She got up, crossed the room to him. He put his arm around her in the old but ever new gesture.
"Lensman's load, Chris," he said, quietly.
"Of course," she replied then, as quietly. "It was a shock at first, coming after all these years, but ... if it has to be, it must. But he doesn't ... surely we can help him, Kim?"
"Surely." The man's arm tightened. "When he hits space I go back to work. So do Nadreck and Worsel and Tregonsee. So do you, if your kind of a job turns up. And with us Gray Lensmen to do the blocking, and with Kit to carry the ball—" His thought died away.
"I'll say so," she breathed. Then: "But you won't call me, I know, unless you absolutely have to ... and to give up you and Kit both ... why did we have to be Lensmen, Kim?" she protested, rebelliously. "Why couldn't we have been ground-grippers? You used to growl that thought at me before I knew what a Lens really meant—"
"Vell, some of us has got be der first violiners in der orchestra," Kinnison misquoted, in an attempt at lightness. "Ve can't all push vind t'rough der trombone."
"I suppose that's true." The Red Lensman's somber air deepened. "Well, we were going to start for Tellus today, anyway, to see Kit graduate. This doesn't change that."
And in a distant room four tall, shapely, auburn-haired, startlingly identical girls stared at each other briefly, then went en rapport; for their mother had erred greatly in saying that the breakfast room was screened against their minds. Nothing was or could be screened against them: they could think above, below, or, by sufficient effort, straight through any thought-screen that had ever been designed. Nothing in which they were interested was safe from them, and they were interested in practically everything.
"Kay, we've got ourselves a job!" Kathryn, older by minutes than Karen, excluded pointedly the younger twins, Camilla and Constance—"Cam" and "Con".