Mentor's visualization had been sound. The Eddorian guardians had scarcely taken over the first screen when it was overwhelmed by a tremendous wave of Arisian thought. It is to be remembered, however, that this was the second time that the massed might of Arisia had been thrown against Eddore's defenses, and the Boskonians had learned much, during the intervening years, from their exhaustive analyses of the offensive and defensive techniques of that earlier conflict. Thus the Arisian drive was practically stopped at the second zone of defense as Kit approached it. The screen was wavering, shifting; yielding stubbornly wherever it must and springing back into place whenever it could.
Under a tremendous concentration of Arisian force the screen weakened in a limited area directly ahead of the hurtling speedster. A few beams lashed out aimlessly, uselessly—if the Eddorians could not hold their main screens proof against the power of the Arisian attack, how could they protect such minor things as gunners' minds? The little ship flashed through the weakened barrier and into the center of a sphere of impenetrable, impermeable Arisian thought.
At the shock of the sudden ending of his terrific battle—the instantaneous transition from supreme to zero effort—Kit fainted in his control chair. He lay slumped, inert, in a stupor which changed gradually into a deep and natural sleep. And as the sleeping man in his inertialess speedster traversed space at full touring blast, that peculiar sphere of force still enveloped and still protected him.
Kit finally began to come to. His first foggy thought was that he was hungry—then, wide awake and remembering, he grabbed his levers.
"Rest quietly and eat your fill," a grave resonant pseudovoice assured him. "Everything is exactly as it should be."
"Hi, Ment ... well, well, if it isn't my old chum Eukonidor! Hi, young fellow! What's the good word? And what's the big idea of letting—or making—me sleep for a week when there's work to do?"
"Your part of the work, at least for the immediate present, is done; and, let me say, very well done."
"Thanks ... but—" Kit broke off, flushing darkly.
"Do not reproach yourself, nor us. Consider, please, and recite, the manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality."
"The correct alloy. Hot working—perhaps cold, too. Forging—heating—quenching—drawing—"