Chapter I: Front Matter

SECOND STAGE LENSMEN

By E. E. Smith, Ph.D.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction November, December 1941,
January, February 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

HISTORICAL

Law enforcement lagged behind crime because the police were limited in their spheres of action, while criminals were not. Therefore, when Bergenholm invented the inertialess drive and commerce throughout the Galaxy became commonplace, crime became so rampant as to threaten the very existence of Civilization.

Thus came into being the Galactic Patrol, an organization whose highest members are called "Lensmen." Each is identified by wearing the Lens, a pseudoliving telepathic jewel matched to the ego of its wearer by those master philosophers, the Arisians. The Lens cannot be either imitated or counterfeited, since it glows with color when worn by its owner, and since it kills any other who attempts to wear it.

Of each million selected candidates for the Lens all except about a hundred fail to pass the grueling tests employed to weed out the unfit. Kimball Kinnison graduated No. 1 in his class and was put in command of the spaceship _Brittania_--a war vessel of a new type, using explosives, even though such weapons had been obsolete for centuries. The "pirates"--the Boskonian Conflict was just beginning, so that no one yet suspected that the Patrol faced anything worse than highly organized piracy--were gaining the upper hand because of a new and apparently almost unlimited source of power. Kinnison was instructed to capture one of the new-type pirate ships, in order to learn the secret of that power.

He found and defeated a Boskonian warship. Peter VanBuskirk led the storming party of Valerians--men of human type, but of extraordinary size, strength and agility because of the enormous gravitational force of their home planet--in wiping out those of the pirate crew not killed in the battle between the two ships.

The scientists of the expedition secured the information desired. It could not be transmitted to Prime Base, however, because the pirates blanketed all channels of communication. Boskonian warships were gathering, and the crippled _Brittania_ could neither run nor fight. Therefore each man was given a spool of tape bearing the data and all the Patrolmen took to the lifeboats.

Kinnison and VanBuskirk, in one of the boats, were forced to land upon the planet Delgon, where they joined forces with Worsel--later to become Lensman Worsel--a winged, reptilian native of a neighboring planet, Velantia. The three destroyed a number of the Overlords of Delgon, a sadistic race of monsters who preyed upon the other races of their solar system by sheer power of mind. Worsel accompanied the Patrolmen to Velantia, where all the resources of the planet were devoted to preparing defenses against the expected Boskonian attack. Several others of the _Brittania's_ lifeboats reached Velantia, called by Worsel's prodigious mind working through Kinnison's ego and Lens.

Kinnison finally succeeded in tapping a communicator beam, thus getting one line upon Helmuth, who "spoke for Boskone"--it was supposed then that Helmuth actually was Boskone instead of a comparatively unimportant Director of Operations--and upon his Grand Base.

The Boskonians attacked Velantia and six of their vessels were captured. In these ships, manned by Velantian crews, the Tellurians set out for Earth and the Prime Base of the Galactic Patrol. Kinnison's Bergenholm, the generator of the force which makes inertialess--"free," in space parlance--flight possible, broke down, wherefore he had to land upon the planet Trenco for repairs.

Trenco, the tempestuous, billiard ball-smooth planet where it rains forty-seven feet and five inches every night and where the wind blows eight hundred miles an hour. Trenco, the world upon which is produced thionite, the deadliest and most potent of all habit-forming drugs. Trenco, the Mecca of all the "zwilniks"--members of the Boskonian drug ring; sometimes loosely applied to any Boskonian--of the Galaxy. Trenco, whose weirdly charged ether and atmosphere so distort beams and vision that it can be policed only by such beings as the Rigellians, who possess the sense of perception instead of sight and hearing!

Lensman Tregonsee, of Rigel IV, then in command of the Patrol's wandering base upon Trenco, furnished Kinnison a new Bergenholm and he again set out for Tellus.

Meanwhile Helmuth, the Boskonian commander, had deduced that some one particular Lensman was back of all his setbacks; and that the Lens, a complete enigma to the Boskonians, was in some way connected with Arisia. That planet had always been dreaded and shunned by all spacemen. No one would ever say why, but no being who had ever approached that planet uninvited could be compelled, even by threat of death, to go near it again.

Helmuth, thinking himself secure by virtue of his thought-screens, the secret of which he had stolen from Velantia, went alone to Arisia, to learn how the Lens gave its wearer such power. He was stopped at the barrier. His thought-screens were useless--the Arisians had given them to Velantia, hence knew how to break them down. He was punished to the verge of insanity, but was finally permitted to return to his Grand Base, alive and sane: "Not for your own good, but for the good of that struggling young civilization which you oppose."

