"QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she's good, or she wouldn't be in on this deal at all. In fact, they're about as fine a couple of youngsters as old Tellus has produced."
"They are that. Man, what a pair of skeletons!"
And in the Nurses' Quarters a young woman with a wealth of red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection in a mirror.
"You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!" she stormed, bitterly if almost inaudibly, at that reflection. "You lame-brained moron, you red-headed, idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumbbell, you clunker! Of all the men in this whole cockeyed galaxy, you would have to make a dive at Kimball Kinnison, the one man who never has realized that you are even alive. At a Gray Lensman—" Her expression changed and she whispered softly: "A ... Gray ... Lensman. He can't love any woman as long as he's carrying that load. They can't let themselves be human—quite; perhaps loving him will be enough—"
She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful travesty of a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in waves of pain and the girl threw herself down upon her bed.
"Oh Kim, Kim!" she sobbed. "I wish ... why can't you—Oh, why did I ever have to be born!"
Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking thoughts entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk, smoking dreamily, staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling. He was not thinking of Boskone.
When he had thought of Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the first time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact thought being sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was totally inadequate. For that matter, why had he been so glad to see her there? And why, at every odd moment, did visions of her keep coming into his mind—her form and features, her eyes, her lips, her startling hair?