"They thought that they had a call, but they didn't. All they had was a wish. They came back."
"Too bad—but I can see how that would be. A man has to know exactly what he needs, and his brain must be ready to take it, or it burns it out. It almost does, anyway—mind is a funny thing. But that isn't getting us anywhere. Can you take time to let me talk at you a few minutes?"
"I certainly can. You have what is perhaps the most important assignment in the Galaxy, and I would like to know more about it, if it's anything you can pass on."
"Nothing that need be sealed from any Lensman. The main object of all of us, as you know, is to push Boskonia out of this Galaxy. From a military standpoint they practically are out. Their drug syndicate, however, is very decidedly in, and getting in deeper all the time. Therefore, we next push the zwilniks out. They have peddlers and such small fry, who deal with distributors and so on. These, as it were, form the bottom layer. Above them are the secret agents, the observers, and the wholesale handlers; runners and importers. All these folks are directed and controlled by one man, the boss of each planetary organization. Thus, Bominger was the boss of all zwilnik activities on the whole planet of Radelix.
"In turn the planetary bosses report to, and are synchronized and controlled by, a Regional Director, who supervises the activities of a couple of hundred or so planetary outfits. I got a line on the one over Bominger, you know—Prellin, the Kalonian. By the way, you knew, didn't you, that Helmuth was a Kalonian, too?"
"I got it from the tape. Smart people, they must be, but not my idea of good neighbors."
"I'll say not. Well, that's all I really know of their organization. It seems logical to suppose, though, that the structure is coherent all the way up. If so, the Regional Directors would be under some higher-up, possibly a Galactic Director, who in turn might be under Boskone himself—or one of his cabinet officers, at least. Perhaps the Galactic Director might even be a cabinet officer in their government, whatever it is?"
"An ambitious program you've got mapped out for yourself. How are you figuring on swinging it?"
"That's the rub—I don't know," Kinnison confessed, ruefully. "But if it's done at all, that's the way I've got to go about it. Any other way would take a thousand years and more men than we'll ever have. This way works fine, when it works at all."