"Credits to millos it'll be a lot nearer fifteen days. You can find it sometime, though, if anybody can—that's why I'm taking it up with you. While I don't want to seem to be giving a Gray Lensman orders"—that jocular introduction had come to be a sort of ritual in the Kinnison family—"I would very diffidently suggest that there might be some connection between that completely unnoticed planet and some of the things we don't know about Boskonia."
"Diffident! You?" The Gray Lensman laughed deeply. "Like an atomic bomb! I'll start a search on Kalonia right away. As to your credits-to-millos-fifteen-days thing, I'd be ashamed to take your money. You don't know our librarians or our system. Ten millos, even money, that we get full data in less than five G-P days from right now. Want it?"
"I'll say so. I'll wear that cento on my tunic as a medal of victory over the Gray Lensman. I do know the size of these here two galaxies!"
"QX—it's a bet. I'll let you know if we find anything. In the meantime, Kit, remember that you're my favorite son."
"Well, you're not so bad, yourself. Any time I want mother to divorce you so as to change fathers for me I'll let you know." What a terrific, what a tremendous meaning was heterodyned upon that seemingly light exchange! "Clear ether, Dad!"
"Clear ether, son!"
XIII.
Thousands of years were to pass before Christopher Kinnison could develop the ability to visualize, from the contemplation of one fact or artifact, the entire Universe to which it belonged. He could not even plan in detail his one-man invasion of Eddore until he could integrate all available data concerning the planet Kalonia into his visualization of the Boskonian Empire. One unknown, Ploor, blurred his picture badly enough; two such completely unknown factors made visualization, even in broad, impossible.