the Cosmic All, he was rescued by Mentor, 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, and Mentor 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, by Mentor
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.
I was born on Klovia, as were, three and four galactic-standard years later, my
four sisters—two pairs of non-identical twins. I had little babyhood, no childhood.
Fathered and mothered by Second-Stage Lensmen, accustomed from infancy to wide-
open two-ways with such beings as Worsel of Velantia, Tregonsee of Rigel IV, and
Nadreck of Palain VII, it would seem obvious that we did not go to school. We were not
like other children of our ages; but before I realized that it was anything unusual for a
baby who could scarcely walk to be computing highly perturbed asteroidal orbits as
“mental arithmetic”, I knew that we would have to keep our abnormalities to ourselves,
insofar as the bulk of mankind and of Civilization was concerned.
I traveled much; sometimes with my father or mother or both, sometimes alone.
At least once each year I went to Arisia for treatment. I took the last two years of
Lensman-ship, for physical reasons only, at Wentworth Hall instead of the Academy of
Klovia because upon Tellus the name Kinnison is not at all uncommon, while upon
Klovia the fact that “Kit” Kinnison was the son of the coordinator could not have been
concealed.
I graduated, and with my formal enlensment this record properly begins.
I have recorded this material as impersonally as possible, realizing fully that my
sisters and I did only the work for which we were specifically developed and trained;
even as you who read this will do that for which you shall have been developed and are
to be trained.
Respectfully submitted,
Christopher K. Kinnison, L3, Klovia.
CHAPTER 1: KIM AND KIT; GRAY LENSMEN
Galactic coordinator Kimball Kinnison finished his second cup of Tellurian coffee,
got up from the breakfast table, and prowled about in black abstraction. Twenty-odd
years had changed him but little. He weighed the same, or a few pounds less; although
a little of his mass had shifted downward from his mighty chest and shoulders. His hair
was still brown; his stern face was only faintly lined. He was mature, with a conscious
maturity no young man can know.
“Since when, Kim, did you think you could get away with blocking me out of your
mind?” Clarrissa Kinnison directed a quiet thought. The years had dealt as lightly with
the Red Lensman as with the Gray. She had been gorgeous; she was now magnificent.
“This room is shielded, you know, against even the girls.”
“Sorry, Cris—I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know,” she laughed. “Automatic. But you’ve had that block up for two solid
weeks, except when you force yourself to keep it down. That means you’re ‘way off the
green.”
“I’ve been thinking, incredible as it may seem.”
“I know it. Let’s have it, Kim.”
“QX—you asked for it. Queer things have been going on; all over. Inexplicable
things . . . no apparent reason.”
“Such as?”
“Almost any kind of insidious deviltry you care to name. Disaffections, psychoses,
mass hysterias, hallucinations; pointing toward a Civilization-wide epidemic of
revolutions and uprisings for which there seems to be no basis or justification whatever.”
“Why, Kim! How could there be? I haven’t heard of anything like that!”
“It hasn’t got around. Each solar system thinks it’s a purely local condition, but it
isn’t. As galactic coordinator, with a broad view of the entire picture, my office would of
course see such a thing before anyone else could. We saw it, and set out to nip it in the
bud . . . but . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned wryly.
“But what?” Clarrissa persisted.
“It didn’t nip. We sent Lensmen to investigate, but none of them got to the first
check-station. Then I asked our Second-Stage Lensmen—Worsel, Nadreck, and
Tregonsee— to drop whatever they were doing and solve it for me. They hit it and
bounced. They followed, and are still following, leads and clues galore, but they haven’t
got a millo’s worth of results so far.”
“What? You mean it’s a problem they can’t solve?”
“That they haven’t, to date,” he corrected, absently. “And that ‘gives me furiously
to think’.”
“It would,” she conceded, “and it also would make you itch to join them. Think at
me, it’ll help you correlate. You should have gone over the data with me right at first.”
“I had reasons not to, as you’ll see. But I’m stumped now, so here goes. We’ll
have to go away back, to before we were married. First; Mentor told me, quote, only
your descendants will be ready for that for which you now so dimly grope, unquote.
Second; you were the only being ever able to read my thoughts without a Lens. Third;
Mentor told us, when we asked him if it was QX for us to go ahead, that our marriage
was necessary, a choice of phraseology which bothered you somewhat at the time, but
which I then explained as being in accord with his visualization of the Cosmic All.
Fourth; the Patrol formula is to send the man best fitted for any job to do that job, and if
he can’t swing it, to send the Number One graduate of the current class of Lensmen.
Fifth; a Lensman has got to use everything and everybody available, no matter what or
who it is. I used even you, you remember, in that Lyrane affair and others. Sixth; Sir
Austin Cardynge believed to the day of his death that we were thrown out of that hyper-
spatial tube, and out of space, deliberately.”
“Well, go on. I don’t see much, if any, connection.”
“You will, if you think of those six points in connection with our present
predicament Kit graduates next month, and he’ll rank number one of all Civilization, for
all the tea in China.”
“Of course. But after all, he’s a Lensman. Hell have to be assigned some
problem; why not that one?”
“You don’t see yet what that problem is. I’ve been adding two and two together
for weeks, and can’t get any other answer than four. And if two and two are four, Kit has
got to tackle Boskone—the real Boskone; the one I never did and probably never can
reach.”
“No, Kim—no!” she almost shrieked. “Not Kit, Kim-he’s just a boy!”
Kinnison waited, wordless.
She got up, crossed the room to him. He put his arm around her in the old but