"That's due to the way that system of invisibility works. Got to be--nothing else will fit into--" "The Overlords of Delgon!" Haynes rasped, sharply. "But if that's a true picture, how in all the hells of space did this Xylpic, alone of all the ship's personnel, get away clean? Tell me that!" "Simple!" the Gray Lensman snapped back as sharply. "The rest were all Radeligians--he was the only Chickladorian aboard. The Overlords simply didn't know that he was there. They didn't feel him at all. Chickladorians think on a wave nobody else in the Galaxy uses--you must have noticed that when you felt of him with your Lens. It took me half a minute to synchronize with him. "As for his escape, that makes sense, too. The Overlords are slow workers and when they're playing that game they really concentrate on it--they don't pay any attention to anything else. By the time they got done and were ready to take over the ship, he could be almost anywhere." "But he says that there was no ship there--nothing at all!" Haynes protested. "Invisibility isn't hard to understand," Kinnison countered. "We've almost got it ourselves--we undoubtedly could have it as good as that, with a little more work on it. There was a ship there, beyond question. Close. Hooked on with magnets, and with a spacetube, lock to lock. "The only peculiar part of it, and the bad part, is something you haven't mentioned yet. What would the Overlords--if, as we must assume, some of them got away from Worsel and his crew--be doing with a ship? They never had any spaceships that I ever knew anything about, nor any other mechanical devices requiring any advanced engineering skill. Also, and most important, they never did and never could invent or develop such an invisibility apparatus as that." * * * * * Kinnison fell silent, and while he frowned in thought Haynes dismissed the Chickladorian, with orders that his every want be supplied. "What do you deduce from those facts?" the Port Admiral presently asked. "Plenty," the Gray Lensman said, darkly. "I smell a rat. In fact, it stinks to high Heaven. Boskone." "You may be right," the chief of staff conceded. It was hopeless, he knew, for him to try to keep up with this man's mental processes. "But why, and above all, how?" "'Why' is easy. They both owe us a lot, and want to pay us in full. Both hate us all to pieces. 'How' is immaterial. One found the other, some way. They're together, just as sure as hell's a mantrap, and that's what matters. It's bad. Very, _very_ bad, believe me." "Orders?" asked Haynes. He was a big man; big enough to ask instructions from anyone who knew more than he did--big enough to make no bones of such asking. "One does not give orders to the Port Admiral," Kinnison mimicked him lightly, but meaningly. "One may request, perhaps, or suggest, but--"