First Lensman

by Edward E Smith

  “Not quite. How about your identical-twin cousins, Ray and George Olmstead, who have been doing such a terrific job of counter-spying?”

  “Perhaps… Quite possibly.”

  “And if I’m good enough, Clayton and Schweikert certainly are, to name only two of the commodores. And Knobos and DalNalten. And above all, how about Jill?”

  “Jill? Why, I don’t…she measures up, of course, but…but at that, there was nothing said against it, either… I wonder…”

  “Why not have the boys in—Jill, too—and thrash it out?”

  The young people were called in; the story was told; the problem stated. The boys’ reaction was instantaneous and unanimous. Jack Kinnison took the lead.

  “Of course Jill’s going, if anybody does!” he burst out vehemently. “Count her out, with all the stuff she’s got? Hardly!”

  “Why, Jack! This, from you?” Jill seemed highly surprised. “I have it on excellent authority that I’m a stinker; a half-witted one, at that. A jelly-brain, with come-hither eyes.”

  “You are, and a lot of other things besides.” Jack Kinnison did not back up a millimeter, even before their fathers. “But even at your sapadilliest your half wits are better than most other people’s whole ones; and I never said or thought that your brain couldn’t function, whenever it wanted to, back of those said eyes. Whatever it takes to be a Lensman, sir,” he turned to Samms, “she’s got just as much of as the rest of us. Maybe more.”

  “I take it, then, that there is no objection to her going?” Samms asked.

  There was no objection.

  “What ship shall we take, and when?”

  “The Chicago. Now.” Kinnison directed. “She’s hot and ready. We didn’t strike any trouble going or coming, so she didn’t need much servicing. Flit!”

  They flitted, and the great battleship made the second cruise as uneventfully as she had made the first. The Chicago’s officers and crew knew that the young people left the vessel separately; that they returned separately, each in his or her lifeboat. They met, however, not in the control room, but in Jack Kinnison’s private quarters; the three young Lensmen and the girl. The three were embarrassed; ill at ease. The Lenses were—definitely—not working. No one of them would put his Lens on Jill, since she did not have one… The girl broke the short silence.

  “Wasn’t she the most perfectly beautiful thing you ever saw?” she breathed. “In spite of being over seven feet tall? She looked to be about twenty—except her eyes—but she must have been a hundred, to know so much—but what are you boys staring so about?”

  “She!” Three voices blurted as one.

  “Yes. She. Why? I know we weren’t together, but I got the impression, some way or other, that there was only the one. What did you see?”

  All three men started to talk at once, a clamor of noise; then all stopped at once.

  “You first, Spud. Whom did you talk to, and what did he, she, or it say?” Although Conway Costigan was a few years older than the other three, they all called him by nickname as a matter of course.

  “National Police Headquarters—Chief of the Detective Bureau,” Costigan reported, crisply. “Between forty three and forty five; six feet and half an inch; one seventy five. Hard, fine, keen, a Big Time Operator if there ever was one. Looked a lot like your father, Jill; the same dark auburn hair, just beginning to gray, and the same deep orange-yellow markings in his eyes. He gave me the works; then took this Lens out of his safe, snapped it onto my wrist, and gave me two orders—get out and stay out.”

  Jack and Mase stared at Costigan, at Jill, and at each other. Then they whistled in unison.

  “I see this is not going to be a unanimous report, except possibly in one minor detail,” Jill remarked. “Muse, you’re next.”

  “I landed on the campus of the University of Arisia,” Northrop stated, flatly. “Immense place—hundreds of thousands of students. They took me to the Physics Department—to the private laboratory of the Department Head himself. He had a panel with about a million meters and gauges on it; he scanned and measured every individual component element of my brain. Then he made a pattern, on a milling router just about as complicated as his panel. From there on, of course, it was simple—just like a dentist making a set of china choppers or a metallurgist embedding a test-section. He snapped a couple of sentences of directions at me, and then said ‘Scram!’ That’s all.”

