Children of the Lens

Children of the Lens

Lensmen 06

(1948)*

E. E. Doc Smith

Contents

Introduction Message Of Transmittal

Chapter 1 Kim And Kit; Gray Lensmen

Chapter 2 Worsel And The Overlords

Chapter 3 Kinnison Writes A Space-Opera

Chapter 4 Nadreck Of Palain VII At Work

Chapter 5 The Abduction Of A President

Chapter 6 Tregonsee, Camilla, And "X"

Chapter 7 Kathryn On Guard

Chapter 8 Black Lensmen

Chapter 9 An Arisian Education

Chapter 10 Constance Out-Worsels Worsel

Chapter 11 Nadreck Traps A Trapper

Chapter 12 Kalonia Becomes Of Interest

Chapter 13 Clarrissa Takes Her L-2 Work

Chapter 14 Kinnison-Thyron, Drug Runner

Chapter 15 Thyron Follows A Lead

Chapter 16 Red Lensman In Gray

Chapter 17 Nadreck Vs. Kandron

Chapter 18 Camilla Kinnison, Detector

Chapter 19 The Hell-Hole In Space

Chapter 20 Kinnison And The Black Lensman

Chapter 21 The Red Lensman On Lyrane

Chapter 22 Kit Invades Eddore; And —

Chapter 23 —Escapes With His Life

Chapter 24 The Conference Solves A Problem

Chapter 25 The Defense Of Arisia

Chapter 26 The Battle Of Ploor

Chapter 27 Kinnison Trapped

Chapter 28 The Battle Of Eddore

Chapter 29 The Power Of Love

Epilogue

Message Of Transmittal

Subject: The Conclusion of the Boskonian War; A Report:

By: Christopher K. Kinnison, L3, of Klovia:

To: The Entity Able to Obtain and to Read It

To you, the third-level intellect who has been guided to this imperishable container and who is able to break the Seal and to read this tape, and to your fellows, greetings: For reasons which will become obvious, this report will not be made available for an indefinite but very long time; my present visualization of the Cosmic All does not extend to the time at which such action will become necessary. Therefore it is desirable to review briefly the most pertinent facts of the earlier phases of Civilization's climactic conflict: information which, while widely known at present, will probably in that future time exist otherwise only in the memories of my descendants.

In early Civilization law enforcement lagged behind crime because the police were limited in their spheres of action, while criminals were not. Each technological advance made that condition worse until finally, when Bergenholm so perfected the crude inertialess space-drive of Rodebush and Cleveland that commerce throughout the galaxy became an actuality, crime began to threaten Civilization's very existence. Of course it was not then suspected that there was anything organized, coherent, or of large purpose about this crime. Centuries were to pass before my father, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus, now galactic coordinator, was to prove that Boskonia —an autocratic, dictatorial culture diametrically opposed to every ideal of Civilization—was in fact back of practically all the pernicious activities of the First Galaxy. Even he, however, has never had any inkling either of the eons-long conflict between the Arisians and the Eddorians or of the fundamental raison d'etre of the Galactic Patrol—material which can never be revealed to any mind not inherently stable at the third level of stress. Virgil Samms, then chief of the Triplanetary Service, perceived the general situation and foresaw the shape of the inevitable. He realized that unless and until his organization could secure an identifying symbol which could not be counterfeited, police work would remain relatively ineffectual. Tellurian science had done its best in the golden meteors of the Service, and its best was not good enough. Through one Dr. Nels Bergenholm, an Arisian-activated form of human flesh, Virgil Samms became the first wearer of Arisia's Lens, and during his life he began the rigid selection of those worthy of wearing it. For centuries the Patrol grew and spread. It became widely known that the Lens was a. perfect telepath, that it glowed with colored light only when worn by the individual to whose ego it was attuned, that it killed any other living being who attempted to wear it. Whatever his race or shape, any wearer of the Lens was accepted as the embodiment of Civilization.

Kimball Kinnison was the first Lensman to realize that the Lens was more than an identification and a telepath. He was thus the first Lensman to return to Arisia to take the second stage of Lensmanship—the treatment which only an exceptional brain can withstand, but which gives the second-stage Lensman any mental power which he needs and which he can both visualize and control.

