fell apart; the insulation was removed; there was revealed the Lens. Clamped to Kinnison's brawny wrist by a massive bracelet of imperishable, almost unbreakable, metal in which it was embedded it shone in all its lambent splendor—no longer a whitely inert piece of jewelry, but a lenticular polychrome of writhing, almost fluid radiance, which proclaimed to all observers in symbols of ever-changing flame that here was a Lensman of the Galactic Patrol.

In similar fashion each man of the class was invested with the symbol of his rank. Then the stern-faced inspector general touched a button and from the bare metal floor there arose deeply upholstered chairs, one for each graduate.

"Fall out!" he commanded, then smiled almost boyishly—the first intimation any of the class had ever had that the hard-boiled old tyrant could smile—and went on in a strangely altered voice: "Sit down, men, and smoke up. We have an hour in which to talk things over, and now I can tell you what it is all about. Each of you will find his favorite refreshment in the arm of his chair.

"No, there's no catch to it," he continued, in answer to amazedly doubtful stares, and lighted a huge black cigar of Venus-grown tobacco as he spoke. "You are Lensmen now, and henceforth each of you is accountable only to himself and to GHQ. Of course, you have yet to go through the formalities of commencement, but they don't count. Each of you really graduated when the Lens was welded around his arm.

"We know your individual preferences, and each of you has his favorite weed, from Tillotson's Pittsburgh stogies up to Snowden's Alsakanite cigarettes—even though Alsakan is just about as far away from here as a planet can be and still lie within the galaxy.

"We also know that you are all immune to the lure of noxious drugs. If you were not, you would not be here to-day. So smoke up and speak up. Ask any questions you care to, and I will try to answer them. Nothing is barred now. This room is shielded against any spy ray or communicator beam operable upon any known frequency."

There was a brief and rather uncomfortable silence. Then Kinnison suggested, diffidently: "Might it not be best, sir, to tell us all about it, from the ground up? I imagine that most of us are in too much of a daze to ask intelligent questions."

"Perhaps. While some of you undoubtedly have your suspicions, I will begin by telling you what is behind what you have been put through during the last 

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