But Kinnison's mind, while slower than his daughter's and much less able, was

sure. The four Boskonians in the control-room were screened against his every mental

force and it was idle even to hope for another such lucky break as he had just had. They

were armored by this time and they had both machine rifles and semi-portable

projectors. They were entrenched; evidently intending to fight a delaying and defensive

battle, knowing that if they could hold him off until the tube had been traversed, the

Lensman would not have a chance. Armed with all they could use of the most powerful

mobile weapons aboard -and being four to one, they undoubtedly thought they could

win easily enough.

     Kinnison thought otherwise. Since he could not use his mind against them he

would use whatever he could find, and this ship, having come upon such a mission,

would be carrying plenty of weapons—and those four men certainly hadn't had time to

tamper with them all. He might even find some negative-matter bombs.

     Setting up a spy-ray block, he proceeded to rummage. They couldn't see him,

and if any one of them had a sense of perception and cut his screen for even a fraction

of a second to use it the battle would end right then. And if they decided to rush him, so

much the better. They remained, however, forted up, as he had thought they would, and

he rummaged in peace. Various death-dealing implements, invitingly set up, he ignored

after one cursory glance into their interiors. He knew weapons—these had been fixed.

He went on to the armory.

     He did not find any negabombs, but he found plenty of untouched weapons like

those now emplaced in the control-room. The rifles were beauties; high-caliber, water-

cooled things, each with a heavy dureum shield-plate and a single-ply screen. Each had

a beam, too, but machine-rifle beams weren't so hot. Conversely, the semi-portables

had lots of screen, but very little dureum. Kinnison lugged one rifle and two semi-

portables, by easy stages, into the room next to the control room; so placing them that

the control panels would be well out of the line of fire.

     What gave Kinnison his chance was the fact that the enemies' weapons were set

to cover the door. Apparently they had not considered the possibility that the Lensman

would attempt to flank them by blasting through an inch and a half of high-alloy steel.

Kinnison did not know whether he could do it fast enough to mow them down from the

side before they could reset their magnetic clamps, or not; but he'd give it the good old

college try. It was bound to be a mighty near thing, and the Lensman grinned wolfishly

behind the guard-plates of his helmet as he arranged his weapons to save every

possible fractional second of time.

     Aiming one at a spot some three feet above the floor, the other a little lower,

Kinnison cut in the full power of his semis and left them on. He energized the rifle's

beam— every little bit helped—set the defensive screens at "full", and crouched down

into the saddle behind the dureum off, with the ship's dureum cat-walk as close to the

floor of the corridor as the dimensions of the tube permitted, he reversed the controls

and poised himself for a running headlong dive. He could not feel Radeligian gravitation,

of course, but he was pretty sure that he could jump far enough to get through the

interface. He took a short run, jerked the line, and hurled himself through the space-

ship's immaterial wall. The ship disappeared.

     .Going through that interface was more of a shock than the Lensman had

anticipated. Even taken very slowly, as it customarily is, inter-dimensional acceleration

brings malaise to which no one has ever become accustomed, and taking it so rapidly

fairly turned Kinnison inside out. He was going to land with the rolling impact which

constitutes perfect technique in such armored maneuvering. As it was, he never did

know how he landed, except that he made a boiler-shop racket and brought up against

the far wall of the corridor with a climactic clang. Beyond the addition of a few more

bruises and contusions to his already abundant collection, however, he was not hurt.

     As soon as he could collect himself he leaped to his feet and rapped out orders.

"Tractors—pressors—shears! Heavy stuff, to anchor, not to clamp! Hipe!" He knew what

he was up against now, and if they'd only come back he'd yank them out of that blank

tube so fast it'd break every blank blank one of their blank blank blank necks!

     And Kathryn, still watching intently, smiled. Her dad was a pretty smart old duck,

but he wasn't using his noggin now—he was cockeyed as Trenco's ether in even

thinking they might come back. If anything at all erupted from that hyper-circle it would

be something against which everything he was mustering would be precisely as

effective as so much thin air. And she still had no concrete idea of what she so feared. It

wouldn't be essentially physical, she was pretty sure. It would almost have to be mental.