Aided by Lensmen Worsel of Velantia and Tregonsee of Rigel IV—the former a winged reptile, the latter a four-legged, barrel-shaped creature with the sense of perception instead of sight—Kimball Kinnison traced and surveyed Boskone's military organization in the First Galaxy. He helped plan the attack on Grand Base, the headquarters of Helmuth, who spoke for Boskone. By flooding the control dome of Grand Base with thionite, that deadly drug native to the peculiar planet Trenco, he made it possible for Civilization's Grand Fleet, under the command of Port Admiral Haynes, to reduce that base. He, personally, killed Helmuth in hand-to-hand combat. He was instrumental in the almost-complete destruction of the Overlords of Delgon; those sadistic, life-eating reptiles who were the first to employ the hyper-spatial tube against humanity.

He was wounded more than once; in one of his hospitalizations becoming acquainted with Surgeon-Marshal Lacy and with Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall, who was later to become the widely-known Red Lensman and, still later, my mother.

In spite of the military defeat, however, Boskonia's real organization remained intact, and Kinnison's further search led into Lundmark's Nebula, thenceforth called the Second Galaxy. The planet Medon, being attacked by Boskonians, was rescued from the enemy and was moved across inter-galactic space to the First Galaxy. Medon made two notable contributions to Civilization: first, electrical insulation, conductors, and switches by whose means voltages and amperages theretofore undreamed-of could be handled; and later Phillips, a Posenian surgeon, was able there to complete the researches which made it possible for human bodies to grow anew lost members or organs.

Kinnison, deciding that the drug syndicate was the quickest and surest line to Boskone, became Wild Bill Williams the meteor-miner; a hard-drinking, bentlam-eating, fast-shooting space-hellion. As Williams he traced the zwilnik line upward, step by step, to the planet Jarnevon in the Second Galaxy. Upon Jarnevon lived the Eich; frigid blooded monsters more intelligent, more merciless, more truly Boskonian even than the Overlords.

He and Worsel, second-stage Lensmen both, set out to investigate Jarnevon. He was captured, tortured, dismembered; but Worsel brought him back to Tellus with his mind and knowledge intact—the enormously important knowledge that Jarnevon was ruled by a council of nine of the Eich, a council named Boskone. Kinnison was given a Phillips treatment, and again Clarrissa MacDougall nursed him back to health. They loved each other, but they could not marry until the Gray Lensman's job was done; until Civilization had triumphed over Boskonia. The Galactic Patrol assembled its Grand Fleet, composed of millions of units, under the flagship Z9M9Z. It attacked. The planet of Jalte, Boskonia's director of the First Galaxy, was consumed by a bomb of negative matter. Jarnevon was crushed between two colliding planets; positioned inertialess, then inerted especially for that crushing. Grand Fleet returned, triumphant.

But Boskonia struck back, sending an immense fleet against Tellus through a hyper-spatial tube instead of through normal space. This method of approach was not, however, unexpected. Survey-ships and detectors were out; the scientists of the Patrol had been for months hard at work on the sunbeam —a device to concentrate the energy of the sun into one frightful beam. With this weapon re-enforcing the already vast powers of Grand Fleet, the invaders were wiped out.

Again Kinnison had to search for a high Boskonian; some authority higher than the Council of Boskone. Taking his personal super-dreadnought, the Dauntless, which carried his indetectable, non-ferrous speedster, he found a zwilnik trail and followed it to Dunstan's Region, an unexplored, virtually unknown, outlying spiral arm of the First Galaxy. It led to the planet Lyrane II, with its humanoid matriarchy, ruled by Helen, its queen.

There he found Illona Potter, the ex-Aldebaranian dancer; who, turning against her Boskonian masters, told him all she knew of the Boskonian planet Lonabar, where she had spent most of her life. Lonabar was unknown to the Patrol and Illona knew nothing of its location in space. She did, however, know its unique jewelry—gems also completely unknown to Civilization.

