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 _equals_. 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 field 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 a hurry. A zwilnik--an actual drug-runner with a really worth-while cargo--would be the best bet.