Second stage Lensman by Edward Elmer Smith Page A

neither hurt you nor
    do you mental or physical harm. The only torture you will undergo will be that which, as
    now, you give yourself."
         "But you called me a . . . a zwilnik, and they always kill them," she protested.
         "Not always. In battles and in raids, yes. Captured ones are tried in court. If found
    guilty, they used to go into the lethal chambers. Sometimes they do yet, but not usually.
    We have mental therapists now who can operate on a mind if there's anything there
    worth saving."
         "And you think that I will wait to stand trial, in the entirely negligible hope that
    your bewhiskered, fossilized therapists will find something in me worth saving?"
         "You won't have to," Kinnison laughed. "Your case has already been decided—in
    your favor. I am neither a policeman nor a Narcotics man; but I happen to be qualified
    as judge, jury, and executioner. I am a therapist to boot. I once saved a worse zwilnik
    than you are,- even though she wasn't such a knockout. Now do we eat?"
         "Really? You aren't just. . . just giving me the needle?"
         The Lensman flipped off her screen and gave her unmistakable evidence. The
    girl, hitherto so unmovedly self-reliant, broke down. She recovered quickly, however,
    and in Kinnison's cabin she ate ravenously.
         "Have you a cigarette?" She sighed with repletion when she could hold no more
    food.
         "Sure. Alsakanite, Venerian, Tellurian, most anything— we carry a couple of
    hundred different brands. What would you like?"
         "Tellurian, by all means. I had a package of Camerfields once—they were
    gorgeous. Would you have those, by any chance?"
         "Uh-huh," he assured her. "Quartermaster! Carton of Camerfields, please." It
    popped out of the pneumatic tube in seconds. "Here you are sister."
          The glittery girl drew the fragrant smoke deep, down into her lungs.
         "Ah, that tastes good! Thanks, Kinnison—for everything. I'm glad you kidded me
    into eating; that was the finest meal I ever ate. But it won't take, really. I've never broken
    yet, and I won't break now. If I do, I won't be worth a damn, to myself or to anybody
    else, from then on." She crushed out the butt. "So let's get on with the third degree.
    Bring on your rubber hose and your lights and your drip-can."
         "You're still on the wrong foot, Toots," Kinnison said, pityingly. What a frightful
    contrast there was between her slimly rounded body, in its fantastically gorgeous
    costume, and the stark somberness of her eyes! "There'll be no third degree, no hose,
    no lights, nothing like that. In fact, I'm not even going to talk to you until you've had a
    good long sleep. You don't look hungry any more, but you're still not in tune, by seven
    thousand kilocycles. How long has it been since you really slept?"
         "A couple of weeks, at a guess. Maybe a month."
         "Thought so. Come on; you're going to sleep now."
         The girl did not move. "With whom?" she asked, quietly. Her voice did not quiver,
    but stark terror lay in her mind and her hand crept unconsciously toward the hilt of her
    dagger.
         "Holy Klono's claws!" Kinnison snorted, staring at her in wide-eyed wonder. "Just
    what kind of a bunch of hyenas do you think you've got into, anyway?"
         "Bad," the girl replied, gravely. "Not the worst possible, perhaps, but from my
    standpoint plenty bad enough. What can I expect from me Patrol except what I do
    expect?'You don't need to kid me along, Kinnison. I can take it, and I'd a lot rather take
    it standing up, facing it, than have you sneak up on me with it after giving me your shots
    in the arm."
         "What somebody has done to you is a sin and a shrieking shame," Kinnison
    declared, feelingly. "Come on, you poor little devil." He picked up sundry pieces of
    apparatus, then, taking her arm, he escorted her to another, almost luxuriously
    furnished cabin.
         "That door," he explained