* * * * *

Kinnison finally reached Prime Base with the all-important data. By building superpowerful battleships, called "maulers," the Patrol gained a temporary advantage over Boskonia, but a stalemate soon ensued. Kinnison developed a plan of action whereby he hoped to locate Helmuth's Grand Base; and asked Port Admiral Haynes, Chief of Staff of the entire Patrol, for permission to follow it. In lieu of that, however, Haynes informed him that he had been given his Release; that he was an Unattached Lensman--a "Gray" Lensman, popularly so called, from the color of the plain leather uniforms they wear. Thus he earned the highest honor which the Galactic Patrol can bestow, for the Gray Lensman works under no direction whatever. He is as absolutely a free agent as it is possible to be. He is responsible to no one; to nothing save his own conscience. He is no longer of Tellus, nor of the Solarian System, but of the Universe as a whole. He is no longer a cog in the immense machine of the Patrol: wherever he may go, throughout the unbounded reaches of space, he _is_ the Patrol!

In quest of a second line upon Grand Base, Kinnison scouted a pirate stronghold upon Aldebaran I. Its personnel, however, were not even near-human, but were Wheelmen, possessed of the sense of perception; hence Kinnison was discovered before he could accomplish anything and was very seriously wounded. He managed to get back to his speedster and to send a thought to Port Admiral Haynes, who immediately rushed ships to his aid. In Base Hospital, Surgeon General Lacy put him together, and, during a long and quarrelsome convalescence, Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall held him together. Lacy and Haynes connived to promote a romance between nurse and Lensman.

As soon as he could leave the hospital he went to Arisia in the hope that he might be permitted to take advanced training; an unheard-of idea. Much to his surprise, he learned that he had been expected to return, for exactly such training. Getting it almost killed him, but he emerged infinitely stronger of mind than any man had ever been before. He also now had the sense of perception; a sense somewhat analogous to that of sight, but of vastly greater penetration, power and scope and not dependent upon light; a sense only vaguely forecast by ancient work upon clairvoyance.

By the use of his new mental equipment he succeeded in entering a Boskonian base upon Boyssia II. There he took over the mind of the communications officer and waited. A pirate ship working out of that base captured a hospital ship of the Patrol and brought it in. Clarrissa, now chief nurse of the captured vessel, working under Kinnison's instructions, stirred up trouble. Helmuth, from Grand Base, interfered, thus enabling the Lensman to get his second, all-important line.

The intersection of the two lines, Boskonia's Grand Base, lay in a star cluster well outside the Galaxy. Pausing only long enough to destroy the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I, the project in which his first attempt had failed so dismally, he investigated Helmuth's headquarters. He found fortifications impregnable to any massed attack of the Patrol, manned by beings wearing thought-screens. His sense of perception was suddenly cut off--the enemy had thrown a thought-screen around the whole planet.

He returned to Prime Base, deciding en route that boring from within was the only possible way in which that base could be reduced. In consultation with Haynes the zero hour was set, at which the Grand Fleet of the Patrol would start raying Helmuth's base with every available projector.

Pursuant to his plan, Kinnison again visited Trenco, where Tregonsee and his Rigellians extracted for him fifty kilograms of thionite, the noxious drug which, in microgram inhalations, makes the addict experience all the physical and mental sensations of doing whatever it is that he wishes most ardently to do. The larger the dose the more intense the sensations--but the slightest overdose means a sudden and super-ecstatic death.

Thence to Helmuth's planet; where, by controlling the muscles of a dog whose brain was unscreened, he let himself into the central dome. Here, just before zero time, he released his thionite into the primary air stream, thus wiping out all the pirate personnel except Helmuth; who, in his inner dome, could not be affected. The Patrol attacked on schedule. Kinnison killed Helmuth in hand-to-hand combat. Grand Base was blasted out of existence, largely by the explosion of bombs of duodecaplyl atomate placed by the pirates themselves. These bombs were detonated by an enigmatic, sparkling force-ball which Kinnison had studied with care. He knew that it was operated by thought, and he suspected--correctly--that it was in reality an intergalactic communicator.

* * * * *

Kinnison's search for the real Boskone lead to Lundmark's Nebula, thenceforth called the Second Galaxy. His ship, the superpowerful _Dauntless_, met and defeated a squadron of Boskonian warships. The Tellurians landed upon the planet Medon, whose people were fighting a losing war against the forces of Boskone. The Medonians, electrical wizards who had been able to install inertia-neutralizers and a space drive upon their planet, moved their world over to our First Galaxy.

With the cessation of military activity, however, the illicit traffic in habit-forming drugs amongst all races of warm-blooded oxygen breathers had increased tremendously; and Kinnison, deducing that Boskone was back of the Drug Syndicate, decided that the best way to find the real leader of the enemy was to work upward through the drug ring.

