"It was not an Eddorian," Camilla decided. "It was not of Arisian, or even near-Arisian, grade. Sorry to say it, Kit, but it was another member of that high-thinking race that you've already got down on Page One of your little black book." "I thought it might be. The missing link between Kalonia and Eddore. Credits to millos it's that dopey planet Ploor that Mentor was yowling about." "Let's link up and let the Unit find it," Constance suggested, brightly. "That'd be fun." "Act your age, baby," Kit advised. "Ploor is taboo--you know that as well as I do. Mentor told us all not to try to investigate it--that we'd learn of it in time, so we probably will. I told him a while back that I was going to hunt it up myself, and he told me that if I did he'd tie both my legs around my neck in a lovers' knot, or words to that effect. Sometimes I'd like to half-brain the old buzzard, but everything he has said so far has dead-centered the beam. We'll just have to take it, and try to like it." * * * * * Kinnison was eminently willing to cut his thought-screen, since he could not work through it to do what had to be done here. Nor was he over-confident. He knew that he could handle the Black Lensman--_any_ Black Lensman--but he also knew enough of mental phenomena in general and of Lensmanship in particular to realize that Melasnikov might very well have within call reserves about whom he, Kinnison, could know nothing. He knew that he had lied outrageously to young Frank in regard to the odds applicable to this enterprise; that instead of a million to one, the actuality was one to one, or even less. Nevertheless, he was well content. He had neither lied nor exaggerated in saying that he himself was expendable. That was why Frank and the _Dauntless_ were upstairs now. Getting the dope and getting it back to Base were what mattered. Nothing else did. He was coldly certain that he could get all the information that Melasnikov had, once he had engaged the Kalonian Lensman mind to mind. No Boskonian power or thing, he was convinced, could treat him rough enough to kill him fast enough to keep him from doing that. And he could and would shoot the stuff along to Frank as fast as he got it. And he stood an even--almost even, anyway--chance of getting away afterward. If he could, QX. If he couldn't ... well, that would have to be QX, too. Kinnison flipped his switch and there ensued a conflict of wills that made the subether boil. The Kalonian was one of the strongest, hardest, and ablest individuals of his hellishly capable race; and the fact that he believed implicitly in his own complete invulnerability operated to double and to quadruple his naturally tremendous strength. On the other hand, Kimball Kinnison was a Second-Stage Lensman of the Galactic Patrol.