"Is that thing an armor or a personal tank?" asked Haynes. "I aged ten years while that was going on; but, at that, I'm glad you insisted on testing it as you did. You can get away with anything now."
"I've found that it is much better technique to learn things among friends here, than among enemies." Kinnison laughed. "It's heavy, of course—over three hundred kilos, net. I won't be walking around in it much, though; and even that little I'll be flying it instead of walking it. Well, sir, since everything's all set, I think I'd better fly it over to the speedster and start flitting, don't you? I don't know exactly how much time I am going to need on Trenco."
"Might as well," the port admiral agreed, as casually, and Kinnison was gone.
"What a man!" Haynes stared after the monstrous figure until it vanished in the distance, then strolled slowly toward his office, thinking as he went.
Nurse MacDougall had been highly irked and incensed at Kinnison's casual departure, without idle conversation or formal leave takings. Not so Haynes. That seasoned campaigner knew that gray Lensmen—particularly young gray Lensmen—were prone to get that way. He knew, in a way she never would and never could know, that Kinnison was no longer of Earth.
He was now only of the galaxy, not of any one tiny dust grain of it. He was of the patrol. He was the patrol, and he was taking his new responsibilities very seriously indeed. In his fierce zeal to drive his campaign through to a successful end he would use man or woman, singly or in groups, ships, even Prime Base itself, exactly as he had used them: as pawns, as mere tools, as means to an end. And, having used them, he would leave them as unconcernedly and as unceremoniously as he would drop pliers and spanner, and with no realization that he had violated any of the nicer amenities of life as it is lived!
And as he strolled along and thought, the port admiral smiled quietly to himself. He knew, as Kinnison would learn in time, that the universe was vast, that time was long, and that the Scheme of Things, comprising the whole of eternity and the cosmic all, was a something incomprehensibly immense indeed. With which cryptic thought the space-hardened veteran sat down at his desk and resumed his interrupted labors.
But Kinnison had not yet attained Haynes' philosophic viewpoint, any more than he had his age, and to him the trip to Trenco seemed positively interminable. Eager as he was to put his plan of campaign to the test, he found that mental urgings, or even audible invectives, would not make the speedster go any faster than the already incomprehensible top speed of her drivers' maximum blast. Nor did pacing up and down the little control room seem to help very much. Physical exercise he had to perform, but it did not satisfy him. Mental exercise was impossible; he could think of nothing except Helmuth's base.