"Tune in on this," Kinnison grinned wryly. "If the last meeting I had with her is any criterion, it ought to be good. S'pose anybody around here understands the language of Aldebaran II?"
"Never heard it mentioned if they do."
The Tellurian walked blithely up to the radiant visitor, held out his hand in Earthly—and Aldebaranian—greeting, and spoke: "Madam Desplaines would not remember Chester Q. Fordyce, of course. It is of the piteousness that I should be so accursedly of the ordinariness; for to see madam but the one time, as I did at the New Year's ball in High Altamont, is to remember her forever."
"Such a flatterer!" The woman laughed. "I trust that you will forgive me, Mr. Fordyce, but one meets so many interesting—" Her eyes widened in surprise, an expression which changed rapidly to one of flaming hatred, not unmixed with fear.
"So you do recognize me, you bedroom-eyed, Aldebaranian hell-cat," he remarked, evenly. "I rather expected that you would."
"Yes, you sweet, uncontaminated sissy, you overgrown super-Boy Scout, I do," she hissed, malevolently, and made a quick motion toward her corsage. These two, as has been intimated, were friends of old.
Quick though she was, the man was quicker. His left hand darted out to seize her left wrist; his right, flashing around her body, grasped her right and held it rigidly in the small of her back. Thus they walked away.
"Stop!" she flared. "You're making a spectacle of me!"
"Now isn't that something to worry about?" His lips smiled, for the benefit of the observers, but his eyes held no glint of mirth. "These folks will think that this is the way all Aldebaranian friends walk together. If you think for a second that I'm going to give you a chance to touch that sounder you're wearing you haven't got the sense of a Zabriskan fontema. Stop wriggling!" he counseled, sharply. "Even if you can do enough hula-hula shimmying to work it, before it contacts once I'll crush your brain to a pulp, right here and right now!"
Outside, in the grounds, "Oh, Lensman, let's sit down and talk this over!" and the girl brought into play everything she had. It was a distressing scene, but it left the Lensman cold.