Lensman from rigel, p.1
Lensman From Rigel, page 1
Lensman From Rigel
E E 'Doc' & David A. Kyle
Foreword
The exploits of Tregonsee of Rigel IV have hardly been documented by the historical research department of the Galactic Patrol. This book is the first to give proper recognition to the extraordinary contributions to the progress of Civilization by the Lensman From Rigel.
Until the beginning of the new series of adventures in the universe of the Lens of Arisia, the official chronicler had been exclusively E.E. "Doc" Smith. Then came the first book, The Dragon Lensman, which was about Worsel, the Second Stage Lensman from Velantia, written by the new head of the Patrol's historical section. Previously, the half-dozen books by Doc Smith explained the coming of Civilization and its powerful champion, the Galactic Patrol, with the great Tellurian, Kimball Kinnison, in the central role. The time had come to pay proper tribute to other Lensmen of other alien races' and Worsel was the first. This time it is Tregonsee who is honored.
The time of our story falls within the early part of the twenty-year period marked by the marriage of Kinnison to the Red Lensman, Clarrissa, and the maturity of their very special children of the Lens. The conspiracy of evil represented by Roskonia, a mysterious network of criminals, had been smashed by Kinnison leading the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol into a titanic battle near the planet Klovia in Lundmark's Nebula, the Second Galaxy. In the mightiest clash of arms ever in the history of space, sending thousands upon thousands of warships into conflict against each other, the enemy had been defeated. The two galaxies were safe and the Patrol
then began its new task of dismantling the remains of old Boskonia. What at first seemed a simple task, however, was not. From the shattered confederation of hundreds of thousands of solar systems which was Boskonia, there grew a new threat. Like the severed parts of a beast which refused to die, but which, instead, instinctively fused together to re-form a creature and thus renew its malignant ways, the parts of the conspiracy came together as another challenge to Civilization. This was the Spawn of the Boskone.
The trouble with the Spawn came in the Second Galaxy, newly conquered and, under the direction of the Galactic Council, now governed by Kimball Kinnison himself.
The Second Galaxy was the twin of our own native Milky Way galaxy. Billions of years ago that lenticular spiral galaxy had, through the miracle of chance, run headlong into the starry disk that was the Milky Way and the two of them had for an unimaginably long period of time passed one through the other. Billions of planets had been formed and on them life, seeded by the spores of the ancient race of Arisia, had begun to evolve. Civilization thus was born. And the dark counter force, too, was also born to dispute its future.
Arisia, from which the life forms of goodness and morality came, was the home of an unimaginably ancient race in the young Milky Way, existing before the Coalescence of the galaxies. The Arisians had advanced almost to the ultimate in evolution when the new planets were forming. By force of | mind alone, they were the benevolent masters of their section of the universe. On a planet much like Earth, almost alone as a habitable world in a planetless galaxy, they had prospered. Now they looked forward to the time in the incredibly distant future when their seed would populate the billions of new worlds and rise to far greater glory than their own.
There was, however, a serpent in paradise, ready to lead the children of Arisia into evil, chaos, and an eternal living death. This monstrous malevolence from an alien plenum was the race of Eddorians who had stumbled from universe to universe into the Coalescing galaxies and discovered virgin worlds which they could corrupt and rule as masters over slaves for the pure pleasure of total power.
FOREWORD
The ablest thinkers of Arisia, however, recognized the threat and instituted their plan to foil the Eddorians and to give Civilization its chance for liberty, freedom, and its destiny of goodness. The Arisians were almost, but not quite, omnipotent. They could not alone destroy the Eddorians. Their means for ultimate success lay in the creation of the Galactic Patrol by one of four Civilized planets, Earth, also known as Tellus or Terra. With the Tellurians joining with the other three centers of intelligent races, Rigel IV, Velantia III and Palain VII, the Patrol grew in strength. Unfortunately, at the same time, Eddorians infiltrated these planets and thousands more lesser ones and stimulated irrational thought and criminal activities in order to destroy the positive forces of Civilization.
