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 intheir spheres of action, while criminals were not. Therefore, whenBergenholm invented the inertialess drive and commerce throughout theGalaxy became commonplace, crime became so rampant as to threaten thevery existence of Civilization.
Thus came into being the Galactic Patrol, an organization whose highestmembers are called "Lensmen." Each is identified by wearing the Lens, apseudoliving telepathic jewel matched to the ego of its wearer by thosemaster philosophers, the Arisians. The Lens cannot be either imitatedor counterfeited, since it glows with color when worn by its owner, andsince it kills any other who attempts to wear it.
Of each million selected candidates for the Lens all except about ahundred fail to pass the grueling tests employed to weed out the unfit.Kimball Kinnison graduated No. 1 in his class and was put in commandof the spaceship Brittania—a war vessel of a new type, usingexplosives, even though such weapons had been obsolete for centuries.The "pirates"—the Boskonian Conflict was just beginning, so that noone yet suspected that the Patrol faced anything worse than highlyorganized piracy—were gaining the upper hand because of a new andapparently almost unlimited source of power. Kinnison was instructed tocapture one of the new-type pirate ships, in order to learn the secretof that power.
He found and defeated a Boskonian warship. Peter VanBuskirk led thestorming party of Valerians—men of human type, but of extraordinarysize, strength and agility because of the enormous gravitational forceof their home planet—in wiping out those of the pirate crew not killedin the battle between the two ships.
The scientists of the expedition secured the information desired. Itcould not be transmitted to Prime Base, however, because the piratesblanketed all channels of communication. Boskonian warships weregathering, and the crippled Brittania could neither run norfight. Therefore each man was given a spool of tape bearing the dataand all the Patrolmen took to the lifeboats.
Kinnison and VanBuskirk, in one of the boats, were forced to landupon the planet Delgon, where they joined forces with Worsel—laterto become Lensman Worsel—a winged, reptilian native of a neighboringplanet, Velantia. The three destroyed a number of the Overlords ofDelgon, a sadistic race of monsters who preyed upon the other racesof their solar system by sheer power of mind. Worsel accompanied thePatrolmen to Velantia, where all the resources of the planet weredevoted 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 andLens.
Kinnison finally succeeded in tapping a communicator beam, thus gettingone line upon Helmuth, who "spoke for Boskone"—it was supposedthen that Helmuth actually was Boskone instead of