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Kinnison came to—or, rather, to say that he came half-to would be a more accurate statement—with a yell directed at the blurrily-seen figure in white which he knew must be a nurse.

“Nurse!” Then, as a searing stab of pain shot through him at the effort, he went on, thinking at the figure in white through his Lens:

“My speedster! I must have landed her free! Get the space-port .”

“There, there, Lensman,” a low, rich voice crooned, and a red-head bent over him. “The speedster has been taken care of. Everything is on the green; go to sleep and rest.”

“Never mind your ship,” the unctuous voice went on. “It was landed and put away .”

“Listen, dumb-bell!” snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite of the pain, the better to drive home his meaning. “Don’t try to soothe me! What do you think I am, delirious? Get this and get it straight. I said I landed that speedster free. If you don’t know what that means, tell somebody that does. Get the space-port—get Haynes—get .”

“We got them, Lensman, long ago.” Although her voice was still creamily, sweetly soft, an angry color burned into the nurse’s face. “I said everything is on zero. Your speedster was inerted; how else could you be here, inert? I helped do it myself, so I know she’s inert.”

“QX.” The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse turned to an intern standing by—wherever that nurse was, at least one doctor could almost always be found.

“But my ship .”

“Dumb-bell!” she flared. “What a sweet mess he’s going to be to take care of! Not even conscious yet, and he’s calling names and picking fights already!”

In a few days Kinnison was fully and alertly conscious. In a week most of the pain had left him, and he was beginning to chafe under restraint. In ten days he was “fit to be tied,” and his acquaintance with his head nurse, so inauspiciously begun, developed even more inauspiciously as time went on. For, as Haynes and Lacy had each more than anticipated, the Lensman was by no means an ideal patient.

Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were fat-heads, even Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were dumb-bells, even—or especially?—“Mac,” who with almost superhuman skill, tact, and patience had been holding him together. Why, even fat-heads and dumb-bells, even high-grade morons, ought to know that a man needed food!

Accustomed to eating everything he could reach, three or four or five times a day, he did not realize—nor did his stomach—that his now quiescent body could no longer use the five thousand or more calories that it had been wont to burn up, each twenty-four hours, in intense effort. He was always hungry, and he was forever demanding food.

And food, to him, did not mean orange juice or grape juice or tomato juice or milk. Nor did it mean weak tea and hard, dry toast and an occasional anemic soft-boiled egg. If he ate eggs at all he wanted them fried; three or four of them, accompanied by two or three thick slices of ham.

He wanted—and demanded in no uncertain terms, argumentatively and persistently—a big, thick, rare beefsteak. He wanted baked beans, with plenty of fat pork. He wanted bread in thick slices, piled high with butter, and not this quadruply-and-unmentionably-qualified toast. He wanted roast beef, rare, in big, thick slabs. He wanted potatoes and thick brown gravy. He wanted corned beef and cabbage. He wanted pie—any kind of pie—in large, thick quarters. He wanted peas and corn and asparagus and cucumbers, and also various other-worldly staples of diet which he often and insistently mentioned by name.

But above all he wanted beefsteak. He thought about it days and dreamed about it nights. One night in particular he dreamed about it—an especially luscious porterhouse, fried in butter and smothered in mushrooms—only to wake up, mouth watering, literally starved, to face again the weak tea, dry toast, and, horror of horrors, this time a flabby, pallid, flaccid poached egg! It was the last straw.

“Take it away,” he said, weakly; then, when the nurse did not obey, he reached out and pushed the breakfast, tray and all, off the table. Then, as it crashed to the floor, he turned away, and, in spite of all his efforts, two hot tears forced themselves between his eyelids.

It was a particularly trying ordeal, and one requiring all of even Mac’s skill, diplomacy, and forbearance, to make the recalcitrant patient eat the breakfast prescribed for him. She was finally successful, however, and as she stepped out into the corridor she met the ubiquitous interne.

“How’s your Lensman?” he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.

