"No. You have shown that you understand torture better than we do."
"I should, since we Overlords have practiced it as a fine art since our beginnings as a race. Do you wish the pleasure of co-operating with me in the work?"
"I do not torture for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the procedure as outlined. All I require is the assurance that he will be a warning and an object lesson to Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol."
"I can assure you definitely that he will be both. More, I will show you the results when I have finished with him. Or, if you like, I would be glad to have you stay and look on—you will find the spectacle interesting, entertaining and highly instructive."
"No, thanks—that is, not if you are sure that you can handle him alone."
"Handle him! This pitiful weakling?" The Overlord snorted contemptuously. "I could handle seven like him. He is on the verge of fainting already. Observe, please, his reaction to the fungus-culture injections."
Four times the Delgonian rammed the needle home; and, true to prediction, Kinnison's body went limp in its shackles.
"Ah, yes; a weak race, physically—very weak," Eichmil observed, as he left the room; and the Overlord, alone with his victim, cast off the chains in order to stretch the Lensman out upon one of the sinister machines so close at hand.
But Kinnison had not fainted. He had not allowed himself to feel the hurt of the knife, of the needle, nor of the injected fluid. Never before had he been more coldly, intently alert than in this, the climactic minute of his life. The full of his powers he did not have, perhaps, yet even now he was better equipped, mentally and physically, than the Kinnison of even a short year ago, able to establish a nerve block that would permit full and unshaken concentration on every move of offense and defense he might make, whatever frightful toll of pain and injury the inhumanly powerful, semireptilian Delgonian might inflict in the struggle that the Lensman now proposed. Thus, upon the first instant of opportunity, he exploded into action with a violence which took even the trigger-nerved Overlord entirely by surprise.