But who or what could possibly put it across? And how? And above all, what could she

do about it if they did?

     Eyes narrowed, brow furrowed in concentration, she thought as she had never

thought before; and the harder she thought the more clouded the picture became. For

the first time in her triumphant life she felt small—weak—impotent. It was in that hour

that Kathryn Kinnison really grew up.

     The tube vanished; she heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. They, whoever they

were, having failed to bring Kinnison to them—this time—were not coming after

him—this time. Not an important enough game to play to the end? No, that wasn't it.

Maybe they weren't ready. But the next time . . .

     Mentor the Arisian had told her bluntly, the last time she had seen him, to come

to him again when she realized that she didn't know quite everything. Deep down, she

had not expected that day ever to come. Now, however, it had. This escape—if it had

been an escape—had taught her much.

     "Mother!" She shot a call to distant Klovia. "I'm on Radelix. Everything's on the

green. Dad has just knocked a flock of Boskonians into an outside loop and come

through QX. I've got to do a little flit, though, before I come home. Bye."

     Kinnison stood intermittent guard over the base for four days after the hyper-

spatial tube had disappeared before he gave up; before he did any very serious thinking

about what he should do next.

     Could he and should he keep on as Sybly Whyte? He could and he should, he

decided. He hadn't been gone long enough for Whyte's absence to have been noticed;

nothing whatever connected Whyte with Kinnison. If he really knew what he was doing a

more specific alias might be better; but as long as he was merely smelling around,

Whyte's was the best identity to use. He could go anywhere, do anything, ask anything

of anybody, and all with a perfectly good excuse.

     And as Sybly Whyte, then, for days that stretched into weeks, he

roamed—finding, as he had feared, nothing whatever. It seemed as though all

Boskonian activity of the type in which he was most interested had ceased with his

return from the hyper-spatial tube. Just what that meant he did not know. It was

unthinkable that they had given up on him: much more probably they were hatching

something new. And the frustration of inaction and the trying to figure out what was

coming next was driving him not-so-slowly nuts.

     Then, striking through the doldrums, came a call from Maitland.

     "Kim? You told me to Lens you immediately about any off-color work. Don't know

whether this is or not. The guy may be—probably is—crazy. Conklin, who reported him,

couldn't decide. Neither can I, from Conklin's report. Do you want to send somebody

special, take over yourself, or what?"

     "I'll take over," Kinnison decided instantly. If neither Conklin nor Maitland, Gray

Lensmen both, could decide, there was no point in sending anyone else. "Where and

who?"

     "Planet, Meneas II, not too far from where you are now. City, Meneateles; 116-3-

29, 45-22-17. Place, Jack's Haven, a meteor-miner's hangout at the corner of Gold and

Sapphire Streets. Person, a man called 'Eddie'."

     "Thanks, I'll check." Maitland did not send, and Kinnison did not want, any

additional information. Both knew that since the coordinator was going to investigate

this thing himself, he should get his facts, and particularly his impressions, at first and

unprejudiced hand.

     To Meneas II, then, and to Jack's Haven, Sybly Whyte went, notebook very much

in evidence. An ordinary enough space-dive Jack's turned out to be—higher-toned man

that Radeligian space-dock saloon of Bominger's; much less flamboyant than notorious

Miners' Rest on far Euphrosyne.

     "I wish to interview a person named Eddie," he announced, as he bought a bottle

of wine. "I have been informed that he has had deep-space adventures worthy of

incorporation into one of my novels."

     "Eddie? Haw!" The barkeeper laughed raucously. "That space-louse?

Somebody's been kidding you, mister. He's nothing but a broken-down meteor-

miner—you know what a space-louse is, don't you?—that we let clean cuspidors and do

such-Iike odd jobs for his keep. We don't throw him out, like we do the others, because

he's kind of funny in one way. Every hour or so he throws a fit, and that amuses

people."

