"Never mind the anæsthetic, Dr. Lacy. You can't make me unconscious without killing me. Go ahead with your work. I'll hold a nerve block while you're doing what has to be done. I can do it perfectly—I've had lots of practice."
"But we can't, man!" Lacy exclaimed. "You've got to be under a general for this job—we can't have you conscious. You're raving, I think. It will work, surely; it always has. Let us try it, anyway, won't you?"
"Sure. It'll save me the trouble of holding the block, even though it won't do anything else. Go ahead."
The attendant physician did so, with the same cool skill and to the same end point as in thousands of similar and successful undertakings. At its conclusion: "Gone now, aren't you, Kinnison?" Lacy asked, through his Lens.
"No," came the surprising reply. "Physically, it worked. I can't feel a thing and I can't move a muscle, but mentally I am as wide awake as I ever was."
"But you shouldn't be!" Lacy protested. "Perhaps you were right, at that—we can't give you much more without danger of collapse. But you've got to be unconscious! Isn't there some way in which you can be made so?"
"Yes, there is. But why do I have to be unconscious?" Kinnison asked curiously.
"To avoid mental shock—seriously damaging," the surgeon explained. "In your case particularly the mental aspect is much graver than the purely physical one."
"Maybe you're right but you can't do it with drugs. Call Worsel; he has done it before. He had me unconscious most of the way over here, except when he had to give me a drink or something to eat. He's the only man this side of Arisia who can operate on my mind."