  “Sure that was all?” Costigan asked. “Didn’t he add ‘and stay scrammed’?”

  “He didn’t say it, exactly, but the implication was clear enough.”

  “The one point of similarity,” Jill commented. “Now you, Jack. You have been looking as though we were all candidates for canvas jackets that lace tightly up the back.”

  “Uh-uh. As though maybe I am. I didn’t see anything at all. Didn’t even land on the planet. Just floated around in an orbit inside that screen. The thing I talked with was a pattern of pure force. This Lens simply appeared on my wrist, bracelet and all, out of thin air. He told me plenty, though, in a very short time—his last word being for me not to come back or call back.”

  “Hm…m…m.” This of Jack’s was a particularly indigestible bit, even for Jill Samms.

  “In plain words,” Costigan volunteered, “we all saw exactly what we expected to see.”

  “Uh-uh,” Jill denied. “I certainly did not expect to see a woman…no; what each of us saw, I think, was what would do us the most good—give each of us the highest possible lift. I am wondering whether or not there was anything at all really there.”

  “That might be it, at that.” Jack scowled in concentration. “But there must have been something there—these Lenses are real. But what makes me mad is that they wouldn’t give you a Lens. You’re just as good a man as any one of us—if I didn’t know it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good I’d go back there right now and…”

  “Don’t pop off so, Jack!” Jill’s eyes, however, were starry. “I know you mean it, and I could almost love you, at times—but I don’t need a Lens. As a matter of fact, I’ll be much better off without one.”

  “Jet back, Jill!” Jack Kinnison stared deeply into the girl’s eyes—but still did not use his Lens. “Somebody must have done a terrific job of selling, to make you believe that…or are you sold, actually?”

  “Actually. Honestly. That Arisian was a thousand times more of a woman than I ever will be, and she didn’t wear a Lens—never had worn one. Women’s minds and Lenses don’t fit. There’s a sex-based incompatibility. Lenses are as masculine as whiskers—and at that, only a very few men can ever wear them, either. Very special men, like you three and Dad and Pops Kinnison. Men with tremendous force, drive, and scope. Pure killers, all of you; each in his own way, of course. No more to be stopped than a glacier, and twice as hard and ten times as cold. A woman simply can’t have that kind of a mind! There is going to be a woman Lensman some day—just one—but not for years and years; and I wouldn’t be in her shoes for anything. In this job of mine, of…”

  “Well, go on. What is this job you’re so sure you are going to do?”

  “Why, I don’t know!” Jill exclaimed, startled eyes wide. “I thought I knew all about it, but I don’t! Do you, about yours?”

  They did not, not one of them; and they were all as surprised at that fact as the girl had been.

  “Well, to get back to this Lady Lensman who is going to appear some day, I gather that she is going to be some kind of a freak. She’ll have to be, practically, because of the sex-based fundamental nature of the Lens. Mentor didn’t say so, in so many words, but she made it perfectly clear that…”

  “Mentor!” the three men exclaimed.

  Each of them had dealt with Mentor!

  “I am beginning to see,” Jill said, thoughtfully. “Mentor. Not a real name at all. To quote the Unabridged verbatim—I had occasion to look the word up the other day and I am appalled now at the certainty that there was a connection—quote; Mentor, a wise and faithful cou
nselor; unquote. Have any of you boys anything to say? I haven’t; and I am beginning to be scared blue.”

  Silence fell; and the more they thought, those three young Lensmen and the girl who was one of the two human women ever to encounter knowingly an Arisian mind, the deeper that silence became.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Bribery

  O YOU DIDN’T FIND ANYTHING on Nevia.” Roderick Kinnison got up, deposited the inch-long butt of his cigar in an ashtray, lit another, and prowled about the room; hands jammed deep into breeches pockets. “I’m surprised. Nerado struck me as being a B.T.O… I thought sure he’d qualify.”

  “So did I.” Samms’ tone was glum. “He’s Big Time, and an Operator; but not big enough, by far. I’m—we’re both—finding out that Lensman material is damned scarce stuff. There’s none on Nevia, and no indication whatever that there ever will be any.”

