During the long trip, Kinnison exercised, thought, and studied spool after spool of tape--the Radeligian language. Thoughts of the red-headed nurse obtruded themselves strongly at times, but he put them aside resolutely. He was, he assured himself, off women forever--all women. He cultivated his new beard; trimming it, with the aid of a triplex mirror and four stereoscopic photographs, into something which, although neat and spruce enough, was too full and bushy by half to be a Vandyke. Also, he moved his Lens bracelet up his arm and rayed the white skin thus exposed until his whole wrist was the same even shade of tan. He did not drive his speedster to Radelix, for that racy little fabrication would have been recognized anywhere for what she was; and private citizens simply did not drive ships of that type. Therefore, with every possible precaution of secrecy, he landed her in a Patrol base four solar systems away. In that base Kimball Kinnison disappeared; but the tall, shock-haired, bushy-bearded Chester Q. Fordyce--cosmopolite, man of leisure, and dilettante in science--who took the next space liner for Radelix was not precisely the same individual who had come to that planet a few days before with that name and those unmistakable characteristics. Mr. Chester Q. Fordyce, then, and not Gray Lensman Kimball Kinnison, disembarked at Ardith, the world-capital of Radelix. He took up his abode at the Hotel Ardith-Splendide and proceeded, with neither too much nor too little fanfare, to be his cosmopolitan self in those circles of society in which, wherever he might find himself, he was wont to move. As a matter of course, he entertained, and was entertained by, the Tellurian Ambassador. Equally as a matter of course, he attended divers and sundry functions, at which he made the acquaintance of hundreds of persons, many of them personages. That one of these should have been Vice-Admiral Gerrond, Lensman in charge of the Patrol's Radeligian base, was inevitable. * * * * * It was, then, a purely routine and logical development that at a reception one evening Vice-Admiral Gerrond stopped to chat for a moment with Mr. Fordyce; and it was purely accidental that the nearest bystander was a few yards distant. Hence, Mr. Fordyce's conduct was strange enough. "Gerrond!" he said without moving his lips and in a tone almost inaudible, the while he was offering the Admiral an Alsakanite cigarette. "Don't look at me particularly right now, and don't show surprise. Study me for the next ten minutes, then put your Lens on me and tell me whether you have ever seen me before or not." Then, glancing at the watch upon his left wrist--a time-piece just about as large and as ornate as a wrist watch could be and still remain in impeccable taste--he murmured something conventional and strolled away.