"Why, Kim!" Mac protested. "She's nice, really, when you get to know her. And she's so stunningly, so ravishingly beautiful!"
"Uh-huh," Kinnison agreed, without a trace of enthusiasm. "Cast her in chilled stainless steel—she'd just about do as she is, without any casting—and she'd make a mighty fine statue."
"Kim! Shame on you!" the girl exclaimed. "Why, she's the most perfectly beautiful thing I ever saw in my whole life!" Her voice softened. "I wish that I looked like that," she added wistfully.
"She's beautiful enough—in her way—of course," the man admitted, entirely unimpressed. "But, then, so is a Radeligian cateagle, so is a spire of frozen helium, and so is a six-foot-long, armor-piercing punch. As for you wanting to look like her—I'm terrifically glad that you don't. That's sheer tripe, Chris, and you know it. If you want to look at something really beautiful, get a mirror—beside you, all the Helens that ever lived, with Cleopatra, Dessa Desplaines and Illona Potter thrown in, wouldn't make a baffled flare—"
That was, of course, what she wanted him to say; and what followed is of no particular importance here.
Shortly after the Dauntless cleared the stratosphere, Nadreck reported that he had finished assembling and arranging the data, and Kinnison called the Lensmen together in his con room for an ultraprivate conference. Worsel, it appeared, was still in the surgery.
"'Smatter, doc?" Kinnison asked, casually. He knew that there was nothing really serious the matter—Worsel had come out of the cavern under his own power, and a Velantian recovers with startling rapidity from any wound which does not kill him outright. "Having trouble with your stitching?"
"I'll say we are!" the surgeon grunted. "Have to bore holes with an electric drill and use linemen's pliers. Just about done now, though—he'll be with you in a couple of minutes," and in a very little more than the stipulated time the Velantian joined the other Lensmen.
He was bandaged and taped, and did not move at his customary headlong pace, but he fairly radiated self-satisfaction, bliss and contentment. He felt better, he declared, than he had at any time since he cleaned out the last cavern upon Delgon.