"Ploor!"
"By all means Ploor!"
"But how about Arisia here?" Maitland asked.
"Under control," Kinnison replied. "We'll leave a heavy guard and a spare tank—the Arisians will do the rest."
As soon as the tremendous fleet had shaken itself down into the course for Ploor, all seven of the Kinnisons retired to a small dining room and ate a festive meal. They drank after-dinner coffee. Most of them smoked. They discussed, for a long time and not very quietly, the matter of the Hell Hole in Space. Finally:
"I know it's a trap, as well as you do." Kinnison got up from the table, rammed his hands into his breeches pockets, and paced the floor. "It's got T-R-A-P painted all over it, in bill-poster letters seventeen meters high. So what? Since I'm the only one who can, I've got to go in, if it's still there after we knock Ploor off. And it'll still be there, for all the tea in China. All the Ploorans aren't on Ploor."
Four young Kinnisons flashed thoughts at Kathryn, who frowned and bit her lip. She had hit that hole with everything she had, and had simply bounced. She had been able to block the radiation, of course, but such solid barriers had been necessary that she had blinded herself by her own screens. That it was Eddorian there could be no doubt—warned by her own activities in the other tube—Plooran, of course—and Dad would be worth taking, in more ways than one.
"I can't say that I'm any keener about going in than any of you are about having me to do it," the big Lensman went on, "but unless some of you can figure out a reason for my not going in that isn't fuller of holes than a sponge-rubber cushion, I'm going to tackle it just as soon after we blow Ploor apart as I can possibly get there."
And Kathryn, his self-appointed guardian, knew that nothing could stop him. Nor did anyone there, even Clarrissa, try to stop him. Lensmen all, they knew that he had to go in; and why.