Children of the Lens

by Edward E Smith

  “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 ever new gesture.

  “Lensman’s load, Cris,” he said, quietly.

  “Of course,” she replied then, as quietly. “It was a shock at first, coming after all these years, but…if it has to be, it must. But he—surely we can help him, Kim?”

  “Surely.” The man’s arm tightened. “When he hits space I go back to work. So do Nadreck and Worsel and Tregonsee. So do you, if your kind of a job turns up. And with us to do the blocking, and with Kit to carry the ball…” His thought died away.

  “I’ll say so,” she breathed. Then: “But you won’t call me, I know, unless you absolutely have to…and to give up you and Kit both…why did we have to be Lensmen, Kim?” she protested, rebelliously. “Why couldn’t we have been ground-grippers? You used to growl that thought at me before I knew what a Lens really meant…”

  “Vell, some of us has got to be der first violiners in der orchestra,” Kinnison misquoted, in an attempt at lightness. “Ve can’t all push vind t’rough der trombone.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” The Red Lensman’s somber air deepened. “Well, we were going to start for Tellus today, anyway, to see Kit graduate. This doesn’t change that.”

  And in a distant room four tall, shapely, auburn-haired girls stared at each other briefly, then went en rapport; for their mother had erred greatly in saying that the breakfast room was screened against their minds. Nothing was or could be screened against them; they could think above, below, or, by sufficient effort, straight through any thought-screen known to Tellurian science. Nothing in which they were interested was safe from them, and they were interested in practically everything.

  “Kay, we’ve got ourselves a job!” Kathryn, older by minutes than Karen, excluded pointedly the younger twins, Camilla and Constance—“Cam” and “Con.”

  “At last!” Karen exclaimed. “I’ve been wondering what we were born for, with nine-tenths of our minds so deep down that nobody except Kit even knows they’re there and so heavily blocked that we can’t let even each other in without a conscious effort. This is it. We’ll go places now, Kat, and really do things.”

  “What do you mean you’ll go places and do things?” Con demanded, indignantly. “Do you think for a second you carry screen enough to block us out of all the fun?”

  “Certainly,” Kat said, equably. “You’re too young.”

  “We’ll let you know what we’re doing, though,” Kay conceded, magnanimously. “You might, just conceivably, contribute an idea we could use.”

  “Ideas—phooey!” Con jeered. “A real idea would shatter both your skulls; You haven’t any more plan than a…”

  “Hush—shut up, everybody!” Kat commanded. “This is too new for any of us to have any worth-while ideas on, yet. Tell you what let’s do—we’ll all think this over until we’re aboard the Dauntless, half-way to Tellus; then we’ll compare notes and decide what to do.”

  They left Klovia that afternoon. Kinnison’s personal super-dreadnought, the mighty Dauntless—the fourth to bear that name—bored through inter-galactic space. Time passed. The four young red-heads convened.

  “I’ve got it all worked out!” Kat burst out, enthusiastically, forestalling the other three. “There’ll be four Second-Stage Lensmen at work and there are four of us. We’ll circulate—percolate—you might say—around and through the universe. We’ll pick up ideas and facts and feed ’em to our Gray Lensmen. Surreptitiously, sort of, so they’ll think they, got ’em themselves. I’ll take dad for my partner, Kay can have…”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” A general clamor arose, Con’s thought being the most insistent. “If we aren’t going to work with them all, indiscriminately, we’ll draw lots or throw dice to see who gets him, so there!”

  “Seal it, snake-hips, please,” Kat requested, sweetly. “It is trite but true to say that infants should be seen, but not heard. This is serious business…”

  “Snake-hips! Infant!” Con interrupted, venomously. “Listen, my steatopygous and senile friend!” Constance measured perhaps a quarter of an inch less in gluteal circumference than did her oldest sister; she tipped the beam at one scant pound below her weight. “You and Kay are a year older than Cam and I, of course; a year ago your minds were stronger than ours. That condition, however, no longer exists. We too are grown up. And to put that statement to test, what can you do that I can’t?”

  “This.” Kathryn extended a bare arm, narrowed her eyes in concentration. A Lens materialized about her wrist; not attached to it by a metallic bracelet, but a bracelet in itself, clinging sentiently to the smooth, bronzed skin. “I felt that in this work there would be a need. I learned to satisfy it. Can you match that?”

  They could. In a matter of seconds the three others were similarly enlensed. They had not previously perceived the need, but at Kathryn’s demonstration their acquisition of full knowledge had been virtually instantaneous.

  Kat’s Lens disappeared.

