"Well, what are we waiting for? I'm hungry, too—let's go eat."
"Not with you, either, any more than with them. I thanked you, Lensman, for saving my life there, and I meant it. I thought then and still think that I would rather have you kill me than those horrible, monstrous women, but I simply can't eat."
"But I'm not even thinking of killing you—can't you get that through your skull? I don't make war on women; you ought to know that by this time."
"You will have to." The girl's voice was low and level. "You didn't kill any of those Lyranians, no, but you didn't chase them a million parsecs, either. We have been taught ever since we were born that you Patrolmen always torture people to death. I don't quite believe that of you personally, since I have had a couple of glimpses into your mind, but you'll kill me before I'll talk. At least, I hope and I believe that I can hold out."
"Listen, girl." Kinnison was in deadly earnest. "You are in no danger whatever. You are just as safe as though you were in Klono's hip pocket. You have some information that I want, yes, and I will get it, but in the process I will neither hurt you nor do you mental or physical harm. The only torture you will undergo will be that which, as now, you give yourself."
"But you called me a ... a zwilnik, and they always kill them," she protested.
"Not always. In battles and in raids, yes. Captured ones are tried in court. If found guilty, they used to go into the lethal chambers. Sometimes they do yet, but not usually. We have mental therapists now who can operate on a mind if there's anything there worth saving."
"And you think that I will wait to stand trial upon Tellus, in the entirely negligible hope that your bewhiskered, fossilized therapists will find something in me worth saving?"
"You won't have to," Kinnison laughed. "Your case has already been decided—in your favor. I am neither a policeman nor a narcotics man; but I happen to be qualified as judge, jury and executioner. I am a therapist to boot. I once saved a worse zwilnik than you are, even though she wasn't quite such a knockout. Now do we eat?"
"Really? You aren't just ... just giving me the needle?"