"Now remember, Gerrond," the Gray Lensman said impressively as he was about to leave. "They're probably right here in Ardith, but they may be anywhere on the planet. Keep a spy ray on me wherever I go, and trace theirs if you can. That will take some doing, as the head one is bound to be an expert. Keep those oglons at least a mile--thirty seconds flying time--away from me; get all the Lensmen you can on the job; keep a cruiser and a speedster hot, but not too close. I may need one of them, or all, or none of them, I can't tell; but I do know this--if I need anything at all, I'll need it fast. Above all, Gerrond, by the Lens you wear, do nothing whatever, no matter what happens around me or to me, until I give you the word. QX?" "QX, Gray Lensman. Clear ether!" Kinnison took a ground-cab to the mouth of the narrow street upon which was situated his dock-walloper's mean lodging. This was a desperate, a fool-hardy trick--but in its very boldness, in its insolubly paradoxical aspects, lay its strength. Probably Boskone could solve its puzzles, but--he hoped--this ape, not being Boskone, couldn't. And, paying off the cabman, he thrust his hands into his tattered pockets and, whistling blithely if a bit raucously through his stained teeth, he strode off down the narrow way as though he did not have a care in the world. But he was doing the finest job of acting of his short career; even though, for all he really knew, he might not have any audience at all. For, inwardly, he was strung to highest tension. His sense of perception, sharply alert, was covering the full hemisphere around and above him; his mind was triggered to jerk any muscle of his body into instantaneous action. * * * * * Meanwhile, in a heavily guarded room, there sat a manlike being, faintly but definitely blue; not only as to eyes, but also as to hair, teeth, and complexion. For two hours he had been sitting at his spy ray plate, studying with ever-growing uneasiness the human beings so suddenly and so surprisingly numerously having business at the Patrol's Base. For minutes he had been studying minutely a man in a ground-cab, and his uneasiness reached panic heights. "It _is_ the Lensman!" he burst out. "It's _got_ to be, Lens or no Lens. Who else would have the cold nerve to go back there when he knows that he has exposed himself?" "Well, get him, then," advised his companion. "All set, aren't you?" "But it _can't_ be!" the chief went on, reversing himself in mid-flight. "A Lensman without a Lens is unthinkable, and invisible Lens is preposterous. And this fellow has not now, and never has had, a mind-ray machine. He hasn't got _anything_! And besides, the Lensman we're after wouldn't think of doing a thing like this--he always disappears the instant a job is finished, whether or not there is any chance of his having been discovered." "Well, drop him and chase somebody else, then," the lieutenant advised, unfeelingly.