THE LENSMEN and their Patrolmen, having made sure that the body of Zamke’s murderer was in fact that of the long-sought Fairchild, went unostentatiously about their various businesses. The six Tellurians, although shaken no little by their climactic experience on Vegia, returned soon to normal and resumed their accustomed routines of life—with certain outstanding variations. Thus, Helen and Joe flirted joyously and sparred dextrously, but neither was ever to be found tête-à-tête with anyone else. And thus, Bob and Barbara, neither flirting nor sparring, became quietly but enthusiastically inseparable. And thus, between Joan and Cloud, so close even before Vegia, the bonding became so tight that their two minds were, to all intents and purposes, one mind. The week on Vegia was over. The _Vortex Blaster II_ was loafing through the void at idling speed. Cloud was pacing the floor in his office. Joan, lounging in a deeply-cushioned chair with legs stuck out at an angle of forty-five degrees to each other, was smoking a cigarette and watching him, with her eyes agleam. “Confound it, I wish they’d hurry up with that fine-tooth,” he said, flipping his half-smoked cigarette at a receptacle and paying no attention to the fact that he missed it by over a foot. “How can I tell Captain Ross where to go when I don’t know myself?” “That’s one thing I just _love_ about you, my pet,” Joan drawled. “You’re so wonderfully, so superhumanly _patient_. You know as well as I do that the absolutely irreducible minimum of time is twenty-six minutes from now, and that they’ll probably find something they’ll want to study for a minute or so after they get there. So light somewhere, why don’t you, and unseethe yourself?” “Touché, Joan.” He sat down with a thump. “Has Doctor Janowick a prescription specific for the ailment?” “Nothing else but, chum. That tight-linkage snooping that we’ve been going to try, but never had time for. Let’s start on Helen and Barbara. I’ve snooped them repeatedly, of course, but our fusion of minds, theoretically, should be able to pick their minds apart cell by cell; to tap their subconscious ancestral memories, even—if there are such things—for a thousand generations back.” He looked at her curiously. “You know, I think you must have some ghoul blood in you somewhere? I tell you again, those girls are _friends_ of ours!” “So what?” she grinned at him, entirely unabashed. “You’ll have to get rid of that squeamishness some day; it’s the biggest roadblock there is on the Way of Knowledge. If not them, how would Nadine suit you?” “Worse yet. She’s just as good at this business as we are, maybe better, and she probably wouldn’t like it.” “You may have something there. We’ll save her for last, and call on her formally, with announcements and everything. Vesta, then?”