"Now remember, Worsel, no matter what happens to me, or around me, you stay out. Don't come in after me. Help me all you can with your mind, but not otherwise. Take everything I get, and at the first sign of danger you flit back to the speedster and give her the oof, whether I'm around or not. Check?"
"Check," Worsel agreed, quietly. Kinnison's was the harder part. Not because he was the leader, but because he was the better qualified. They both knew it. The Patrol came first. It was bigger, vastly more important than any being or any group of beings in it.
The man strode away and in thirty seconds underwent a weird and striking mental transformation. Three quarters of his knowledge disappeared so completely that he had no inkling that he had ever had it. A new name, a new personality were his, so completely and indisputably his that he had no faint glimmering of a recollection that he had ever been otherwise.
He was wearing his Lens. It could do no possible harm, since it was almost inconceivable that the Eich could be made to believe that any ordinary agent could have penetrated so far, and the fact should not be revealed to the foe that any Lensman could work without his Lens. That would explain far too much of what had already happened. Furthermore, it was a necessity in the only really convincing rôle which Kinnison could play in the event of his capture.
He would not think into that base until he was far enough away from Worsel so that the Velantian's hiding place, if it were not already known, would not be revealed. He did not then know that such a being as Worsel existed; he did not think into the stronghold simply because he was not yet close enough to work efficiently.
Closer he crept. Closer. There were pits beneath the pavement, he observed, big enough to hold a speedster. Traps. He avoided them. There were various mechanisms within the blank walls he skirted. More traps. He avoided them. Photo-cells, trigger beams, invisible rays, networks. He avoided them all. Close enough.
Delicately he sent out a mental probe, and almost in the instant of its sending, cables of steel came whipping from afar. He perceived them as they came, but he was unable to dodge them all. His projectors flamed briefly, only to be sheared away. The cables wrapped about his limbs, binding him fast. Helpless, he was carried through the atmosphere, into the dome, through an air lock into a chamber housing much grimly unmistakable apparatus. And in the council room, where the nine of Boskone and one armored Delgonian Overlord held meeting, a communicator buzzed and snarled.
