The Lensman flipped off her screen and gave her unmistakable evidence. The girl, hitherto so unmovedly self-reliant, broke down. She recovered quickly, however, and in Kinnison's cabin she ate ravenously.
"Have you a cigarette?" she sighed with repletion when she could hold no more food.
"Sure. Alsakanite, Venerian, Tellurian, most anything—we carry a couple of hundred different brands. What would you like?"
"Tellurian, by all means. I had a package of Camerfields once—they were gorgeous. Would you have those, by any chance?"
"Uh-huh," he assured her. "Quartermaster! Carton Camerfields, please." It popped out of the pneumatic tube in seconds. "Here you are, sister."
The glittery girl drew the fragrant smoke deep down into her lungs.
"Ah, that tastes good! Thanks, Kinnison—for everything. I'm glad that you kidded me into eating; that was the finest meal I ever ate. But it won't take, really. I have never broken yet, and I don't believe that I will break now. And if I do, I'm dead certain that I won't be worth a damn, to myself or to anybody else, from then on." She crushed out the butt. "So let's get on with the third degree. Bring on your rubber hose and your lights and the drip can."
"You're still on the wrong foot, Toots," Kinnison said, pityingly. What a frightful contrast there was between her slimly rounded body, in its fantastically gorgeous costume, and the stark somberness of her eyes! "There'll be no third degree, no hose, no lights, nothing like that. In fact, I'm not even going to talk to you until you've had a good long sleep. You don't look hungry any more, but you're still not in tune, by seven thousand kilocycles. How long has it been since you really slept?"
"A couple of weeks, at a guess. Maybe a month."