     Whyte's eager-beaver attitude did not change; his face reflected nothing of what

Kinnison thought of this callous speech. For Kinnison did know exactly what a space-

louse was. More, he knew what turned a man into one. Ex-meteor-miner himself, he

knew what the awesome depths of space, the ever-present dangers, the privations, the

solitude, the frustrations, did to any mind not adequately integrated. He knew that only

the strong survived; that the many weak succumbed. From sickening memory he knew

just what pitiful wrecks those many became. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the

information was not necessary:

     "Where is this Eddie now?"

     "That's him, over there in the corner. By the way he's acting, he'll have another fit

pretty quick now."

     The shambling travesty of a man accepted avidly the invitation to table and

downed at a gulp the proffered drink. Then, as though the mild potion had been a

trigger, his wracked body tensed and his features began to writhe.

     "Cateagles!" he screamed; eyes rolling, breath coming in hard, frantic gasps.

"Gangs of cateagles! Thousands! They're clawing me to bits! And the Lensman! He's

sicking them on! Ow!! YOW!!!" He burst into unintelligible screams and threw himself to

the floor. There, rolling convulsively over and over, he tried the impossible feat of

covering simultaneously with his two claw-like hands his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and

throat.

     Ignoring the crowding spectators, Kinnison invaded the helpless mind before him.

He winced mentally as he scanned the whole atrocious enormity of what was there.

Then, while Whyte busily scribbled notes, he shot a thought to distant Klovia.

     "Cliff! I'm here in Jack's Haven, and I've got Eddie's data. What did you and

Conklin make of it? You agree, of course, that the Lensman is the crux."

     "Definitely. Everything else is hop-happy space-drift. The fact that there are

not—there can't be—any such Lensman as Eddie imagined, makes him space-drift, too,

in our opinion. We called you in on the millionth chance—sorry we sent you out on a

false alarm, but you said we had to be sure."

     "You needn't be sorry." Kinnison's thought was the grimmest Clifford Maitland

had ever felt. "Eddie isn't an ordinary space-louse. You see, I know one thing that you

and. Conklin don't. You noticed the woman? Very faint, decidedly in the background?"

     "Now that you mention her—yes. Too far in the background and too faint to be a

key. Most every spaceman has a woman—or a lot of different ones—more or less on

his mind all the time, you know. Immaterial, I'd say."

     "So would I, maybe, except for the fact that she isn't a woman at all, but a

Lyranian . . ."

     "A LYRANIAN!" Maitland interrupted. Kinnison could feel the racing of his

assistant's thoughts. "That complicates things . . . But how in Palain's purple hells, Kim,

could Eddie ever have got to Lyrane—and if he did, how did he get away alive?"

     "I don't know, Cliff." Kinnison's mind, too, was working fast. "But you haven't got

all the dope yet. To cinch things, I know her personally—she's that airport manager who

tried her damndest to kill me all the time I was on Lyrane II."

     "Hm . . . m . . . m." Maitland tried to digest that undigestible bit. Tried, and failed.

"That would seem to make the Lensman real, too, then—real enough, at least, to

investigate—much as I hate to think of the possibility of a Lensman going that far off the

beam." Maitland's convictions died hard. "You'll handle this yourself, then?"

     "Check. At least, I'll help. There may be people better qualified than I am. I'll get

them at it Thanks, Cliff—clear ether."

     . He lined a thought to his wife; and after a short, warmly ultimate contact, he told

her the story.

     "So you see, beautiful," he concluded, "your wish is coming true. .I couldn't keep

you out of this if I wanted to. So check with the girls, put on your Lens, shed your

clothes, and go to work."

     "I'll do that." Clarrissa laughed and her soaring spirit flooded his mind. "Thanks,

my dear."

     Then and only then did Kimball Kinnison, master therapist, pay any further

attention to that which lay contorted upon the floor. But when Whyte folded up his

notebook and left the place, the derelict was resting quietly, and in a space of time long

enough so that the putative writer of space-opera would not be connected with the cure,

those fits would end. Moreover, Eddie would return, whole, to the void: he would

become what he had never before been—a successful meteor-miner.

     Lensmen pay their debts; even to spiders and to worms.