"It's nice, Mother, seeing you again." Words, or thoughts even, were _so_ inadequate! Kit's voice was a trifle rough: his eyes were not completely dry. "Uh-huh. It _is_ nice," she agreed, snuggling her spectacular head even more firmly into the curve of his shoulder. "Mental contact is better than nothing, of course, but _this_ is perfect!" "Just as much a menace to navigation as ever, aren't you?" He held her at arm's length and shook his head in mock disapproval. "Do you think it's quite right for one woman to have so much of everything when all the others have so little of anything?" "Honestly, I don't." She and Kit had always been exceptionally close; now her love for and her pride in this splendid creature, her son and her first-born, simply would not be denied. "You're joking, I know, but that strikes too deep for comfort. I wake up in the night to wonder why, of all the women in existence, I should be so lucky, especially in my children. QX, skip it." Kit was shying away--she should have known better than to try in words even to skirt the profound depths of sentiment which both she and he knew so well were there. * * * * * "Get back onto the beam, Gorgeous, you know what I meant. Look at yourself in a mirror some day--or do you, perchance?" "Once in a while--maybe twice." She giggled unaffectedly. "You don't think that all this charm and glamour comes without effort, do you? But maybe you'd better get back on the beam yourself--I know that you didn't come all these parsecs out of your way to say pretty things to your mother--even though I admit that they've built up my ego no end." "On target, dead center." Kit had been grinning, but he sobered quickly. "I wanted to talk to you about Lyrane and the job you're figuring on doing out there." "Why?" she demanded. "Do you know anything about it?" "Unfortunately, I don't." Kit's black frown of concentration reminded her forcibly of his father's characteristic scowl. "Guesses--suspicions--theories--not even good hunches. But I thought ... I wondered--" He paused, embarrassed as a schoolboy, then went on with a rush: "Would you mind it too much if I went into something pretty personal?" "You know I wouldn't, son." In contrast to Kit's usual clarity and precision of thought, the question was highly ambiguous, but Clarrissa covered both angles. "I can conceive of no subject, event, action, or thing, in either my life or yours, too intimate or too personal to discuss with you in full. Can you?" "No, I can't--but this is different. As a woman, you're tops--the finest and best that ever lived." This statement, made with all the matter-of-factness of stating that a triangle had three corners, thrilled Clarrissa through and through. "As a Gray Lensman you're over the rest of them like a cirrus cloud. But you should rate full Second Stage, and ... well, you may run up against something too hot to handle, some day, and I ... that is, you--"