“Don’t call him my Lensman!” she stormed. She was about to explode with the pent-up feelings which she of course could not vent upon such a pitiful, helpless thing as her star patient. “Beefsteak! I almost wish they would give him a beefsteak, and that he’d choke on it—which of course he would. He’s worse than a baby. I never saw such a . such a brat in my life. I’d like to spank him—he needs it. I’d like to know how he ever got to be a Lensman, the big cantankerous clunker! I’m going to spank him, too, one of these days, see if I don’t!”

“Don’t take it so hard, Mac,” the interne urged. He was, however, very much relieved that relations between the handsome young Lensman and the gorgeous red-head were not upon a more cordial basis. “He won’t be here very long. But I never saw a patient clog your jets before.”

“You probably never saw a patient like him before, either. I certainly hope he never gets cracked up again.”

“Huh?”

“Do I have to draw you a chart?” she asked, sweetly. “Or, if he does get cracked up again, I hope they send him to some other hospital,” and she flounced out.

Nurse MacDougall thought that when the Lensman could eat the meat he craved her troubles would be over; but she was mistaken. Kinnison was nervous, moody, brooding; by turns irritable, sullen, and pugnacious. Nor is it to be wondered at. He was chained to that bed, and in his mind was the gnawing consciousness that he had failed. And not only failed—he had made a complete fool of himself. He had underestimated an enemy, and as a result of his own stupidity the whole Patrol had taken a setback. He was anguished and tormented. Therefore:

“Listen, Mac,” he pleaded one day. “Bring me some clothes and let me take a walk. I need exercise.”

“Uh uh, Kim, not yet,” she denied him gently, but with her entrancing smile in full evidence. “But pretty quick, when that leg looks a little less like a Chinese puzzle, you and nursie go bye-bye.”

“Beautiful, but dumb!” the Lensman growled. “Can’t you and those cockeyed croakers realize that I’ll never get any strength back if you keep me in bed all the rest of my life? And don’t talk baby-talk at me, either. I’m well enough at least so you can wipe that professional smile off your pan and cut that soothing bedside manner of yours.”

“Very well—I think so, too!” she snapped, patience at long last gone. “Somebody should tell you the truth. I always supposed that Lensmen had to have brains, but you’ve been a perfect brat ever since you’ve been here. First you wanted to eat yourself sick, and now you want to get up, with bones half-knit and burns half-healed, and undo everything that has been done for you. Why don’t you snap out of it and act your age for a change?”

“I never did think nurses had much sense, and now I know they haven’t.” Kinnison eyed her with intense disfavor, not at all convinced. “I’m not talking about going back to work. I mean a little gentle exercise, and I know what I need.”

“You’d be surprised at what you don’t know,” and the nurse walked out, chin in air. In five minutes, however, she was back, her radiant smile again flashing.

“Sorry, Kim, I shouldn’t have blasted off that way—I know that you’re bound to back-fire and to have brain-storms. I would, too, if I were .”

“Cancel it, Mac,” he began, awkwardly. “I don’t know why I have to be crabbing at you all the time.”

“QX, Lensman,” she replied, entirely serene now. “I do. You’re not the type to stay in bed without it griping you; but when a man has been ground up into such hamburger as you are, he has to stay in bed whether he likes it or not, and no matter how much he pops off about it. Roll over here, now, and I’ll give you an alcohol rub. But it won’t be long now, really—pretty soon we’ll have you out in a wheel-chair .”

Thus it went for weeks. Kinnison knew his behavior was atrocious, abominable; but he simply could not help it. Every so often the accumulated pressure of his bitterness and anxiety would blow off; and, like a jungle tiger with a toothache, he would bite and claw anything or anybody within reach.

Finally, however, the last picture was studied, the last bandage removed, and he was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged, bitterly although he resented his “captivity,” as he called it, until he really was fit. Haynes saw to that. And Haynes had allowed only the most sketchy interviews during that long convalescence. Discharged, however, Kinnison sought him out.

