"QX, Kinnison?" came two hard, sharp thoughts. The Lensmen did not see the Tellurian, but Lieutenant Peter van Buskirk did. That is, he saw him, but did not look at him. "Hi, Kim, you little Tellurian wart!" That worthy's thought was a yell. "Ain't we got fun?" "QX fellows--thanks," to Gerrond and to Winstead, and-- "Ho, Bus! Thanks, you big, Valerian ape!" to the gigantic Dutch-Valerian with whom he had shared so many experiences in the past. "A good clean-up, fellows?" "One hundred per cent, thanks to you. We'll put you--" "Don't, please. You will probably clog my jets if you do. I don't appear in this anywhere--it's just one of your good, routine jobs of mopping up. Clear ether, fellows, I've got to do a flit." "Where?" all three wanted to ask, but they didn't--the Gray Lensman was gone. VII. Kinnison did start his flit, but he did not get far. In fact, he did not even reach his squalid room before cold reason told him that the job was only half done--yes, less than half. He had to give Boskone credit for having brains, and it was not at all likely that even such a comparatively small unit as a planetary headquarters would have only one string to its bow. They certainly would have been forced to install duplicate controls of some sort or other by the trouble they had had after Helmuth's supposedly impregnable Grand Base had been destroyed. There were other straws pointing the same way. Where had those five strange thought-screened men come from? Bominger hadn't known of them apparently. If that idea was sound, the other headquarters would have a spy ray on the whole thing. Both sides used spy rays freely, of course, and to block them was, ordinarily, worse than to let them come. The enemies' use of the thought-screen was different. They realized that it made it easy for the unknown Lensman to discover their agents, but they were forced to use it because of the deadliness of the supposed mind-ray. Why hadn't he thought of this sooner, and had the whole area blocked off? Too late to cry about it now, though. Assume the idea correct. They certainly knew now that he was a Lensman; probably were morally certain that he was _the_ Lensman. His instantaneous change from a drunken dock-walloper to a cold-sober, deadly-skilled rough-and-tumble brawler--and the unexplained deaths of half-a-dozen agents, as well as that of Bominger himself--this was bad. Very, _very_ bad--a flare lit tip-off, if there ever was one. Their spy rays would have combed him, millimeter by plotted cubic millimeter: they knew exactly where his Lens was, as well as he did himself. He had put his tail right into the wringer--wrecked the whole job right at the start--unless he could get that other headquarters outfit, too, and get them before they reported in detail to Boskone.