Children of the lens

by E. E. Smith

And while they pondered, shaken, a call from their Red Lensman mother impinged upon their consciousness.

"You are together? Good! I have been so worried about Kim going into that trap. I have been trying to get in touch with him, but I cannot reach him. You children, with your greater power—"

She broke off as the dread import of the Five's surface thoughts became clear to her. At first she, too, was shaken, but she rallied magnificently.

"Nonsense!" she snapped; not in denial of an unwelcome fact, but in sure knowledge that the supposition was not and could not be a fact. "Kimball Kinnison is alive. He is lost, I know—I last heard from him just before he went into that hyperspatial tube—but I did not feel him die. And if he died, no matter where or when or how, I would most certainly have felt it. So don't be idiots, children, please. Think—really think! I am going to do something—somehow—but what? Mentor the Arisian? I've never called him and I'm terribly afraid that he might not be willing to do anything. I could go there and make him do something, but that would take so long—tell me, what shall I—what can I do?"

"Mentor, by all means," Kit decided. "The most logical, the only possible solution. I am sure that in this case he will act. It is neither necessary nor desirable to go to Arisia." Now that the Eddorians had ceased to exist, intergalactic space presented no barrier to Arisian thought, but Kit did not enlighten his mother upon that point. "Link your mind with ours." She did so.

"Mentor of Arisia!" the clear-cut thought flashed out. "Kimball Kinnison of Klovia is not present in this, his normal space and time, nor in any other continuum which we can reach. We ask assistance."

"Ah, 'tis Lensman Clarrissa and the Five." Imperturbably, Mentor's mind joined theirs on the instant. "I have given the matter no attention, nor have I scanned my visualization of the Cosmic All. It may be that Kimball Kinnison has passed on from this plane of exist—"

"He has NOT!" the Red Lensman interrupted violently, so violently that her thought had the impact of a physical blow. Mentor and the Five alike could see her eyes flash and sparkle; could hear her voice crackle as she spoke aloud, the better to drive home her passionate conviction. "Kim is ALIVE! I told the children so and I now tell you so. No matter where or when he might be, in whatever possible extra-dimensional nook or cranny of the entire macrocosmic universe or in any possible aisle of time between plus and minus eternity, he could not die—he could not possibly die—without my knowing it. So find him, please—please find him, Mentor—or, if you can't or won't, just give me the littlest, tiniest hint as to how to go about it and I will find him myself!"

The Five were appalled. Especially Kit, who knew, as the others did not, just how much afraid of Mentor his mother had always been. To direct such a thought as that to any Arisian was unthinkable; but Mentor's only reaction was one of pleased interest.

"There is much of truth, daughter, in your thought," he replied, slowly. "Human love, in its highest manifestation, can be a mighty, a really tremendous thing. The force, the power, the capability of such a love as yours is a sector of the truth which has not been fully examined. Allow me, please, a moment in which to consider the various aspects of this matter."