First Lensman, E. E. Smith [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

more thing. Rod, you always carry a pocket rule. Measure this scratch, will you? You’ll find it’s mighty close to three millimeters long.”

“Not ‘close,’ Virge⁠—it’s exactly three millimeters, as near as this vernier can scale it.”

“And just above and parallel to the cheekbone.”

“Check. Just above and as parallel as though it had been ruled there by a draftsman.”

“Well, that’s that. Let’s get finished with the haircuts, before you’re late for your speech,” and the barbers, with thoughts which will be left to the imagination, resumed their interrupted tasks.

“Spill it, Virge!” Kinnison Lensed the pent-up thought. If Carbonero, who did not know Samms at all, had been amazed at what had been happening, Kinnison, who had known him so long and so well, had been literally and completely dumbfounded. “What in hell’s behind this? What’s the story? Give!”

Samms told him, and a mental silence fell; a silence too deep for intelligible thought. Each was beginning to realize that he never would and never could know what Mentor of Arisia really was.

Endnotes

Detet⁠—the distance at which one spaceship can detect another. —⁠E. E. S. ↩

Colophon

First Lensman
was published in 1950 by
E. E. Smith.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Mike Bennett,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2015 by
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Idle Governor,
a painting completed circa 1940 by
Horatio C. Forjohn.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
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