity aroma, as of skunk—so … I hate to seem to be giving a Solarian Councillor the heave-ho but if I want to read what goes on—and I certainly do—I'll have to concentrate, As soon as you get back give us a call and we'll report. Take it easy, Dad!"
    "You're the one to be told that, not me. Good hunting, Jill!"
    Samms, still seated calmly at his desk, reached out and pressed a button marked "GARAGE". His office was on the seventieth floor; the garage occupied level after level of subbasement. The screen brightened; a keen young face appeared.
    "Good evening, Jim. Will you please send my car up to the Wright Skyway feeder?"
    "At once, sir. It will be there in seventy five seconds."
    Samms cut off; and, after a brief exchange of thought with Kinnison, went out into the hall and along it to the "DOWN" shaft. There going free, he stepped through a doorless, unguarded archway into over a thousand feet of air. Although it was long after conventional office hours the shaft was still fairly busy, but that made no difference—inertialess collisions cannot even be felt. He bulleted downward to the sixth floor, where he brought himself to an instantaneous halt.
    Leaving the shaft, he joined the now thinning crowd hurrying toward the exit. A girl with meticulously plucked eye brows and an astounding hair-do, catching sight of his Lens, took her hands out of her breeches pockets—skirts went out, as office dress, when up-and-down open-shaft velocities

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