"As you say; and with your permission," Nadreck agreed. "Also it may very well be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device whereby its efficiency may be increased."
"I doubt it." The Tellurian's already great respect for this retiring, soft-spoken, "cowardly" Lensman was increasing constantly. "But we would like to study it, and perhaps copy it, if you so allow."
"Gladly."
And so it was arranged.
The Dauntless crept among a black backgrounded pathway and stopped. Nadreck, Worsel and Kinnison—three were enough and neither Mac nor Tregonsee insisted upon going—boarded the Palainian speedster.
Away from the mother ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the far-flung, heavily overlapped electromagnetic detector zones. Through the outer thought-screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space speeds go, the speedster moved forward, feeling for whatever other blocking screens there might be.
All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves—their Arisian-imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal, vibrations actually visible or tangible—but they did not depend only upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried instruments unknown to space pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When they came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating mechanisms gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed to forbid the passage of any material object, yielded without protest to Nadreck's subtle manipulation.
Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through blackness so intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster settled downward toward the Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.
XIV.