“Let me talk first,” Haynes instructed him at sight. “No self-reproaches, no destructive criticism. Everything constructive. Now, Kimball, I’m mighty glad to hear that you made a perfect recovery. You were in bad shape. Go ahead.”

“You have just about shut my mouth by your first order.” Kinnison smiled sourly as he spoke. “Two words—flat failure. No, let me add two more—as yet.”

“That’s the spirit!” Haynes exclaimed. “Nor do we agree with you that it was a failure. It was merely not a success—so far—which is an altogether different thing. Also, I may add that we had very fine reports indeed on you from the hospital.”

“Huh?” Kinnison was amazed to the point of being inarticulate.

“You just about tore it down, of course, but that was only to be expected.”

“But, sir, I made such a .”

“Exactly. As Lacy tells me quite frequently, he likes to have patients over there that they don’t like. Mull that one over for a bit—you may understand it better as you get older. The thought, however, may take some of the load off your mind.”

“Well, sir, I am feeling a trifle low, but if you and the rest of them still think .”

“We do so think. Cheer up and get on with the story.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and before I go around sticking out my neck again I’m going to .”

“You don’t need to tell me, you know.”

“No, sir, but I think I’d better. I’m going to Arisia to see if I can get me a few treatments for swell-head and lame-brain. I still think that I know how to use the Lens to good advantage, but I simply haven’t got enough jets to do it. You see, I .” he stopped. He would not offer anything that might sound like an alibi: but his thoughts were plain as print to the old Lensman.

“Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn’t.”

“If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But when those wheelers took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I didn’t have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn’t have happened if .” he paused.

“If what? Reason it out, son,” Haynes advised, pointedly. “You are wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Suppose you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome.” It did not occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in. Lensmen always went in.

“Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts,” Kinnison admitted, frankly. “So I’m going back to Arisia for more training, if they’ll give it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even Mentor a long time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century.”

“Didn’t Mentor tell you never to go back there?”

“No, sir.” Kinnison grinned boyishly. “He must’ve forgot it in my case—the only slip he ever made, I guess. That’s what gives me an out.”

“Um . . . m . . . m.” Haynes pondered this startling bit of information. He knew, far better than young Kinnison could, the Arisian power of mind: he did not believe that Mentor of Arisia had ever forgotten anything, however tiny or unimportant. “It has never been done . they are a peculiar race; incomprehensible . but not vindictive. He may refuse you, but nothing worse—that is, if you do not cross the barrier without invitation. It’s a splendid idea, I think; but be very careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power—or else don’t strike it at all.”

They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing through space. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip in physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take it. Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail’s pace, stopping instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.

“Kimball Kinnison of Sol Three calling Mentor of Arisia. Is it permitted that I approach your planet?” He was neither brazen nor obsequious, but was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply.

“It is permitted, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus,” a slow, deep, measured voice resounded in his brain. “Neutralize your controls. You will be landed.”

He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect landing at a regulation space-port. He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity’s unblinking eyes, in silence.

“Ah, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be.”

“I am wondering now, seriously,” Kinnison replied, “and if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your true shapes.”

“This?” and the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.

“No. There is a vast difference between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize fully that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind.”

“Ah; your development has been eminently satisfactory. It is now permissible to tell you, youth, that your present quest, not for mere information, but for real knowledge, was expected.”

“Huh? How could that be? I didn’t decide definitely, myself, until only a couple of weeks ago.”

“It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth .”

“Helmuth! You know, then, where .” Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that—he would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good; but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.

“You are right,” the sage remarked, imperturbably. “For proper development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself.” Then he continued his previous thought:

“As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality—the Lens—by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to understand the true relationship between mind and Lens. That understanding has been inevitable; for long we have known that in time a certain few of your minds would become strong enough to discover that theretofore unknown relationship. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would of course return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.

“Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. There are several others who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or one other would be the first advanced student.”

“Who is that other, if I may ask?”

“Your friend, Worsel the Velantian.”

“He’s got a real mind—way, way ahead of mine,” the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.

“In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no.”

“Huh?” Kinnison exclaimed. “In what possible way have I got it over him?”

