When Kimball Kinnison received his son's call he was in Ultra Prime, the Patrol's

stupendous Klovian base, about to enter his ship. He stopped for a moment; practically

in mid-stride. While nothing was to be read in his expression or in his eyes, the

lieutenant to whom he had been talking had been an interested, if completely

uninformed, witness to many such Lensed conferences and knew that they were usually

important. He was therefore not surprised when the Lensman turned around and

headed for an exit.

     "Put her back, please. I won't be going out for a while, after all," Kinnison

explained, briefly. "Don't know exactly how long."

     A fast flitter took him to the hundred-story pile of stainless steel and glass which

was the coordinator's office. He strode along a corridor, through an unmarked door.

     "Hi, Phyllis—the boss in?"

     "Why, Coordinator Kinnison! Yes, sir . . . no, I mean . . ."

     His startled secretary touched a button and a door opened; the door of his private

office.

     "Hi, Kim—back so soon?" Vice-Coordinator Maitland also showed surprise as he

got up from the massive desk and shook hands cordially. "Good! Taking over?"

     "Emphatically no. Hardly started yet. Just dropped in to use your plate, if you've

got a free high-power wave. QX?"

     "Certainly. If not, you can free one fast enough."

     "Communications." Kinnison touched a stud. "Will you please get me Thrale?

Library One; Principal Librarian Nadine Ernley. Plate to plate."

     This request was surprising enough to the informed. Since the coordinator

practically never dealt personally with anyone except Lensmen, and usually Unattached

Lensmen at that, it was a rare event indeed for him to use any ordinary channels of

communication. And as the linkage was completed, subdued murmurs and sundry

squeals gave evidence of the intense excitement at the other end of the line.

     "Mrs. Ernley will be on in one moment, sir." The operator's business was done.

Her crisp, clear-cut voice ceased, but the background noise increased markedly.

     "Sh . . . sh . . . sh! It's the Gray Lensman, himself!" Everywhere upon Klovia,

Tellus, and Thrale, and in many localities of many other planets, the words "Gray

Lensman", without surname, had only one meaning.

     "Not the Gray Lensman."

     "It can't be!"

     "It is, really—I know him—I actually met him once!"

     "Let me look—just a peek!"

     "Sh . ,. sh! He'll hear you!"

     "Switch on the vision. If we've got a moment, let's get acquainted," Kinnison

suggested, and upon his plate there burst into view a bevy of excitedly embarrassed

blondes, brunettes, and redheads. "Hi, Madge! Sorry I don't know the rest of you, but I'll

make it a point to meet you all—before long, I think. Don't go away." The head of the

library was coming on the run. "You're all in on this. Hi, Nadine! Long time no see.

Remember that bunch of squirrel food you rounded up for me?"

     "I remember, sir." What a question! As though Nadine Ernley, nee Hostetter,

could ever forget her share in that famous meeting of the fifty-three greatest scientific

minds of all Civilization! "I'm sorry that I was out in the stacks when you called."

     "QX—we all have to work sometime, I suppose. What I'm calling about is that I've

got a mighty big job for you and those smart girls of yours. Something like that other

one, only a lot more so. I want all the information you can dig up about a planet named

Kalonia, just as fast as you can possibly get it. What makes it extra tough is that I have

never even heard of the planet itself and don't know of anyone who has. There may be

a million other names for it, on a million other planets, but we don't know any of them.

Here's all I know." He summarized; concluding: "If you can get it for me in less than four

point nine five G-P days from now I'll bring you, Nadine, a Manarkan star-drop; and you

can have each of your girls go down to Brenleer's and pick out a wrist-watch, or

whatever else she likes, and I'll have it engraved to her 'In appreciation, Kimball

Kinnison'. This job is important—my son Kit bet me ten millos that we can't do it that

fast."

