By the big wall chronom he saw he had already been standing there at rigid attention a full five minutes. The second hand crept around again. Six minutes! It dragged slowly around once again. Seven minutes.
Then the unbearable silence was mercifully broken by the admiral's voice.
"In some ways, Mister, you're quite a stupid young man," he said. "I'm inclined to be disappointed in you."
Hanlon gave a start of surprise, and forced himself to scrutinize more carefully that enigmatic face.
The stern eyes were still boring into his. But now the cadet thought he could detect a trace of secret amusement behind them.
"Why do you torture yourself like this? You know how to find out what it's all about."
There was a sinking feeling in George Hanlon's mind. Did that mean what he was afraid it meant?
He sent out a tentative feeler of thought toward the mind behind that expressionless face. He expected to find it difficult to do, because of long disuse of the faculty. But he was amazed both at the ease with which the technique returned to him, and with the feeling of warm friendliness he found in that mind--almost like a sort of fatherly pride.
He probed a bit deeper, and was aware of assurance that he had done nothing to merit punishment. Indeed, it seemed he could catch exactly the opposite feeling.
He must have shown his relief, for the commandant's stern face relaxed into a broad smile, and he lounged back in his big chair.
Slowly, disbelieving the sudden change, the astonished young cadet gingerly sank onto the front edge of a chair. He had to, his legs were suddenly rubbery.
The admiral leaned forward and spoke impressively. "Do you think, Cadet Hanlon, that we would let any man get to within weeks of graduation without knowing all about him?"
The young man's eyes widened, and his hands clutched at his knees in an effort to keep them from shaking.
"Oh, yes, we know all about you, George Spencer Newton Hanlon," and the cadet's eyes opened even wider at that name. "We know about your talent for mind-reading as a child, and how you suppressed it as you grew older and found how it got you into trouble. We know all about your father's disgrace and disappearance; your mother's death; your running away, and your adoption by the Hanlons, whose last name you assumed."