"It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth——"
"Helmuth! You know, then, where——" Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that. He would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good; but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.
"You are right," the sage remarked, imperturbably. "For strong development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself."
Then he continued his previous thought: "As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality—the Lens—by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to realize what it was that we had given you. That realization has been inevitable; from the first it has been certain that in time your minds would become strong enough to discover the theretofore unknown depths of power of your Lenses. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would, of course, return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.
"Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. Since your enlensment there has been one other who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or that other would be the first advanced student."
"Who is that other, if I may ask?"
"Your friend, Worsel, the Velantian."
"He's got a real mind—'way, 'way ahead of mine," the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.
"In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no."
"Huh?" Kinnison exclaimed. "In what possible way have I got it over him?"