It was, then, a purely routine and logical development that at a reception one evening Vice-Admiral Gerrond stopped to chat for a moment with Mr. Fordyce; and it was purely accidental that the nearest bystander was a few yards distant. Hence, Mr. Fordyce's conduct was strange enough.
"Gerrond!" he said without moving his lips and in a tone almost inaudible, the while he was offering the Admiral an Alsakanite cigarette. "Don't look at me particularly right now, and don't show surprise. Study me for the next ten minutes, then put your Lens on me and tell me whether you have ever seen me before or not." Then, glancing at the watch upon his left wrist—a time-piece just about as large and as ornate as a wrist watch could be and still remain in impeccable taste—he murmured something conventional and strolled away.
The ten minutes passed and he felt Gerrond's thought. A peculiar sensation, this, being on the receiving end of a single beam, instead of using his own Lens.
"As far as I can tell, I have never seen you before. You are certainly not one of our agents, and if you are one of Haynes' whom I have ever worked with you have done a wonderful job of disguising. I must have met you somewhere, sometime, else there would be no point to your question; but beyond the evident—and admitted—fact that you are a white Tellurian, I can't seem to place you."
"Does this help?" This question was shot through Kinnison's own Lens.
"Since I have known so few Tellurian Lensmen it tells me that you must be Kinnison, but I do not recognize you at all readily. You seem changed—older—besides, who ever heard of an Unattached Lensman doing the work of an ordinary agent?"
"I am both older and changed—partly natural and partly artificial. As for the work, it's a job that no ordinary agent can handle—it takes a lot of special equipment—"
"You've got that, indubitably! I get goose-flesh yet every time I think of that trial."
"You think that I'm proof against recognition, then, as long as I don't use my Lens?" Kinnison stuck to the issue.