Disguised as a dock walloper, he frequented the saloon of a drug baron, and helped to raid it; but, although he secured much information, his disguise was penetrated.

He called a Conference of Scientists, to devise means of building a gigantic bomb of negative matter. Then, impersonating a Tellurian secret-service agent who lent himself to the deception, he tried to investigate the stronghold of Prellin of Bronseca, one of Boskone's Regional Directors. This disguise also failed and he barely escaped.

Ordinary disguises having proved useless against Boskone's clever agents, Kinnison himself became Wild Bill Williams; once a gentleman of Aldebaran II, now a space rat meteor miner. Instead of pretending to drink he really drank; making of himself a practically bottomless drinker of the most vicious beverages known to space. He became a drug fiend--a bentlam eater--discovering that his Arisian-developed mind could function at full efficiency even while his physical body was stupefied. He became widely known as the fastest, deadliest performer with twin ray guns that had ever struck the asteroid belts. Thus, through solar system after solar system, he built up an unimpeachable identity as a hard-drinking, wildly carousing, bentlam-eating, fast-shooting space hellion; a lucky or a very skillful meteor miner; a derelict who had been an Aldebaranian gentleman once and who would be again if he should ever strike it rich and if he could conquer his weaknesses.

Physically helpless in a bentlam stupor, he listened in on a zwilnik conference and learned that Edmund Crowninshield, of Tressilia III, was also a Regional Director of the enemy.

Boskone formed an alliance with the Overlords of Delgon, and through a hyperspatial tube or vortex the combined forces again attacked humanity. Not simple slaughter this time, for the Overlords tortured their captives and consumed their life forces in sadistic orgies. The Conference of Scientists solved the mystery of the tube and the _Dauntless_ attacked through it; returning victorious.

Wild Bill Williams struck it rich at last. Forthwith he abandoned the low dives in which he had been wont to carouse, and made an obvious effort to become again an Aldebaranian gentleman. He secured an invitation to visit Crowninshield's resort. The Boskonian, believing that Williams was basically a drink and drug-soaked bum, took him in, to get his quarter-million credits. Relapsing into a characteristically wild debauch, Kinnison-Williams did squander a large part of his new fortune; but he learned from Crowninshield's mind that one Jalte, a Kalonian by birth, was Boskone's Galactic Director and that Jalte had his headquarters in a star cluster just outside the First Galaxy. Pretending bitter humiliation and declaring that he would change his name and disappear, the Gray Lensman left the planet--to investigate Jalte's base.

He learned that Boskone was not a single entity, but was a council. He also learned that, while the Kalonian did not know who or where Boskone was, Eichmil, Jalte's superior, who lived upon the planet Jarnevon in the Second Galaxy, would probably know all about it.

* * * * *

Kinnison and Worsel, therefore, set out to investigate Jarnevon. Kinnison was captured and tortured--there was at least one Delgonian upon Jarnevon--but Worsel rescued him before his mind was damaged and brought him back to the Patrol's Grand Fleet with his knowledge intact. Jarnevon was populated by the Eich, a race of monsters as bad as the Overlords of Delgon; the Council of Nine which ruled the noisome planet was, in fact, the long-sought, the utterly detested Boskone!

The greatest surgeons of the age--Phillips of Posenia and Wise of the newly acquired planet Medon--demonstrated that they could grow new nervous tissue; even new limbs and organs if necessary.

Again Clarrissa MacDougall nursed Kinnison back to health, and this time the love between them would not be denied.

The Grand Fleet of the Patrol was assembled, and with Kinnison in charge of Operations, swept outward from the First Galaxy. Jalte's planet was destroyed by means of the negasphere--the negative-matter bomb. Then on to the Second Galaxy.

There the Patrol forces destroyed Jarnevon, the planet of the Eich, by smashing it between two barren planets which had been driven there in the "free"--inertialess--condition. These planets, having opposite intrinsic velocities, were placed one upon each side of Jarnevon. Then their Bergenholms were cut, restoring inertia and intrinsic velocity; and when that frightful collision was over a minor star had come into being.

Grand Fleet returned to our Galaxy. Galactic Civilization rejoiced. Earth in particular made merry, and Prime Base was the center of celebration. And in Prime Base Kinnison, supposing that the war was over and that his problem was solved, threw off his Gray Lensman's burden and forgot all about the Boskonian menace. Marrying his Chris, he declared, was the most important thing in the Universe.

But how wrong he was! For, even as Lensman and Sector Chief Nurse were walking down a hallway of Base Hospital after a conference with Lacy and Haynes regarding that marriage--