"Hi, fellows--thanks." Kinnison waved a salute to the room as a whole. "Hi, Port Admiral! Hi, Commandant!" He saluted Haynes and von Hohendorff as perfunctorily, and greeted them as casually, as though he had last seen them an hour, instead of ten weeks, before; as though the intervening time had been spent in the veriest idleness, instead of in the fashion in which it actually had been spent. Old von Hohendorff greeted his erstwhile pupil cordially enough, but: "Out with it!" Haynes demanded. "What did you do? How did you do it? What does all this confounded rigmarole mean? Tell us all about it--all you can, I mean," he added, hastily. "There's no need of secrecy now, I think," and in flashing thoughts the Gray Lensman went on to describe everything that had happened. "So you see," he concluded, "I don't really _know_ anything. It's all surmise, suspicion, and deduction. It may be that nothing at all will happen: in which case these precautions, while they will have been wasted effort, will have done us no harm. In case something _does_ happen, however--and I'll bet all the tea in China that something will--we'll be ready for it." "But if what you are beginning to suspect is really true, it means that Boskonia is inter-Galactic in scope--wider spread even than the Patrol!" "Probably, but not necessarily--it may mean only that they have bases further outside. And remember that I'm arguing on a mighty slim thread of evidence. That screen was hard and tight, and I couldn't touch the external beam--if there was one--at all. I got just part of a thought, here and there. However, the thought was 'that' galaxy; not just 'galaxy,' or 'this' or 'the' galaxy--and why think that way if the guy was already in this galaxy?" [Illustration: _"But that's not the end, sir," said Kinnison. "They said not 'the' galaxy, or even 'this' galaxy--the thought was 'that' galaxy!"_] "But nobody has ever--But skip it for now--the boys are ready for you. Take over!" "QX. First we'll go free again. Don't think much, if any, of the stuff can come out here, but no use taking chances. Cut your screens. Now, all you gamma-zeta men, throw out your fields, and if any of you get a puncture, or even a flash, measure its position. You recording observers, step your scanners up to fifty thousand. QX?" "QX!" the observers and recorders reported, almost as one, and the Gray Lensman sat down at a plate. * * * * * His mind, free at last to make the investigation from which it had been so long and so sternly barred, flew down into and through the dome, to and into that cryptic globe so tantalizingly poised in the air of the Center.