  So did the other three. Each knew that no hint of this knowledge or of t
his power should ever be revealed; each knew that in any moment of stress the Lens of Civilization could be and would be hers.

  “Logic, then, and by reason, not by chance.” Kat changed her tactics. “I still get him. Everybody knows who works best with whom. You, Con, have tagged around after Worsel all your life. You used to ride him like a horse…”

  “She still does,” Kay snickered. “He pretty nearly split her in two a while ago in a seven-gravity pull-out, and she almost broke a toe when she kicked him for it.”

  “Worsel is nice,” Con defended herself vigorously. “He’s more human than most people, and more fun, as well as having infinitely more brains. And you can’t talk, Kay—what anyone can see in that Nadreck, so cold-blooded that he freezes you even through armor at twenty feet—you’ll get as cold and hard as he is if you don’t…”

  “And every time Cam gets within five hundred parsecs of Tregonsee she goes into the silences with him, contemplating raptly the whichnesses of the why,” Kathryn interrupted, forestalling recriminations. “So you see, by the process of elimination, dad’s mine.”

  Since they could not all have him it was finally agreed that Kathryn’s claim would be allowed and, after a great deal of discussion and argument, a tentative plan of action was developed. In due course the Dauntless landed at Prime Base. The Kinnisons went to Wentworth Hall, the towering, chromium-and-glass home of the Tellurian cadets of the Galactic Patrol. They watched the impressive ceremonies of graduation. Then, as the new Lensmen marched out to the magnificent cadences of “Our Patrol”, the Gray Lensman, leaving his wife and daughters to their own devices, made his way to his Tellurian office.

  “Lensman Christopher K. Kinnison, sir, by appointment,” his secretary announced, and as Kit strode in Kinnison stood up and came to attention.

  “Christopher K. Kinnison of Klovia, sir, reporting for duty.” Kit saluted crisply.

  The coordinator returned the salute punctiliously. Then: “At rest, Kit. I’m proud of you, mighty proud. We all are. The women want to heroize you, but I had to see you first, to clear up a few things. An explanation, an apology, and, in a sense, commiseration.”

  “An apology, sir?” Kit was dumbfounded. “Why, that’s unthinkable…”

  “For not graduating you in Gray. It has never been done, but that wasn’t the reason. Your commandant, the board of examiners, and Port Admiral LaForge, all recommended it, agreeing that none of us is qualified to give you either orders or directions. I blocked it.”

  “Of course. For the son of the coordinator to be the first Lensman to graduate Unattached would smell—especially since the fewer who know of my peculiar characteristics the better. That can wait, sir.”

  “Not too long, son.” Kinnison’s smile was a trifle forced. “Here’s your Release and your kit, and a request that you go to work on whatever it is that’s going on. We rather think it heads up somewhere in the Second Galaxy, but that’s just a guess.”

  “I start out from Klovia, then? Good—I can go home with you.”

  “That’s the idea, and on the way there you can study the situation. We’ve made tapes of the data, with our best attempts at analysis and interpretation. The stuff’s up to date, except for a thing I got this morning… I can’t figure out whether it means anything or not, but it should be inserted…” Kinnison paced the room, scowling.

  “Might as well tell me. I’ll insert it when I scan the tape.”

  “QX. I don’t suppose you’ve heard much about the unusual shipping trouble we’ve been having, particularly in the Second Galaxy?”

  “Rumor—gossip only. I’d rather have it straight.”

  “It’s all on the tapes, so I’ll just hit the high spots. Losses are twenty-five percent above normal. A few very peculiar derelicts have been found—they seem to have been wrecked by madmen. Not only wrecked, but gutted, and every mark of identification wiped out. We can’t determine even origin or destination, since the normal disappearances outnumber the abnormal ones by four to one. On the tapes this is lumped in with the other psychoses you’ll learn about. But this morning they found another derelict, in which the chief pilot had scrawled ‘WARE HELLHOLE IN SP’ across a plate. Connection with the other derelicts, if any, obscure. If the pilot was sane when he wrote that message it means something—but nobody knows what. If he wasn’t, it doesn’t, any more than the dozens of obviously senseless—excuse me, I should say apparently senseless—messages on the tapes.”

  “Hm…m. Interesting. I’ll bear it in mind and tape it in its place. But speaking of peculiar things, I’ve got one I wanted to tell you about—getting my Release was such a shock I almost forgot it. Reported it, but nobody thought it was anything important. Maybe—probably—it isn’t. Tune your mind up to the top of the range—there—did you ever hear of a race that thinks on that band?”

  “I never did—it’s practically unreachable. Why—have you?”

