"Certainly," Kat said, equably. "You're too young."

"We'll let you know what we're doing, though," Kay conceded, magnanimously. "You might even conceivably contribute an idea that we could use."

"Ideas—phooey!" Con jeered. "A real idea would crack both of your skulls. You haven't any more plan than a—"

"Hush—shut up, everybody!" Kat commanded. "This is too new for any of us to have any worth-while ideas on, yet. Tell you what let's do—we'll all think this over until we're aboard the Dauntless, halfway to Tellus; then we'll compare notes and work out parts for all of us."

They left Klovia that afternoon. Kinnison's personal superdreadnought, the mighty Dauntless—the fourth to bear that name—bored through intergalactic space. Time passed. The four young redheads convened.

"I've got it all worked out!" Kat burst out enthusiastically, forestalling the other three. "There will be four Second-Stage Lensmen at work and there are four of us. We'll circulate—percolate, you might say—around and throughout the Universe. We'll pick up ideas and facts and feed 'em to our Gray Lensmen; surreptitiously, sort of, so they'll think they got them themselves. I'll take Dad for my partner. Kay can have—"

"You'll do no such thing!" A general clamor rose, Con's thought being the most insistent. "If we aren't going to work with all, indiscriminately, we'll draw lots or throw dice to see who gets him, so there!"

"Seal it, snake-hips, please," Kat requested, sweetly. "It is trite but true to say that infants should be seen, but not heard. This is serious business—"

"Snake-hips! Infant!" Con interrupted, venomously. "Listen, my steatopygous and senile friend!" Constance measured perhaps a quarter of an inch less in gluteal circumference than did her oldest sister; she tipped the beam at one scant pound below her weight. "You and Kay are a year older than Cam and me, of course; a year ago your minds were stronger than ours. That condition, however, no longer exists. We, too are grown up. And to put that statement to test, what can you do that I can't?"

"This." Kathryn extended a bare arm, narrowed her eyes in concentration. A Lens materialized about her wrist; not attached to it by a metallic bracelet, but a bracelet in itself, clinging sentiently to the smooth, bronzed skin. "I felt that in this work there would be a need. I learned to satisfy it. Can 

 Prev. P 10/237 next