"Uh-huh," she confessed. "In my room, with the spy-ray block on."
"Good. No need to hide, though, and no need to wear dresses any time you're practicing—the boys were right on that. What do you think of this pseudoinertia as compared to the real thing?" He did not, actually, care what she thought of it; he was merely making conversation to cover up the fact that he was probing the deepest recesses of her mind.
"I like it, even better in some ways. Your legs and arms feel as though they were following through perfectly, but if you kick something, or come down too hard in a forward flip—back flips are easy—it doesn't hurt. It's nice."
"Must be," he agreed, absently. "Got to watch out for yourself, though, when you get back onto a planet. Now I want you to help me. Will you?"
"Yes, sir. In anything I can—anything, sir," she answered, instantly.
"I want you to give me every scrap of information you possibly can about Lonabar; its customs and habits, its work and its play—everything, even its money and its jewelry." This last apparently an afterthought. "To do so, you'll have to let me into your mind of your own free will—you'll have to co-operate to the limit of your capability. QX?"
"That will be quite all right, Lensman," she agreed, shyly. "I know now that you are not going to hurt me."
Illona did not like it at first, there was no question of that. And small wonder. It is an intensely disturbing thing to have your mind invaded, knowingly, by another; particularly when that other is the appallingly powerful mind of Gray Lensman Kimball Kinnison. There were lots of things she did not want exposed, and the very effort not to think of them brought them ever and ever more vividly to the fore. She squirmed, mentally and physically: her mind was for minutes a practically illegible turmoil. But she soon steadied down and, as she got used to the new sensations, she went to work with a will. She could not increase materially the knowledge of the planet which Kinnison had already obtained from her, but she was a mine of information concerning the peculiar gems. She knew all about every one of them, with the completely detailed knowledge one is all too apt to have of a thing long and intensely desired, but supposedly forever out of reach.
"Thanks, Illona." It was over; the Lensman knew as much as she did about everything which had any bearing upon his quest. "You have helped a lot—now you can flit."
"I'm glad to help, sir, really—any time. I'll see you at the party, then, if not before." Illona left the room in a far more subdued fashion than she had entered it. She had always been more than half afraid of Kinnison; just being near him did things to her which she did not quite like. And this last thing, this mind-searching interview, did not operate to quiet her fears. It gave her the screaming meamies, no less!