The Eddorians through milleniums were the destroyers while the Arisians were the builders. In their fundamental clash, Civilization rose and fell and rose again.
With the development of intelligent and responsible races, the Arisians watched over them. A four-ply mentality of four of the greatest Arisians fused together to form Mentor of Arisia. Every Lensmen knew about Mentor and Arisia, despite the fact that under ordinary circumstances Arisia, a strange planet with unique properties, was absolutely unapproachable except by invitation. Every Lensman knew about Mentor and Arisia because from them came the fantastic Lens of Arisia which each specially-chosen Patrolman wore.
The Lens was a living disc of some million crystalloids worn on the flesh, sometimes like a spectacularly glowing wristwatch, sometimes like an inset jewel on an entity's brain case. Whoever had it had been singled out by Mentor for this Lens which matched the individual's life force, multiplying strength and developing latent talents, and providing astounding communicative powers. It was also a symbol of the best of all Civilized life, for those who wore it were the finest guardians, protectors, and champions of Civilization.
Lensmen were in the forefront of the cosmic struggle of Arisian against Eddorian, of goodness against evilness. The expanding cultures of the many races of two galaxies teetered in the balance between good and bad as the lives and souls of all kinds of intelligent life forms were pushed and pulled this way and that. Lensmen knew that goodness was Arisian; they knew that badness was Boskonian. They did not know what the Arisians knew, that, the ultimate enemy, the terrible leaders at the very top, were the horrible, most vile aliens of any time and space--the Eddorians.
Tregonsee had been one of a relatively small number of Rigellians who had broken with their indifferent racial attitudes toward galactic cooperation. He had joined the Patrol, taken Lensman training, and had risen to be one of the four greatest Lensmen ever, a Gray Lensman of free and unattached status, and then, finally, a Second Stage Lensman personally developed and trained by Mentor itself. Tregonsee had helped defeat Boskonia. Now it was time to help defeat its Spawn.
Doc Smith knew Tregonsee intimately, for he first encountered him as a Lensman on the weird planet of Trenco, where the insidious drug thionite originated. Tregonsee has served the Patrol well and Doc would have told his story with the great affection he had for this rather grotesque but brilliant intellect. Your present historian has tried to capture the personality of this strange alien who is so cool in a crisis, so philosophic about the eternal struggle, and so capable of human understanding of a race from which he is so different. Once again, this historian pledges to be faithful to the spirit of the worlds of the Lens.
David A. Kyle
Tellus
PROLOGUE
It was hot. Unbearably hot. Even in his refrigerated plainclothes with their special energy absorbing lining, the human Lensman was very uncomfortable. However, it wasn't just the heat or the cacophony of the city which afflicted the secret agent. He was most affected by the impending confrontation with Tregonsee's "triplet" brother.
The sky was whitely incandescent under the radiations from Rigel, the blue giant sun, and the heat waves shimmered over the aerial bridges and windowless towers of Rigelston, metropolis of Rigel IV. Blinding light shone in kaleidoscopic patterns from the steel streets and steel columns and steel buildings, spraying flashes of colors from the speeding traffic which choked ground and air.
As inflaming as the sunlight was to the Tellurian's eyes, mechanical noises were maddening to his ears. Only his sunshield and his ear plugs made his exposure to the city life tolerable. It seemed inconceivable that Rigel IV, physically comparable to Tellus in so many ways, could be dominated by a sun that was nearly two hundred times farther away than Sol was from Earth.
The Lensman stood in a public square which, with its trellised steel posts and arches of girders, looked more like an unfinished parking garage. A thousand square yards of closely packed two-wheeled torpedo-shaped vehicles surrounded him. The nearest one was directly in front of him, slightly larger than the average, its one round entrance door opened in its windowless side. The doorway was momentarily filled with the quadruplex bulk of a Rigellian as he stepped out ponderously on his four squat feet, like an ambulatory barrel on thick tree stumps.
The Rigellian stopped, slightly swiveling his eyeless domed head, and waved all four of his many-fingered tentacles in a typical cooling gesture. Those steel cars, tightly sealed and unair-conditioned, got too warm in the summer-time even for Rigellians.
