* * * * * In view of the rigorous orders from higher-up the conference room was heavily guarded by screened men; no one except old and trusted employees were allowed to enter it, and they were also protected. Nevertheless, Kinnison got in, by proxy. A clever pickpocket brushed against a screened waiter who was about to enter the sacred precincts, lightning fingers flicking a switch. The waiter began to protest--then forgot what he was going to say, even as the pickpocket forgot completely the deed he had just done. The waiter in turn was a trifle clumsy in serving a certain big shot, but earned no rebuke thereby; for the latter forgot the offense almost instantly. Under Kinnison's control the director fumbled at his screen-generator for a moment, loosening slightly a small but important resister. That done, the Lensman withdrew delicately and the meeting was an open book. "Before we do anything," the director began, "show me that all your screens are on." He bared his own--it would have taken an expert service man an hour to find that it was not functioning perfectly. "Poppycock!" snorted the zwilnik. "Who in all the hells of space thinks that a Lensman would--or _could_--come to Euphrosyne?" "No one can tell what this particular Lensman can or can't do, and nobody knows what he is doing until just before he dies. Hence the strictness. You've searched everybody here, of course?" "Everybody," Strongheart averred, "even the drunks and dopes. The whole building is screened, besides the screens we're wearing." "The dopes don't count, of course, provided they're really doped." No one, except the Gray Lensman himself, could possibly conceive of a Lensman being--not seeming to be, but actually _being_--a drunken sot, to say nothing of being a confirmed addict of any drug. "By the way, who is this Wild Bill Williams that I've been hearing about?" Strongheart and his friend looked at each other and laughed. "I checked up on him early," the zwilnik chuckled. "He isn't the Lensman, of course, but I thought at first he might be an agent. We frisked him and his ship thoroughly--no dice--and checked back on him as a miner, four solar systems back. He's clean, anyway; this is his second bender here. He's been guzzling everything in stock for a week, getting more pie-eyed every day, and Strongheart and I just put him to bed with twenty-four units of benny. You know what _that_ means, don't you?" "Your own benny or his?" the director asked. "My own. That's why I know he's clean. All the other dopes are, too. The drunks we gave the bum's rush, like you told us to." "QX. I don't think there's any danger, myself--I think that the hot-shot Lensman they're afraid of is still working Bronseca--but these orders not to take any chances at all come from 'way, 'way up." "How about this new system they're working on, that nobody knows his boss any more?" asked the zwilnik. "Hooey, I call it."