Nadreck of Palain VII, a frigid-blooded Second-Stage Lensman, with one jewel as a clue, set out to find Lonabar; while Kinnison began to investigate Boskonian activities among the matriarchs.

The Lyranians, however, were fanatically non-cooperative. They hated all males; they despised and detested all foreigners. Kinnison, with the consent and assistance of Mentor of Arisia, made Clarrissa MacDougall an Unattached Lensman and assigned to her the task of working Lyrane II.

Nadreck found and mapped Lonabar; and to build up an unimpeachable Boskonian identity Kinnison became Cartiff the jeweler—Cartiff the jewel-thief and swindler—Cartiff the fence—Cartiff the murderer-outlaw—Cartiff the Boskonian big shot. He challenged and overthrew Menjo Bleeko, the dictator of Lonabar, and before killing him took from his mind everything he knew.

The Red Lensman secured information from which it was deduced that a cavern of Overlords existed on Lyrane II. This cavern was raided and destroyed, the Patrolmen learning that the Eich themselves had a heavily fortified base on Lyrane VIII. Nadreck, master psychologist, invaded that base tracelessly; learning that the Eich received orders from the Thralian solar system in the Second Galaxy and that frigid-blooded Kandron of Onlo (ThrallisDC) was second in power only to human Alcon, the Tyrant of Thrale (Thrallis II).

Kinnison went to Thrale, Nadreck to Onlo; the operations of both being covered by the Patrol's invasion of the Second Galaxy. In that invasion Boskonia's Grand Fleet was defeated and the planet Klovia was occupied and fortified. Assuming the personality of Traska Gannel, a Thralian, Kinnison worked his way upward in Alcon's military organization. Trapped in a hyper-spatial tube, ejected into an unknown one of the infinity of parallel, co-existent, three-dimensional spaces comprising the Cosmic All, he was rescued byMentor , working through the brain of Sir Austin Cardynge, the Tellurian mathematician.

Returning to Thrale, he fomented a revolution, in which he killed Alcon and took his place as the Tyrant of Thrale. He then discovered that his prime minister, Fossten, who concealed his true appearance by means of a zone of hypnosis, had been Alcon's superior instead of his adviser. Neither quite ready for an open break, but both supremely confident of victory when that break should come, subtle hostilities began. Gannel and Fossten planned and launched an attack on Klovia, but just before engagement the hostilities between the two Boskonian leaders flared into an open fight for supremacy. After a terrific mental struggle, during which the entire crew of the flagship died, leaving the Boskonian fleet at the mercy of the Patrol, Kinnison won. He did not know, of course, then or ever, either that Fossten was in fact Gharlane of Eddore or that it was Mentor of Arisia who in fact overcame Fossten. Kinnison thought, andMentor encouraged him to believe, that Fossten was an Arisian who had been insane since youth, and that Kinnison had killed him without assistance. It is a mere formality to emphasize at this point that none of this information must ever become available to any mind below the third level; since to any entity able either to obtain or to read this report it will be obvious that such revealment would set up an inferiority complex which must inevitably destroy both the Patrol and Civilization. With Fossten dead and with Kinnison already the despot of Thrale, it was comparatively easy for the Patrol to take over. Nadreck drove the Onlonian garrisons insane, so that all fought to the death among themselves; thus rendering Onlo's mighty armament completely useless.

Then, thinking that the Boskonian War was over—encouraged, in fact, byMentor so to think—Kinnison married Clarrissa, established his headquarters upon Klovia, and assumed his duties as galactic coordinator.

Kimball Kinnison, while in no sense a mutant, was the penultimate product of a prodigiously long line of selective, controlled breeding. So was Clarrissa MacDougall. Just what course the science of Arisia took in making those two what they are I can deduce, but I do not as yet actually know. Nor, for the purpose of this record, does it matter. Port Admiral Haynes and Surgeon-Marshal Lacy thought that they brought them together and promoted their romance. Let them think so—as agents, they did. Whatever the method employed, the result was that the genes of those two uniquely complementary penultimates were precisely those necessary to produce the first, and at present the only third-stage Lensmen.