Nor was he unduly put out by the fact that both Strongheart and the zwilnik were now wearing screens. He had taken it for granted that they might be, and had planned accordingly. He seized the packet as avidly as before, chewed its contents as ecstatically, and slumped down as helplessly and as idiotically. That much of the show, at least, was real. Twenty-four units of that drug will paralyze any human body, make it assume the unmistakable pose and stupefied mien of the bentlam-eater. But Kinnison's mind was not an ordinary one; the dose which would have rendered any bona-fide miner's brain as helpless as his body did not affect the Lensman's new equipment at all. Alcohol and bentlam together were bad, but the Lensman was sober. Therefore, if anything, the drugging of his body only made it easier to dissociate his new mind from it. Furthermore, he need not waste any thought in making it act. There was only one way it could act, now, and Kinnison let his new senses roam abroad without even thinking of the body he was leaving behind him.
In view of the rigorous orders from higher-up the conference room was heavily guarded by screened men; no one except old and trusted employees were allowed to enter it, and they were also protected. Nevertheless, Kinnison got in, by proxy.
A clever pickpocket brushed against a screened waiter who was about to enter the sacred precincts, lightning fingers flicking a switch. The waiter began to protest—then forgot what he was going to say, even as the pickpocket forgot completely the deed he had just done. The waiter in turn was a trifle clumsy in serving a certain big shot, but earned no rebuke thereby; for the latter forgot the offense almost instantly. Under Kinnison's control the director fumbled at his screen-generator for a moment, loosening slightly a small but important resister. That done, the Lensman withdrew delicately and the meeting was an open book.
"Before we do anything," the director began, "show me that all your screens are on." He bared his own—it would have taken an expert service man an hour to find that it was not functioning perfectly.
"Poppycock!" snorted the zwilnik. "Who in all the hells of space thinks that a Lensman would—or could—come to Euphrosyne?"
"No one can tell what this particular Lensman can or can't do, and nobody knows what he is doing until just before he dies. Hence the strictness. You've searched everybody here, of course?"
"Everybody," Strongheart averred, "even the drunks and dopes. The whole building is screened, besides the screens we're wearing."
"The dopes don't count, of course, provided they're really doped." No one, except the Gray Lensman himself, could possibly conceive of a Lensman being—not seeming to be, but actually being—a drunken sot, to say nothing of being a confirmed addict of any drug. "By the way, who is this Wild Bill Williams that I've been hearing about?"