  “Tough…and you’re right, of course, in your stand that we’ll have to have Lensmen from as many different solar systems as possible on the Galactic Council or the thing won’t work at all. So damned much jealousy—which is one reason why we’re here in New York instead of out at The Hill, where we belong—we’ve found that out already, even in such a small and comparatively homogeneous group as our own system—the Solarian Council will not only have to be made up mostly of Lensmen, but each and every inhabited planet of Sol will have to be represented—even Pluto, I suppose, in time. And by the way, your Mr. Saunders wasn’t any too pleased when you took Knobos of Mars and DalNalten of Venus away from him and made Lensmen out of them—and put them miles over his head.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that…exactly. I convinced him…but at that, since Saunders is not Lensman grade himself, it was a trifle difficult for him to understand the situation completely.”

  “You say it easy—‘difficult’ is not the word I would use. But back to the Lensman hunt.” Kinnison scowled blackly. “I agree, as I said before, that we need non-human Lensmen, the more the better, but I don’t think much of your chance of finding any. What makes you think… Oh, I see…but I don’t know whether you’re justified or not in assuming a high positive correlation between a certain kind of mental ability and technological advancement.”

  “No such assumption is necessary. Start anywhere you please, Rod, and take it from there; including Nevia.”

  “I’ll start with known facts, then. Interstellar flight is new to us. We haven’t spread far, or surveyed much territory. But in the eight solar systems with which we are most familiar there are seven planets—I’m not counting Valeria—which are very much like Earth in point of mass, size, climate, atmosphere, and gravity. Five of the seven did not have any intelligent life and were colonized easily and quickly. The Tellurian worlds of Procyon and Vega became friendly neighbors—thank God we learned something on Nevia—because they were already inhabited by highly advanced races: Procia by people as human as we are, Vegia by people who would be so if it weren’t for their tails. Many other worlds of these systems are inhabited by more or less intelligent non-human races. Just how intelligent they are we don’t know, but the Lensmen will soon find out.

  “My point is that no race we have found so far has had either atomic energy or any form of space-drive. In any contact with races having space-drives we have not been the discoverers, but the discovered. Our colonies are all within twenty six light-years of Earth except Aldebaran II, which is fifty seven, but which drew a lot of people, in spite of the distance, because it was so nearly identical with Earth. On the other hand, the Nevians, from a distance of over a hundred light-years, found us…implying an older race and a higher development…but you just told me that they would never produce a Lensman!”

  “That point stopped me, too, at first. Follow through; I want to see if you arrive at the same conclusion I did.”

  “Wel…l…l…” Kinnison thought intensely, then went on: “Of course, the Nevians were not colonizing; nor, strictly speaking, exploring. They were merely hunting for iron—a highly organized, intensively specialized operation to find a raw material they needed desperately.”

  “Precisely,” Samms agreed.

  “The Rigellians, however, were surveying, and Rigel is about four hundred and forty light-years from here. We didn’t have a thing they needed or wanted. They nodded at us in passing and kept on going. I’m still on your track?”

  “Dead center. And just where does that put the Palainians?”

  “I see…you may have something there, at that. Palain is so far away that nobody knows even where it is—probably thousands of light-years. Yet they have not only explored this system; they colonized Pluto long before our white race colonized America. But damn it, Virge, I don’t like it—any part of it. Rigel Four you may be able to take, with your Lens…even one of their damned automobiles, if you stay solidly en rapport with the driver. But Palain, Virge! Pluto is bad enough, but the home planet! You can’t. Nobody can. It simply can’t be done!”

  “I know it won’t be easy,” Samms admitted, bleakly, “but if it’s got to be done, I’ll do it. And I have a little information that I haven’t had time to tell you yet. We discussed once before, you remember, what a job it was to get into any kind of communication with the Palainians on Pluto. You said then that nobody could understand them, and you were right—then. However, I re-ran those brain-wave tapes, wearing my Lens, and could understand them—the thoughts, that is—as well as though they had been recorded in precisionist-grade English.”

