CHILDREN OF THE LENS
First serialized in “ASTOUNDING,” Nov ’47 – Feb ’48;
Fist book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1954
BY E. E. “DOC” SMITH
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 (Thrallis DC) 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