Nadreck was the first to speak. "Ah, very well done, Lensman MacDougall," he congratulated. "Your data are amply sufficient. A right scholarly and highly informative bit of work, eh, friend Worsel?"
"It is so—it is indeed so," the Velantian agreed, the while a shudder rippled along the thirty-foot length of his sinuous body. "I suspected many things, but not this—certainly not this, ever, away out here."
"Nor I." Tregonsee's four horn-lipped, toothless mouths snapped open and shut; his cabled arms writhed in detestation.
"Nor I," from Kinnison. "If I had, I'd've had a hundred Lyranians mob you, Chris, and tie you down. It would be just about here, I'd say, from the trend of the lines of vanishment." He placed a fingertip near the north pole of the globe. He thought for a moment, his jaw setting and his eyes growing hard, then spoke aloud to the girl. "Chris, the next time I tell you to hide and you don't do it I'm going to take that Lens away from you and flash it with a DeLameter—then you'll go back to Tellus and you'll stay there." His voice was grimmer than she had ever before heard it.
"You don't mean ... why, it can't be ... you're all thinking ... Overlords!" she gasped. Her face turned white; both hands flew to her throat.
"Just that. Overlords. Nothing else but." He pictured in imagination his fiancée's body writhing in torment upon a Delgonian torture screen until his mind revolted; all unconscious that his thoughts were as clear as a telescreen picture to all the others. "If they had detected you—You know that they would do anything to get hold of a mind and a vital force like yours—But, thank all the gods of space, they didn't." He shook himself and drew a tremendously deep breath of relief. "Well, all I've got to say is that if we ever have any kids and they don't bawl when I tell them about this, I'll certainly give them something to bawl about!"
XII.