"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 package, 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 that this ain't the first planet I ever landed on, and if you've got a brain you know that a lot of guys smarter 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 oversize, suit of light space-armor. But it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a powerhouse, 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 a lot of stuff 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.