"I scarcely know how to confess to such blundering," and Nadreck actually squirmed. "Will you not permit me to leave my shame to the spool of record?"
They would not, they informed him definitely.
"If you must have it, then, I yield. The plan was to make all of the armed forces upon Onlo destroy themselves. In theory it was sound and simple, but my execution was pitifully imperfect. My work was so poorly done that the commanding officer in each one of three of the domes remained alive, making it necessary for me to slay them personally, by the use of crude force. I regret exceedingly the lack of finish of this undertaking, and I apologize profoundly for it. I trust that you will not allow this information to become a matter of public knowledge"—and the apologetic, mentally sweating, really humiliated Palainian broke the connection.
Haynes and Kinnison stared at each other, for moments completely at a loss for words. The admiral first broke the silence.
"Hell's—jingling—bells!" he wrenched out, finally, and waved a hand at the points of light crowding so thickly his tactical tank. "A thing that the whole Grand Fleet couldn't do, and he does it alone, and then he apologizes for it as though he ought to be stood up in a corner or sent to bed without any supper!"
"Uh-huh, that's the way he is," Kinnison breathed, in awe. "What a brain!—what a man!"
Nadreck's black speedster arrived and a three-way conference was held. Both Haynes and Kinnison pressed him for the details of his really stupendous achievement, but he refused positively even to mention any phase of it.
"The matter is closed—finished," he declared, in a mood of anger and self-reproach which neither of the Tellurians had ever supposed that the gently scientific monster could assume. "I practically failed. It is the poorest piece of work of which I have been guilty since cubhood, and I desire and I insist that it shall not be mentioned again. If you wish to lay plans for the future, I will be very glad indeed to place at your disposal my small ability—which has now been shown to be even smaller than I had supposed—but if you insist upon discussing my fiasco, I shall forthwith go home. I will not discuss it. The record of it will remain permanently under Lensman's Seal. That is my last word."
And it was. Neither of the two Tellurians mentioned the subject, of course, either then or ever, but many other persons—including your historian—have done so, with no trace whatever of success. It is a shame, it is positively outrageous, that no details are available of the actual fall of Onlo. No human mind can understand why Nadreck will not release his Seal, but the bitter fact of his refusal to do so has been made all too plain.