"Sorry to be a bother, but you'll have to take me to them—right now."
"Oh, may I? Since I could not kill you myself, I must take you to them so that they can do it. I have been wondering how I could force you to go there," she explained, naïvely.
"Henderson?" The Lensman spoke into his microphone—thought-screens, of course, being no barrier to radio waves. "I'm going after the zwilnik. This woman here is taking me. Have the 'copter stay over me, ready to needle anything I tell them to. While I'm gone go over that speedster with a fine-tooth comb, and when you get everything we want, blast it. It and the Dauntless are the only space cans on the planet, and I haven't got a picture of them taking the cruiser away from you. But keep your thought-screens up. Don't let them down for a fraction of a second, because these janes here carry plenty of jets and they're just as sweet and reasonable as a cageful of cateagles. Got it?"
"On the tape, chief," came instant answer. "But don't take any chances, Kim. Sure you can swing it alone?"
"Jets enough and to spare," Kinnison assured him, curtly. Then, as the Tellurians' helicopter shot into the air, he again turned his thought to the manager.
"Let's go," he directed, and she led him across the way to a row of parked ground cars. She manipulated a couple of levers and smoothly, if slowly, the little vehicle rolled away.
The distance was long and the pace was slow. The woman was driving automatically, the while her every sense was concentrated upon finding some weak point, some chink in his barrier, through which to thrust at him. Kinnison was amazed—stumped—at her fixity of purpose; at her grimly single-minded determination to make an end of him. She was out to get him, and she was not fooling.
"Listen, sister," he thought at her, after a few minutes of it; almost plaintively, for him. "Let's be reasonable about this thing. I told you that I didn't want to kill you; why in all the iridescent hells of space are you so dead set on killing me? If you don't behave yourself, I'll give you a treatment that will make your head ache for the next six months. Why don't you snap out of it, you dumb little lug, and be friends?"
This thought jarred her so that she stopped the car, the better to stare directly and viciously into his eyes.