The Lensman dipped his head a bit, not as an unneeded bodily greeting, but in order to tilt his silver-and-white insulated helmet. The smoky lead glass sunshield curving from his forehead to his chin still let too much visible radiation through at times. The new angle to his helmet's brim put a better shadow across his eyes without adjustment by his hands. They remained drawn up in his oversized sleeves, protected from the burning sun, coming out only from time to time to rub the itching from the drying streaks of sweat on his cheeks.
Into the human's mind came the answer
"I have come from my other unit to give you our formal request." The Rigellians tiny, multiple, boneless fingers produced a metallic scroll and held it out. The Lensman slipped his bare, browned hands out of his sleeves and took the scroll, glanced at the embossed printing, which was a distinctively local type of Braille, and put the slender roll in his pocket. " Thank you," he Lensed. "I will Lens my office on Klovia this request and then dispatch it by courier."
"You are a secret agent, then, of Tregonsee's Special Missions Forces?" the Rigellian asked bluntly.
By habit, conscious of the need for secrecy and guarding his tongue and mind, the Lensman nodded ever so slightly in answer to the question. He did so by habit, knowing that few if any sightless Rigellians recognized body language, so he also telepathed, "Yes," and couldn't resist adding a slight chastisement, "You are not supposed to know, and should not mention it."
The human was used to the nonchalant attitude of these enormously intelligent entities, with their unconcern for what they considered the rather silly games that humanoids and the Galactic Patrol liked to play. Rigellians were singularly placid and untroubled about the problems of the other worlds of Civilization. Nevertheless, the cavalier attitude toward S.M.E and the indifference to any hush-hush security which ought to be shown were disconcerting to the secret agent. How Tregonsee, coming as he did from Rigelston on Rigel IV, had ever become a Second Stage Lensman, not to mention the fantastic fact that he headed the Patrol's Military Intelligence Services and the Secret Intelligence Services and created the ultra mysterious S.M.E, was truly remarkable.
"I know your concern," the Rigellian said. "I will not look into your mind, even if you let me. I will not use your name. And do not fear, no Rigellian would be so impolite as to intrude On us. You really did not have to choose this ridiculous place to meet."
The Lensman was not insulted. Rigellians, intensely individualistic, spoke frankly when at home, and very few ever left their planet, for interplanetary travel and trade were of little value to them. Their joint interest and pursuit was now alien anthropology conducted remotely by mental contacts. It wasn't easy finding sufficient numbers of Rigellians who had the desire or the feeling of galactic altruism, although all of them had the wit and wisdom, the exceptional mind control and the sense of perception which so effortlessly penetrated solid matter. No, no one could really take offense at the Rigellians' frankness, knowing that they could never be insolent and were absolutely incorruptible.
"As you are a secret agent," the Rigellian said, "and a Lensman, you should have direct contact with Tregonsee if you desire it. Tell me now, to what degree is Tregonsee dead?"
"I cannot answer that."
"Cannot or will not?"
"Sir, I will file your request for this information, that is all I can say."
"Then I must tell you that we have already sent a message to the Galactic Coordinator of the Second Galaxy saying that we must know the facts within a matter of hours or we will be forced to make this situation public to all Rigellians throughout our galaxy, your galaxy, and the known universe. Death of a Rigellian is a serious matter, sir. We take into account the turmoil still uncontrolled in your galaxy and the unusual nature of your Special Missions Forces, which is
unique to your troubles and your foes. But that does not allow us to neglect our own responsibilities to ourselves. We have indisputable proof that someone calling himself Tregonsee has been violently killed by our enemies, the Boskonians." What the Rigellian said sent a rippling wave of horror through the Lensman. He involuntarily shuddered, despite the terrible heat. Rigellians were infallible when it came to these things. It was not the message directly to Kimball Kinnison tearing away the veil of secrecy imposed by the S.I.S. which so disturbed him. It was the sense of truth, of rumor turning into fact, that was so ghastly. Was Tregonsee, his heroic boss, perhaps the greatest Lensman among the millions of Lensmen, really dead?