  “Yes and no. Only once, and that only a touch. Or, rather, a burst; as though a hard-held mind-block had exploded, or the creature had just died a violent, instantaneous death. Not enough of it to trace, and I never found any more of it.”

  “Any characteristics? Bursts can be quite revealing.”

  “A few. It was on my last break-in trip in the Second Galaxy, out beyond Thrale—about here.” Kit marked the spot upon a mental chart. “Mentality very high—precisionist grade—possibly beyond social needs, as the planet was a bare desert and terrifically hot. No thought of cities. Nor of water, although both may have existed without appearing in that burst of thought. The thing’s bodily structure was RTSL, to four places. No gross digestive tract—atmosphere-nourished or an energy-converter, perhaps. The sun was a blue giant. No spectral data, of course, but at a rough guess I’d say somewhere around class B5 or A0. That’s all I could get.”

  “That’s a lot to get from one burst. It doesn’t mean a thing to me right now…but I’ll watch for a chance to fit it in somewhere.”

  How casually they dismissed as unimportant that cryptic burst of thought! But if they both, right then, together, had been authoritatively informed that that description fitted exactly the physical form forced upon its denizens in its summer by the accurately-described, simply hellish climatic conditions obtaining during that season on the noxious planet Ploor, the information would still not have seemed important to either of them—then.

  “Anything else we ought to discuss before night?” The older Lensman went on without a break.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You said your Release was a shock. You’ve got another one coming.”

  “I’m braced—blast!”

  “Worsel, Tregonsee, Nadreck and I are quitting our jobs and going Gray again. Our main purpose in life is going to be rallying ’round at max whenever you whistle.”

  “That is a shock, sir… Thanks… I hadn’t expected—it’s really overwhelming. And you said something about commiserating me?” Kit lifted his red-thatched head—all of Clarrissa’s children had inherited her startling hair—and gray eyes stared level into eyes of gray.

  “In a sense, yes. You’ll understand later… Well, you’d better go hunt up your mother and the girls. After the clambake is over…”

  “I’d better cut it, hadn’t I?” Kit asked, eagerly. “Don’t you think it’d be better for me to get started right away?”

  “Not on your life!” Kinnison demurred, positively. “Do you think I want that mob of red-heads snatching me bald? You’re in for a large day and evening of lionization, so take it like a man. As I was about to say, as soon as the brawl is over tonight we’ll all board the Dauntless and do a flit for Klovia, where we’ll fix you up an outfit. Until then, son…” Two big hands gripped.

  “But I’ll be seeing you around the Hall!” Kit exclaimed. “You can’t…”

  “No, I can’t run out on it, either,” Kinnison grinned, “but we won’t be in a sealed and shielded room. So, son… I’m proud of you.”

  “Right back at y
ou, big fellow—and thanks a million.” Kit strode out and, a few minutes later, the coordinator did likewise.

  The “brawl”, which was the gala event of the Tellurian social year, was duly enjoyed by all the Kinnisons. The Dauntless made an uneventful flight to Klovia. Arrangements were made. Plans, necessarily sketchy and elastic, were laid.

  Two big, gray-clad Lensmen stood upon the deserted space-field between two blackly indetectable speedsters. Kinnison was massive, sure, calm with the poised calmness of maturity, experience, and power. Kit, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of his years and training, was taut and tense, fiery, eager to come to grips with Civilization’s foes.

  “Remember, son,” Kinnison said as the two gripped hands. “There are four of us—old-timers who’ve been through the mill—on call every second. If you can use any one of us or all of us don’t wait—snap out a call.”

  “I know, dad…thanks. The four best. One of you may make a strike before I do. With the thousands of leads we have, and your experience and know-how, you probably will. So remember it cuts both ways. If any of you can use me any time, you whistle.”

  “QX. We’ll keep in touch. Clear ether, Kit!”

  “Clear ether, dad!” What a wealth of meaning there was in that low-voiced, simple exchange of the standard bon voyage!

  For minutes, as his speedster flashed through space, Kinnison thought only of the boy. He knew exactly how he felt; he re-lived in memory the supremely, ecstatic moments of his own first launching into space as a Gray Lensman. But Kit had the stuff—stuff which he, Kinnison could never know anything about—and he had his own job to do. Therefore, methodically, like the old campaigner he was, he set about it.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Worsel and the Overlords

  ORSEL THE VELANTIAN, HARD and durable and long-lived as Velantians are, had in twenty Tellurian years changed scarcely at all. As the first Lensman and the only Second-Stage Lensman of his race, the twenty years had been very fully occupied indeed.