"Finding you was elementary," the Arisian replied, calmly. "Since you were not in your own environment you must be elsewhere. If my mind had been really competent, I would have foreseen this event in detail. Even though I did not so foresee it, however, it required but little thought to perceive that it was a logical, in fact, an inevitable, development. Such being the case, it needed very little additional effort to determine what had happened, and how, and why; likewise precisely where you must now be. As for departure therefrom, your mechanical preparations are both correct and adequate. I could give you the necessary knowledge, but it is rather technically specialized and not negligible in amount; and since your brain is of very limited capacity, it is better not to fill any part of it with mathematics for which you will have no subsequent use. Put yourself en rapport, therefore, with Sir Austin Cardynge. I will follow."
He did so, and as mind met mind there ensued a conversation whose barest essentials Kinnison could not even dimly grasp. For Cardynge, as has been said, could think in the universal language of mathematics; in the esoteric symbology which very few minds have ever been able even partially to master. The Lensman did not get it, nor any part of it; he knew only that in that to him completely meaningless gibberish the Arisian was describing to the physicist, exactly and fully, the distinguishing characteristics of a vast number of parallel and simultaneously coexistent spaces.
If that was "rather" technical stuff, the awed Lensman wondered, what would really deep stuff be like? Not that he wanted to find out! No wonder these mathematical wizards were nuts—went off the beam—he'd be pure squirrel food if he had half that stuff in his skull!
But Sir Austin took to it like a cat lapping up cream or doing away with the canary. He brightened visibly; he swelled; and, when the Arisian had withdrawn from his mind, he preened himself and swaggered as he made meticulous adjustments of the delicate meters and controls which the technicians had already built.
Preparations complete, Cardynge threw in the switches and everything belonging to the Dauntless was rushed aboard. The neutralizers, worn so long and cherished so assiduously, were taken off with profound sighs of relief. The vessel was briefly, tentatively inerted. QX—no faster-than-light meteorites tore volatilizingly through her mass. So far, so good.
Then the ship's generators were energized and smoothly, effortlessly the big battle wagon took the interdimensional plunge. There came the expected, but nevertheless almost unendurable acceleration; the imperceptible, unloggable flight through the drably featureless grayness; the horrible deceleration. Stars flashed beautifully upon the plates.
"We made it!" Kinnison shouted in relief when he had assured himself that they had emerged into "real" space inside the Second Galaxy, only a few parsecs away from their point of departure. "By Klono's golden grin, Sir Austin, you figured it to a red whisker! And when the Society meets, Tuesday week, won't you just blast that ape Weingarde to a cinder? Hot dog!"
"Having the basic data, the solution and the application followed of necessity—automatically—uniquely," the scientist said, austerely. He was highly pleased with himself, he was tremendously flattered by the Lensman's ebullient praise; but not for anything conceivable would he have so admitted.
"Well, the first thing we had better do is to find out what time of what day it is," Kinnison went on, as he directed a beam to the Patrol headquarters upon Klovia.
"Better ask 'em the year, too," Henderson put in, pessimistically—he had missed Illona poignantly—but it was not that bad.