"Nix, chief, nix—jet back a minute, please!" Kinnison implored. "Unless it's something that's got to be done right away, gimme a break, can't you? I've got a couple of things to do first—stuff to attend to. Maybe a little flit somewhere, too, I don't know yet."
"More important than Patrol business?"—dryly.
"Until it's cleaned up, yes." Kinnison's face burned scarlet and his eyes revealed the mental effort necessary for him to make that statement. "The most important thing in the Universe," he finished, quietly but doggedly.
"Well, of course I can't give you orders—" Haynes' frown was distinct with disappointment.
"Don't, chief—that hurts. I'll be back, honest, as soon as I possibly can, and I'll do anything you want me to—"
"That's enough, son." Haynes stood up and grasped Kinnison's hands—hard—in both his own. "I know. Forgive me for taking you for this little ride, but you and Mac suffer so! You're so young, so intense, so insistent upon carrying the entire Cosmos upon your shoulders—I couldn't help it. You won't have to do much of a flit." He glanced at his chronometer. "You'll find all your unfinished business in Room 7295, Base Hospital."
"Huh? You know, then?" shouted the overjoyed young giant.
"Who doesn't?" was the admiral's quizzical rejoinder. "There may be a few members of some backward race somewhere who do not know all about you and your red-headed sector riot, but I don't happen to know—" He was addressing empty air.
Kinnison shot out of the building and, exerting his Gray Lensman's authority, he did a thing which he had always longed boyishly to do but which he had never before really considered doing. He whistled, shrill and piercingly, and waved a Lensed arm, even while he was directing a Lensed thought at the driver of the fast ground car always in readiness in front of GHQ.
"Base Hospital—full emergency blast!" he ordered, and the Jehu obeyed. That chauffeur loved emergency stuff, and the long, low, wide racer took off with a deafening roar of unmuffled exhaust and a scream of tortured, burning rubber.