     "Ten millos!" Four or five of the girls gasped as one. "Fact," he assured them,

gravely. "So whenever you get the dope, tell Communications—no, you listen while I tell

them myself. Communications, all along the line, come in!" They came. "I expect one of

these librarians to call me, plate to plate, within the next few days. When she does, no

matter what time of day or night it is, and no matter what I or anyone else happen to be

doing, that call will have the right-of-way over any other business in the Universe. Cut!"

The plates went dead, and in Library One: "But he was joking, surely!"

     "Ten millos—and a star-drop—why, there aren't more than a dozen of them on all

Thrale!"

     "Wrist-watches—or something—from the Gray Lensman!" "Be quiet, everybody!"

Madge exclaimed, "I see now. That's the way Nadine got her watch, that she always

brags about so insufferably and that makes everybody's eyes turn green. But I don't

understand that silly ten-millo bet . . . do you, Nadine?"

     "I think so. He does the nicest things—things that nobody else would think of.

You've all seen Red Lensman's Chit, in Brenleer's." This was a statement, not a

question. They all had, with what emotions they all knew. "How would you like to have

that one-cento piece, 'in a thousand-credit frame, here in our main hall, with die legend

'won from Christopher Kinnison for Kimball Kinnison by . . .' and our names? He's got

something like that in mind, I'm sure."

     The ensuing clamor indicated that they liked the idea. "He knew we would; and

he knew that doing it this way would make us dig like we never dug before. He'll give us

the watches and things anyway, of course, but we won't get that one-cento piece unless

we win it. So let's get to work. Take everything out of the machines, finished or not.

Madge, you might start by interviewing Lanion and the other—no, I'd better do that

myself, since you are more familiar with the encyclopedia than I am. Run the whole

English block, starting with K, and follow up any leads, however slight, that you can find.

Betty, you can analyze for synonyms, starting with the Thralian equivalent of Kalonia

and spreading out to the other Boskonian planets. Put half a dozen techs on it, with

transformers. Frances, you can study Prellin and Bronseca. Joan, Leona, Edna—Jalte,

Helmuth, and Crowninshield. Beth, as our best linguist, you can do us the most good by

sensitizing a tech to the sound of Kalonia in each of all the languages you know or that

the rest of us can find, and running and re-running all the transcripts we have of

Boskonian meetings. How many of us are left? Not enough . . . we'll have to spread

ourselves thin on this list of Boskonian planets . . ."

     Thus Principal Librarian Ernley organized a search beside which the proverbial

one of finding a needle in a haystack would have been as simple as locating a football in

a bushel basket. And she and her girls worked. How they worked! And thus, in four days

and three hours, Kinnison's crash-priority person-to-person call came through. Kalonia

was no longer a planet of mystery.

     "Fine work, girls! Put it on a tape and I'll pick it up." He then left

Klovia—precipitately. Since Kit was not within rendezvous distance, he instructed his

son—after giving him the high points of what he had learned—to forward one one-cento

piece to Brenleer of Thrale, personal delivery. He told Brenleer what to do with it upon

arrival. He landed. He bestowed the star-drop; one of Cartiff's collection of fine gems.

He met the girls, and gave each one her self-chosen reward. He departed.

     Out in open space, he ran the tape, and sat still, scowling blackly. It was no

wonder that Kalonia had remained unknown to Civilization for over twenty years. There

was a lot of information on that tape—and all of it stunk—but it had been assembled,

one unimportant bit at a time, from the more than eight hundred million cards of Thrale's

Boskonian Archives; and all the really significant items had been found on vocal

transcriptions which had never before been played.

     Civilization in general had assumed that Thrale had housed the top echelons of

the Boskonian Empire, and that the continuing inimical activity had been due solely to

momentum. Kinnison and his friends had had their doubts, but they had not been able

to find any iota of evidence that any higher authority had ever issued any orders to

Thrale. The Gray Lensman now knew, however, that Thrale had never been the top.

Nor was Kalonia. The information on this tape, by its paucity, its brevity, its incidental

and casual nature, made that fact startlingly clear. Thrale and Kalonia were not in the

same ladder. Neither gave the other any orders— in fact, they had surprisingly little to

do with each other. While Thrale formerly directed the activities of a half-million or so

planets—and Kalonia apparently still did much the same—their fields of action had not

overlapped at any point.

