SUBJECT: The Conclusion of the Boskonian War; A Report:
BY: Christopher 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; perhaps ten
million, perhaps ten million million Galactic-Standard years; 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 climatic 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
Co-ordinator, was to prove that Boskonia, an autocratic, dictatorial
culture diametrically opposed to every ideal of Civilization--was, in
fact, back of practically all of the pernicious activities of the First
Galaxy. Even my father, however, has never had any inkling either of
the existence and the doings of the Eddorians or of the fundamental
_raison d'etre_ of the Galactic Patrol--facts which can never be
revealed to any mind not inherently stable at the third level of stress.
Virgil Samms, then Chief of the Secret Service of the Triplanetary
League, 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 Triplanetary's Secret Service, and
its best was not good enough.
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 entity of Civilization to suspect that
the Boskonian organization existed. He was the first Lensman to realize
that the Lens was more than identification and a telepath. He was
thus the first Lensman to return to Arisia to take the second stage
of Lensmanship--their 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 Lensman 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 upon 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--now retired--to
reduce that Base. He personally killed Helmuth in hand-to-hand combat.
He was instrumental in the almost-complete destruction of the
Overlords; those sadistic, life-eating reptiles native to the planet
Delgon of the Velantian solar system, who were the first to employ
against humanity the hyperspatial tube.
He was wounded more than once; in one of his hospitalizations
becoming acquainted with Surgeon General Lacy--now retired--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 the Boskonians, was rescued from the enemy and was
moved across intergalactic 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 any members or organs which
had been lost.
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 of Delgon.
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 hyperspatial 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 upon the "sunbeam"--a device to concentrate all the energy
of the sun into one frightful beam. With this weapon reinforcing 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
superdreadnought, the _Dauntless_, which carried his indetectable,
nonferrous 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 human
matriarchy, ruled by Helen its queen.
There he found Illona Potter, the ex-Aldebaranian dancer; who,
turning against her Boskonian kidnapers, told him all she knew of
the Boskonian planet Lonabar, upon which 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 nonco-operative. They hated
all males; they despised and detested all nonhuman entities. Hence
Kinnison, with the consent and assistance of Mentor of Arisia, made of
Clarrissa MacDougall a Second-Stage 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 the Overlords of Delgon existed upon Lyrane II. This
cavern was raided and destroyed, the Patrolmen learning that the Eich
themselves had a heavily-fortified base upon Lyrane III.
Nadreck, master psychologist, invaded that base tracelessly; learning
that the Eich received orders from the Thrallian solar system in the
Second Galaxy and that frigid-blooded Kandron of Onlo--Thrallis IX--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 taken and
fortified.
Assuming the personality of Traska Gannel, a Thralian, Kinnison
worked his way upward in Alcon's military organization. Trapped in
a hyperspatial tube, ejected into an unknown one of the infinity of
parallel, coexistent, three-dimensional spaces which comprise 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.
Tyrant and Prime Minister planned and launched an attack upon 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 the course of 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, and never will know, either
that Fossten was in fact an Eddorian or that it was Mentor who in
fact overcame Fossten. Kinnison thought, and Mentor encouraged him
to believe, that the Prime Minister was an Arisian who had been
insane since youth, and that Kinnison himself killed Fossten 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 produce an
inferiority complex which must inevitably destroy both the Galactic
Patrol and the Civilization whose instrument it is.
With Fossten dead and with Kinnison already the Tyrant 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 MacDougall, established
his headquarters upon Klovia and assumed his duties as Galactic
Co-ordinator.
Kimball Kinnison, while not, strictly speaking, 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 General 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 upon Klovia, as were, three or four Galactic-Standard years
later, my four sisters--two pairs of 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 age; 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 Lensmanship, for physical reasons only, at
Wentworth Hall upon Tellus instead of upon my native 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 Co-ordinator could not
have been concealed.
I graduated, and with my formal enlensment this record properly
begins. Much has been told elsewhere, notably in Smith's "History
of Civilization"; but all such works are, and of necessity must be,
pitifully incomplete.
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 Kinnison, L3, Klovia.