"Oh, Mr. Kinnison!" his new partner cooed, ecstatically. "I think that all spacemen, and you Lensmen particularly, are just too perfectly darn heroic for anything! Why, I think that space is just terrible! I simply can't cope with it at all!"
"Ever been out, miss?" he grinned. He had never known many social butterflies, and temporarily he had forgotten that such girls as this one really existed.
"Why, of course!" The young woman kept on being exclamatory.
"Clear out to the Moon, perhaps?" he hazarded.
"Don't be ridic! Ever so much farther than that! Why, I went clear to Mars! And it gave me the screaming meamies, no less. I thought I would collapse!"
That dance ended ultimately, and other dances with other girls followed; but Kinnison could not throw himself into the gaiety surrounding him. During his cadet days he had enjoyed such revels to the full, but now the whole thing left him cold. His mind insisted upon reverting to its problem. Finally, in the throng of young people on the floor, he saw a girl with a mass of red-bronze hair and a supple, superbly molded figure. He did not need to await her turning to recognize his erstwhile nurse and later assistant, whom he had last seen just this side of far-distant Boyssia II.
"Mac!" To her mind alone he sent out a thought through his Lens. "For the love of Klono, lend a hand—rescue me! How many dances have you got ahead?"
"None at all—I'm not dating ahead." She jumped as though someone had jabbed her with a needle, then paused in panic; eyes wide, breath coming fast, breast pounding. She had felt Lensed thoughts before, but this was something else, something entirely different. Every cell of her brain was open to that Lensman's mind—and what was she seeing! She blanketed her thoughts desperately, tried with all her might not to think at all!