     His conquest of Thrale, hailed so widely as such a triumph, had got him precisely

nowhere in the solution of the real problem. It might be possible for him to conquer

Kalonia in a similar fashion, but what would it get him? Nothing. There would be no

more leads upward from Kalonia than there had been from Thrale. How in all of

Noshabkeming's variegated and iridescent hells was he going to work this out?

     A complete analysis revealed only one possible method of procedure. In one of

the transcriptions—made twenty-one years ago and unsealed for the first time by Beth,

the librarian-linguist—one of the speakers had mentioned casually that the new

Kalonian Lensmen seemed to be doing a good job, and a couple of the others had

agreed with him. That was all. It might, however, be enough; since it made it highly

probable that Eddie's Lensman was in fact a Kalonian, and since even a Black Lensman

would certainly know where he got his Lens. At the thought of trying to visit the

Boskonian equivalent of Arisia he flinched, but only momentarily. Invasion, or even

physical approach, would of course be impossible; but any planet, even Arisia itself,

could be destroyed. If it could be found, that planet would be destroyed. He had to find

it—that was probably what Mentor had been wanting him to do all the time! But how?

     In his various previous enterprises against Boskonia he had been a gentleman of

leisure, a dock-walloper, a meteor-miner, and many other things. None of his already

established aliases would fit on Kalonia; and besides, it was very poor technique to

repeat himself, especially at this high level of opposition. To warrant appearance on

Kalonia at all, he would have to be an operator of some kind—not too small, but not big

enough so that an adequate background could not be synthesized in not too long a

time. A zwilnik—an actual drug-runner with a really worth-while cargo—would be the

best bet.

     His course of action decided, the Gray Lensman started making calls. He first

called Kit, with whom he held a long conversation. He called the captain of his

battleship-yacht, the Dauntless, and gave him many and explicit orders. He called Vice-

Coordinator Maitland, and various other Unattached Lensmen who had plenty of weight

m Narcotics, Public Relations, Criminal Investigation, Navigation, Homicide, and many

other apparently totally unrelated establishments of the Galactic Patrol. Finally, after ten

solid hours of mind-racking labor, he ate a tremendous meal and told Clarrissa—he

called her last of all—that he was going to go to bed and sleep for one whole G-P week.

     Thus it was that the name of Bradlow Thyron began to obtrude itself above the

threshold of Galactic consciousness. For seven or eight years that name had been

below the middle of the Patrol's long, black list of the wanted; now it was well up toward

the top. That notorious zwilnik and his villainous crew had been chased from one side of

the First Galaxy to the other. For a few months it had been supposed that they had

been blown out of the ether. Now, however, it was known definitely that he was

operating in the Second Galaxy, and he and every one of his cutthroat gang—fiends

who had blasted thousands of lives with noxious wares—were wanted for piracy, drug-

mongering, and first-degree murder. From the Patrol's standpoint, the hunting was very

poor. G-P planetographers have charted only a small percentage of the planets of the

Second Galaxy; and only a few of those are peopled by the adherents of Civilization.

     Therefore it required some time, but finally there came the message for which

Kinnison was so impatiently waiting. A Boskonian pretty-big-shot and drug-master

named Harkleroy, on the planet Phlestyn II, city, Nelto, coordinates so-and-so, fitted his

specifications to a "T"; a middle-sized operator neither too close to nor too far away

from Kalonia. And Kinnison, having long since learned the lingua franca of the region

from a local meteor-miner, was ready to act. First, he made sure that the mighty

Dauntless would be where he wanted her when he needed her. Then, seated at his

speedster's communicator, he put through regular channels to call to the Boskonian.

     "Harkleroy? I've got a proposition you'll be interested in. Where and when do you

want to see me?"

