"As you say," the officer agreed, again. "But we'd like to--" and he extended a sheaf of currency. "Rather not, sir, thanks. You see, the longer it takes me to earn another stake, the longer it'll be before--" "I see. Thanks, anyway, for us all," and captain and mate helped the derelict embark. They scarcely looked at him, scarcely dared look at each other, but-- Kinnison, for his part, was almost content. This story, too, would get around. It would be in Miners' Rest before he got back there, and it would help--help a lot. He did not see how he could possibly, or ever, let those officers know the truth, even though he realized full well that at that very moment they were thinking, pityingly: "The poor devil--the poor, brave devil!" XIII. The Gray Lensman went back to his mining with a will and with unimpaired vigor, for his distress aboard the ship he had rescued had been sheerest acting. One small bottle of good brandy was scarcely a cocktail to the physique that had stood up under quart after quart of the crudest, wickedest, fieriest beverage known to space; that tiny morsel of bentlam--scarcely half a unit--affected him no more than a lozenge of licorice. Three weeks. Twenty-one days, each of twenty-four G-P hours. At the end of that time, he had learned from the mind of the zwilnik that the Boskonian director of this, the Borovan solar system, would visit Miners' Rest, to attend some kind of a meeting. His informant did not know what the meeting was to be about, and he was not unduly curious about it. Kinnison, however, did and was. The Lensman knew, or at least very shrewdly suspected, that that meeting was to be a regional conference of big-shot zwilniks; he was intensely curious to know all about everything that was to take place; and he was determined to be present. Three weeks was lots of time. In fact, he should be able to complete his quota of heavy metal in two, or less. It was there, there was no question of that. Right out there were the meteors, unaccountable thousands of millions of them, and a certain proportion of them carried values. The more and the harder he worked, the more of these worthwhile wanderers of the void he would find. Therefore he labored long, hard, and rapidly, and his store of high-test meteors grew apace. To such good purpose did he use beam and Spalding drill that he was ready more than a week ahead of time. That was QX--he'd much rather be early than late. Something might have happened to hold him up--things did happen, too often--and he had to be at that meeting! Thus it came about that, a few days before the all-important date, Kinnison's battered treasure-hunter blasted herself down to her second landing at Strongheart's dock. This time the miner was welcomed, not as a stranger, but as a friend of long standing.