"Except when a superior officer catches him at it. Superiors get first pick, you know," the Lensman reminded him, suavely.
"But I protest, sir! I'll take it up with——"
"Shut up!" Kinnison snarled, with cold finality. "Take it up with whom you please, but remember this, my last warning: Bring her in to me as she is and you live. Touch her and you die! Now, you nurses, come over here to the board!"
Nurse Macdougall had been whispering furtively to the others, and now she led the way, head high and eyes blazing defiance. She was an actress, as well as a nurse.
"Take a good, long look at this button, right here, marked 'Relay 46,'" came curt instructions. "If anybody aboard this ship touches any one of you, or even looks at you as though he wants to, press this button and I'll do the rest. Now, you big, red-headed dumb-bell, look at me. Don't start begging—yet. I just want to be sure that you'll know me when you see me."
"I'll know you, never fear, you—you brat!" she flared, thus informing the Lensman that she had received his message. "I'll not only know you—I'll scratch your eyes out on sight!"
"That'll be a good trick if you can do it," Kinnison sneered, and cut off.
"What's it all about, Mac? What has got into you?" demanded one of the nurses, as soon as the women were alone.
"I don't know," she whispered. "Watch out; they may have spy rays on us. I don't know anything, really, and the whole thing is too wildly impossible, too utterly fantastic to be even partially true. But pass the word along to all the girls to ride this out, because my gray Lensman is in on it, somewhere and somehow. I don't see how he can be, possibly, but I just know that he is."