     "What makes you think I want to see you at all?" a voice snarled, and the plate

showed a gross, vicious face. "Who are you, scum?"

     "Who I am is nobody's business—and if you don't clamp a baffle on that damn

mouth of yours I'll come down there and shove a glop-skinner's glove so far down your

throat you can sit on it."

     At the first defiant word the zwilnik began visibly to swell; but in a matter of

seconds he recognized Bradlow Thyron, and Kinnison knew that he did. That pirate

could, and would be expected to, talk back to anybody.

     "I didn't recognize you at first." Harkleroy almost apologized. "We might do some

business, at that. What have you got?"

     "Cocaine, heroin, bentlam, hashish, nitrolabe—most anything a warm-blooded

oxygen-breather would want. The prize, though, is two kilograms of clear-quill thionite."

     "Thionite—two kilograms!" The Phlestan's eyes gleamed. "Where and how did

you get it?"

     "I asked the Lensman on Trenco to make it for me, special, and he did."

     "So you won't talk, huh?" Kinnison could see Harkleroy's brain work. Thyron

could be made to talk, later. "We can maybe do business at that. Come down here right

away." "I'll do that, but listen!" and the Lensman's eyes burned into the zwilnik's. "I know

what you're figuring on, and I'm telling you right now not to try it if you want to keep on

living. You know this ain't the first planet I ever landed on, and if you've got a brain you

know that a lot of smarter guys than you are have tried monkey business on me— and

I'm still here. So watch your step!"

     The Lensman landed, and made his way to Harkleroy's inner office in what

seemed to be an ordinary enough, if somewhat over-size, suit of light space-armor. But

it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a power-house, built of dureum a

quarter of an inch thick. Kinnison was not walking in it; he was merely the engineer of a

battery of two-thousand-horsepower motors. Unaided, he could not have lifted one leg

of that armor off the ground.

     As he had expected, everyone he encountered wore a thought-screen; nor was

he surprised at being halted by a blaring loud-speaker in the hall, since the zwilnik's

search-beams were being stopped four feet away from his armor.

     "Halt! Cut your screens or we'll blast you where you stand!"

     "Yeah? Act your age, Harkleroy. I told you I had something up my sleeve besides

my arm, and I meant it. Either I come as I am or I flit somewhere else, to do business

with somebody who wants this stuff bad enough to act like half a man. 'Smatter—afraid

you ain't got blasters enough in there to handle me?"

     This taunt bit deep, and the visitor was allowed to proceed. As he entered the

private office, however, he saw that Harkleroy's hand was poised near a switch, whose

closing would signal a score or more of concealed gunners to burn him down. They

supposed that the stuff was either on his person or in his speedster just outside. Time

was short.

     "I abase myself—that's the formula you insist on, ain't it?" Kinnison sneered,

without bending his head a millimeter.

     Harkleroy's finger touched the stud.

     "Dauntless! Come down!" Kinnison snapped out the order.

     Hand, stud, and a part of the desk disappeared in the flare of Kinnison's beam.

Wall-ports opened; projectors and machine rifles erupted vibratory and solid destruction.

Kinnison leaped toward the desk; the attack slowing down and stopping as he neared

and seized the Boskonian. One fierce, short blast reduced the thought-screen generator

to blobs of fused metal. Harkleroy screamed to his gunners to resume fire, but before

bullet or beam took the zwilnik's life, Kinnison learned what he most wanted to know.

     The ape did know something about Black Lensmen. He didn't know where the

Lenses came from, but he did know how the men were chosen. More, he knew a

Lensman personally—one Melasnikov, who had his office in Cadsil, on Kalonia III itself.

     Kinnison turned and ran—the alarm had been given and they were bringing up

stuff too heavy for even his armor to handle. But the Dauntless was landing already;

smashing to rubble five city blocks in the process. She settled; and as the dureum-clad

Gray Lensman began to fight his way out of Harkleroy's fortress, Major Peter

vanBuskirk and a full battalion of Valerians, armed with space-axes and semi-portables,