"Thionite—two kilograms!" The Phlestan's eyes gleamed. "Where and how did you get it?"
"I asked the Lensman on Trenco to make it for me, special, and he did."
"So you won't talk, huh?" Kinnison could see Harkleroy's brain work. Thyron could be made to talk, later. "We can maybe do business at that. Come down here right away."
"I'll do that, but listen!" and the Lensman's eyes burned into the zwilnik's. "I know what you're figuring on, and I'm telling you right now not to try it if you want to keep on living. You know that this ain't the first planet I ever landed on, and if you've got a brain you know that a lot of guys smarter than you are have tried monkey business on me—and I'm still here. So watch your step!"
The Lensman landed, and made his way to Harkleroy's inner office in what seemed to be an ordinary enough, if somewhat oversize, suit of light space-armor. But it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a powerhouse, built of dureum a quarter of an inch thick. Kinnison was not walking in it; he was merely the engineer of a battery of two-thousand-horsepower motors. Unaided, he could not have lifted one leg of that armor off the ground.
As he had expected, everyone he encountered wore a thought-screen; nor was he surprised at being halted by a blaring loud-speaker in the hall, since the zwilnik's search-beams were being stopped four feet away from his armor.