“I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours—now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerable greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will ever be able to develop. Since I predicted that you would be the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed in accordance with that prediction.”

“Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward.”

“It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!”

He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison’s mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.

“Resist!” came the harsh command.

“Resist! How?” demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. “You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert space-ship!”

“Use your will—your force—your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor anyone else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed; one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage. Constructive exercises will come later; the first step must be to build up your resistance. Therefore resist!”

The force, which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the very verge of intolerability; and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it; mustering his every ultimate resource to the task .

Suddenly the torture ceased and the Lensman slumped down, a mental and physical wreck. He was white, trembling, sweating; shaken to the very core of his being. He was ashamed of his weakness. He was humiliated and bitterly disappointed at the showing he had made; but from the Arisian there came a calm, encouraging thought.

“You need not feel ashamed; you should instead feel proud, for you have made a start which is almost surprising, even to me, your sponsor. This may seem to you like needless punishment, but it is not. This is the only possible way in which that which you seek may be found.”

“In that case, go to it,” the Lensman declared. “I can take it.”

The “advanced instruction” went on, with the pupil becoming ever stronger; until he was taking without damage thrusts that would at first have slain him instantly. The bouts became shorter and shorter, requiring as they did such terrific outpourings of mental force that no human mind could stand the awful strain for more than half an hour at a time.

And now these savage conflicts of wills and minds were interspersed with real instruction; with lessons neither painful nor unpleasant. In these the aged scientists probed gently into the youngster’s mind, opening it out and exposing to its owner’s gaze vast caverns whose very presence he had never even suspected. Some of these storehouses were already partially or completely filled; needing only arrangement and connection. Others were nearly empty. These were catalogued and made accessible. And in all, permeating everything, was the Lens.

“Just like clearing out a clogged-up water system; with the Lens the pump that couldn’t work!” exclaimed Kinnison one day.

“More like that than you at present realize,” assented the Arisian. “You have observed, of course, that I have not given you any detailed instructions nor pointed out any specific abilities of the Lens which you have not known how to use. You will have to operate the pump yourself; and you have many surprises awaiting you as to what your Lens will pump, and how. Our sole task is to prepare your mind to work with the Lens, and that task is not yet done. Let us on with it.”

After what seemed to Kinnison like weeks the time came when he could block out Mentor’s suggestions completely; nor, now blocked out, should the Arisian be able to discern that fact. The Lensman gathered all his force together, concentrated it, and hurled it back at his teacher; and there ensued a struggle none the less Titanic because of its essential friendliness. The very ether seethed and boiled with the fury of the mental forces there at grips, but finally the Lensman beat down the other’s screens. Then, boring deep into his eyes, he willed with all his force to see that Arisian as he really was. And instantly the scholarly old man subsided into a . a BRAIN! There were a few appendages, of course, and appurtenances, and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion, and the like, but to all intents and purposes the Arisian was simply and solely a brain.

Tension ended, conflict ceased, and Kinnison apologized.

“Think nothing of it,” and the brain actually smiled into Kinnison’s mind. “Any mind of power sufficient to neutralize the forces which I have employed is of course able to hurl no feeble bolts of its own. See to it, however, that you thrust no such force at any lesser mind, or it dies instantly.”

Kinnison started to stammer a reply, but the Arisian went on:

“No, son, I knew and know that the warning is superfluous. If you were not worthy of this power and were you not able to control it properly you would not have it. You have obtained that which you sought. Go, then, with power.”

“But this is only one phase, barely a beginning!” protested Kinnison.

“Ah, you realize even that? Truly, youth, you have come far, and fast. But you are not yet ready for more, and it is a truism that the reception of forces for which a mind is not prepared will destroy that mind. Thus, when you came to me you knew exactly what you wanted. Do you know with equal certainty what more you want from us?”

“No.”

“Nor will you for years, if ever. Indeed, it may well be that only your descendants will be ready for that for which you now so dimly grope. Again I say, young man, go with power.”

Kinnison went.