"Of course. Mighty glad you found Medon, for our sake as well as theirs. They have things that we need, badly."
"Where did they put them? I suggested a sun near Sol, so as to have them handy to Prime Base."
"Right next door—Alpha Centauri. Didn't get to do much scouting, did you?"
"I'll say we didn't. Boskonia owns that Galaxy; lock, stock, and barrel. Maybe some other independent planets—bound to be, of course; probably a lot of them—but it's too dangerous, hunting them at this stage of the game. But at that, we did enough, for the time being. We proved our point. Boskone, if there is any such being, is certainly in the Second Galaxy. However, it will be a long time before we're ready to carry the war there to him, and in the meantime we've got a lot to do. Check?"
"To nineteen decimals."
"It seems to me, then, that while you are rebuilding our first-line ships, super-powering them with Medonian insulation and conductors, I had better keep on tracing Boskone along the line of drugs. I have proved to my own satisfaction that they are back of almost all of that drug business."
"And in some ways their drugs are more dangerous to Civilization than their battleships. More insidious and, ultimately, more fatal."
"I'm convinced of it. And since I am perhaps as well equipped as any of the other Lensmen to cope with that particular problem—" Kinnison paused, questioningly.
"That certainly is no overstatement," the Port Admiral replied, dryly. "You're the only one equipped to cope with it."
"None of the other boys except Worsel, then? I heard that a couple—"