"Synthetic, they say. Not as dense as it appears--that's due largely to field-action, too. They're working on it now." "Thanks for the dope. I've got to flit--got a date with Haynes. I'll see Cardynge later and let him get it off his chest," and the Lensman strode away toward the Port Admiral's office. * * * * * Haynes greeted him cordially; then, at sight of the storm signals flying in the Gray Lensman's eyes, he sobered. "QX," he said, wearily. "If we have to go over this again, unload it, Kim." "Twenty-two good men," Kinnison said, harshly. "I murdered them. Just as surely, if not quite as directly, as though I brained them with a spaceaxe." "In one way, if you look at it fanatically enough, yes," the older man admitted, much to Kinnison's surprise. "I am not asking you to look at it in a broader sense, because you probably can't--yet. Some things you can do alone; some things you can do even better alone than with help. I have never objected; nor shall I ever object to your going alone on such missions, however dangerous they may be. That is, and will be, your job. What you are forgetting in the luxury of giving way to your emotions is that the Patrol comes first. The Patrol is of vastly greater importance than the lives of any man or group of men in it." "But I know that, sir," protested Kinnison. "I--" "You have a peculiar way of showing it, then," the Admiral broke in. "You say that you killed twenty-two men. Admitting it for the moment, which would you say was better for the Patrol--to lose those twenty-two good men in a successful and productive operation, or to lose the life of one Unattached Lensman without gaining any information or any other benefit whatever thereby?" "Why ... I--If you look at it that way, sir--" Kinnison still knew that he was right, but in that form the question answered itself. "That is the only way it can be looked at," the old man returned, flatly. "No heroics on your part, no maudlin sentimentality. Now, as a Lensman, is it your considered judgment that it is best for the Patrol that you traverse that hyperspatial vortex alone, or with all the resources of the _Dauntless_ at your command?" Kinnison's face was white and strained. He could not lie to the Port Admiral. Nor could he tell the truth, for the dying agonies of those fiendishly tortured boys still wracked him to the core. "But I can't order men into any such death as that," he broke out, finally. "You must," Haynes replied, inexorably. "Either you take the ship as she is or else you call for volunteers--and you know what that would mean."