  “What?” Kinnison exclaimed, then fell silent. Samms remained silent. What they were thinking of Arisia’s Lens cannot be expressed in words.

  “Well, go on,” Kinnison finally said. “Give me the rest of it—the stinger that you’ve been holding back.”

  “The messages—as messages—were clear and plain. The backgrounds, however, the connotations and implications, were not. Some of their codes and standards seem to be radically different from ours—so utterly and fantastically different that I simply cannot reconcile either their conduct or their ethics with their obviously high intelligence and their advanced state of development. However, they have at least some minds of tremendous power, and none of the peculiarities I deduced were of such a nature as to preclude Lensmanship. Therefore I am going to Pluto; and from there—I hope—to Palain Seven. If there’s a Lensman there, I’ll get him.”

  “You will, at that,” Kinnison paid quiet tribute to what he, better than anyone else, knew that his friend had.

  “But enough of me—how are you doing?”

  “As well as can be expected at this stage of the game. The thing is developing along three main lines. First, the pirates. Since that kind of thing is more or less my own line I’m handling it myself, unless and until you find someone better qualified. I’ve got Jack and Costigan working on it now.

  “Second; drugs, vice, and so on. I hope you find somebody to take this line over, because, frankly, I’m in over my depth and want to get out. Knobos and DalNalten are trying to find out if there’s anything to the idea that there may be a planetary, or even inter-planetary, ring involved. Since Sid Fletcher isn’t a Lensman I couldn’t disconnect him openly from his job, but he knows a lot about the dope-vice situation and is working practically full time with the other two.

  “Third; pure—or rather, decidedly impure—politics. The more I studied that subject, the clearer it became that politics would be the worst and biggest battle of the three. There are too many angles I don’t know a damned thing about, such as what to do about the succession of foaming, screaming fits your friend Senator Morgan will be throwing the minute he finds out what our Galactic Patrol is going to do. So I ducked the whole political line.

  “Now you know as well as I do—better, probably—that Morgan is only the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. Multiply him by the thousands of others, all over space, who will be on our necks before the Patrol can get its space-legs, and you will see that all that stuff will have to
be handled by a Lensman who, as well as being a mighty smooth operator, will have to know all the answers and will have to have plenty of guts. I’ve got the guts, but none of the other prime requisites. Jill hasn’t, although she’s got everything else. Fairchild, your Relations ace, isn’t a Lensman and can never become one. So you can see quite plainly who has got to handle politics himself.”

  “You may be right…but this Lensman business comes first…” Samms pondered, then brightened. “Perhaps—probably—I can find somebody on this trip—a Palainian, say—who is better qualified than any of us.”

  Kinnison snorted. “If you can, I’ll buy you a week in any Venerian relaxerie you want to name.”

  “Better start saving up your credits, then, because from what I already know of the Palainian mentality such a development is distinctly more than a possibility.” Samms paused, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t know whether it would make Morgan and his kind more rabid or less so to have a non-Solarian entity possess authority in our affairs political—but at least it would be something new and different. But in spite of what you said about ‘ducking’ politics, what have you got Northrop, Jill and Fairchild doing?”

  “Well, we had a couple of discussions. I couldn’t give either Jill or Dick orders, of course…”

  “Wouldn’t, you mean,” Samms corrected.

  “Couldn’t,” Kinnison insisted. “Jill, besides being your daughter and Lensman grade, had no official connection with either the Triplanetary Service or the Solarian Patrol. And the Service, including Fairchild, is still Triplanetary; and it will have to stay Triplanetary until you have found enough Lensmen so that you can spring your twin surprises—Galactic Council and Galactic Patrol. However, Northrop and Fairchild are keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, and Jill is finding out whatever she can about drugs and so on, as well as the various political angles. They’ll report to you—facts, deductions, guesses, and recommendations—whenever you say the word.”