"I'll do that, chief. I think a lot of me, really. You know that story about the guy who was all right in his place, but the place hadn't been dug yet? Well, I don't want anybody digging my proper place for a long time to come." Haynes laughed, but the concern did not leave his features. "Anything special you want done?" he asked. "Yes, very special," Kinnison surprised him by answering in the affirmative. "You know that the Medonians developed a scrambler for a detector-nullifier. Hotchkiss and the boys developed a new line of attack on that--against long-range stuff we're probably safe--but they haven't been able to do a thing on electromagnetics. Well, the Boskonians, beginning with Prellin, are going to start wondering what has been happening. Then, if I succeed in getting Prellin, they are bound to start doing things. One thing they will do will be to fix up their headquarters so that they will have about five hundred percent overlap on their electros. Perhaps they will have outposts, too, close enough together to have the same thing there--possibly two or three hundred even on visuals." "In that case, I would say that you'd stay out." "Not necessarily. What do electros work on?" "Iron, I suppose--they did when I went to school last." "The answer, then, is to build me a speedster that is inherently indetectable--absolutely non-ferrous. Berylumin and other alloys for all the structural parts--" "But you've got to have silicon-steel cores for your electrical equipment!" "I was coming to that. Have you? I was reading in the 'Transactions' the other day that force fields had been used in big units, and were more efficient. Some of the smaller units, instruments and so on, might have to have some iron, but wouldn't it be possible to so saturate those small pieces with a dense field of detector frequencies that they wouldn't react?" "I don't know. Never thought of it. Would it?" "I don't know, either--I'm not telling you, I'm just making suggestions. I do know one thing, however. We've got to keep ahead of them--think of things first and oftenest, and be ready to abandon them for something else as soon as we have used them once." "Except for those primary projectors." Haynes grinned wryly. "They can't be abandoned--even with Medonian power we haven't been able to develop a screen that will stop them cold. We've got to keep them secret from Boskone--and in that connection I want to compliment you on the suggestion of having Velantian Lensmen as mind readers wherever those projectors are even being thought of." "You caught spies, then? How many?" "Not many--three or four in each Base--but enough to have done the damage. Now, I believe, for the first time in history, we can be _sure_ of our entire personnel." "I think so. The Arisian said that the Lens was enough, if we used it properly. That's up to us." "But how about visuals?" Haynes was still worrying, and to good purpose. * * * * *