"Don't, chief--that hurts. I'll be back, honest, as soon as I possibly can, and I'll do anything you want me to--" "That's enough, son." Haynes stood up and grasped Kinnison's hands--hard--in both his own. "I know. Forgive me for taking you for this little ride, but you and Mac suffer so! You're so young, so intense, so insistent upon carrying the entire Cosmos upon your shoulders--I couldn't help it. You won't have to do much of a flit." He glanced at his chronometer. "You'll find all your unfinished business in Room 7295, Base Hospital." "Huh? You know, then?" shouted the overjoyed young giant. "Who doesn't?" was the admiral's quizzical rejoinder. "There may be a few members of some backward race somewhere who do not know all about you and your red-headed sector riot, but I don't happen to know--" He was addressing empty air. Kinnison shot out of the building and, exerting his Gray Lensman's authority, he did a thing which he had always longed boyishly to do but which he had never before really considered doing. He whistled, shrill and piercingly, and waved a Lensed arm, even while he was directing a Lensed thought at the driver of the fast ground car always in readiness in front of GHQ. "Base Hospital--full emergency blast!" he ordered, and the Jehu obeyed. That chauffeur loved emergency stuff, and the long, low, wide racer took off with a deafening roar of unmuffled exhaust and a scream of tortured, burning rubber. "Thanks, Jack--you needn't wait." At the hospital's door Kinnison rendered tribute to fast service and strode along a corridor. An express elevator whisked him up to the seventy-second floor, and there his haste departed completely. This was Nurses' Quarters, he realized suddenly. He had no more business there than--yes, he did, too. He found Room 7295 and rapped upon its door. Boldly, he intended, but the resultant sound was surprisingly small. "Come in!" called a clear contralto. Then, after a moment, "_Come in!_" more sharply; but the Lensman did not, could not obey the summons. She might be--dammitall, he _didn't_ have any business on this floor! Why hadn't he called her up or sent her a thought or something? Why didn't he think at her now? * * * * * The door opened, revealing the mildly annoyed sector chief. At what she saw, her hands flew to her throat and her eyes widened in starkly unbelieving rapture. "_Kim!_" she shrieked in ecstasy. "Chris--my Chris!" Kinnison whispered unsteadily, and for minutes those two uniformed minions of the Galactic Patrol stood motionless upon the room's threshold, strong young arms straining, nurse's crisp and spotless white crushed unregarded against Lensman's pliant gray. "Oh ... I've missed you so terribly, my darling!" Clarrissa crooned. Her voice, always sweetly rich, was pure music. "You don't know the half of it, Chris. This isn't real, I don't think. It can't be--nothing _can_ feel this good!"