"Kim? You told me to Lens you immediately about any off-color work. Don't know whether this is or not. The guy may be—probably is—crazy. Conklin, who reported him, couldn't decide—neither can I, from Conklin's report. Do you want to send somebody special, take over yourself, or what?"
"I'll take over," Kinnison decided instantly. If neither Conklin nor the Vice Co-ordinator, Gray Lensmen both, could decide, there was no point in sending anyone else. "Where and who?"
"Planet, Meneas II, not too far from where you are now. City, Meneateles; 116-3-29, 45-22-17. Place, Jack's Haven, a meteor miner's hangout at the corner of Gold and Sapphire Streets. Person, a man called 'Eddie'."
"Thanks. I'll check." Maitland did not send, and Kinnison did not want, any additional information. Both knew that since the Co-ordinator was going to investigate this thing himself, he should get his facts, and particularly his impressions, unprejudiced and at first hand.
To Meneas II, then, and to Jack's Haven, Sybly Whyte went, notebook very much in evidence. An ordinary enough space-dive Jack's turned out to be—higher-toned than that Radeligian space-dock saloon of Bominger's; much less flamboyant than notorious Miners' Rest on far Euphrosyne.
"I wish to interview a person named Eddie," he announced, as he bought a bottle of wine. "I have been informed that he has had deep-space adventures worthy of incorporation into one of my novels."
"Eddie? Haw!" The barkeeper laughed raucously. "That space-louse? Somebody's been kidding you, mister. He's nothing but a broken-down meteor miner—you know what a space-louse is, don't you?—that we let clean cuspidors and do such-like odd jobs for his keep. We don't throw him out, like we do the others, because he's kind of funny in one way. Every hour or so he throws a fit, and that amuses people."
Whyte's eager-beaver attitude did not change; his face reflected nothing of what Kinnison thought of this callous speech. For Kinnison did know exactly what a space-louse was. More, he knew exactly what turned a man into one. Ex-meteor miner himself, he knew what the awesome depths of space, the ever-present dangers, the privations, the solitude, the frustrations, did to any mind not adequately integrated. He knew that only the strong survived; that the many weak succumbed. From sickening memory he knew just what pitiful wrecks those many became. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the information was not necessary:
"Where is this Eddie now?"
"That's him, over there in the corner. By the way he's acting, he'll have another fit pretty quick now."