For the first time, he began to believe that the secret report of Tregonsee's assassination was true.
What had happened in the city of Rohyl on the planet of Preeko, far away in the Second Galaxy... ?
Death from the Tube
A dark figure clung to the side of the stone wall of the castle, three hundred yards above the dry moat. Two hands and a foot pressed into the mortared joints of the gray-brown, petrified-wood bricks as the other foot scraped upward in search of the next foothold. From wrists and ankles hung a camouflaged gossamer cloak of mottled gray and brown.
The Vegian catman was almost invisible in the night glow of the castle lights below. On the tip of his counterbalancing curved tail was strapped a small but deadly electric gun, its triggering wires embedded in a neural connection under shaved skin.
Two more yards upward was the edge of the polished sill of a huge window. First one, then the other set of his unsheathed talons hooked over the sill. The lithe Vegian froze there, half hanging, watching the seconds and minutes blink away on the chronometer under his left wrist inches away from his round golden eyes. It would be an easy few seconds for him to swing a leg, then his body, onto the ledge. The projecting joints of the folding shutters, like those of the windows he had passed on his strenuous climb, indicated that there should be no bar to his quickly slipping into the room that was his target. Meanwhile, he had to wait. Soon, but not yet, the time would come for the synchronized attack.
Mando, the intruder, glanced downward. The empty moat was ablaze with floodlights, and the palace guards seemed grotesque gold and silver blobs of metal and cloth moving mechanically to and fro. He looked out beyond the imperial palace grounds, across the squat, dark skyline of the sleeping capital city of Rohyl, toward the curved horizon of the planet Preeko. There, in the distant shimmering haze, the tiny moon was rising in a purple field of stars. He could see the haze glowing now; the lightening sky warned that the largest of the three moons would soon appear and eat away the intense blackness needed for his stealthy climb.
A fan of pale blue light sprang from the ground at the edge of the city. Then another, then another, until arcs of pale blue light stood like a transparent wall between urban center and countryside. Defense barrier, Mando realized. Unexpected. Strange. He was aware now of the tickle on his face and hands as his fine yellow fur, raised in instinctive apprehension, was ruffled by the light breeze of the coming dawn.
He stared upward, straining to see the slightest movement in the upper air. No doubt about it, tiny dots were now intensively on patrol where none had been an hour before. They could have nothing to do with him. The frequent, crisscrossing aerial patrols circling the palace at his level had not increased. He would soon be inside and safe from discovery by them.
The Vegian brought his attention back to the small red numbers marking the time. The moment was nineteen, eighteen, seventeen seconds away.
He swung his feline body up on the sill, his tail arched over his lowered head, gun leveled, ready for a quick, silent, lethal burst against the guards.
The window opening was unobstructed, ornate shutters folded tightly at right and left, the slotted security bars also folded out of the way. As quickly as the torch slicing tool had materialized in Mando's hand, it disappeared, unneeded, back in its pouch. He was now ten seconds ahead of schedule. He glided into the room on his soft, naked footpads. With a few sharp movements of his body, the cloak fell away from his wrists and ankles, leaving him almost stripped.
On his chest was taped a translucent disc of integrated chips and crystals, encased in a transparent purple plastic polyhedron. Deep within it, as from another dimension, angry, sparks glowed. He tore the gadget off himself, unmindful of the pain as a bit of downy breast fur came with it, and pushed it gently flat against the floor between his knees. With a screwing motion, he buried it into the heavy nap of the carpet. He did not expect it to be kicked away in a possible scuffle, but such chance was reduced. His escape depended on it there, in the center of the room.
His nocturnal eyes swiftly saw that the room was empty of guards or anyone else. Archways led left and right. The one on the right, he knew from his briefing, should be where Tregonsee would be in the sleep period. At best, the Rigellian would be completely retracted, as immobile as a hibernating turtle, balanced in the center of the room like a huge gray egg--defenseless. At worst, he would be fully awake in a portable security box, or in a closet or bathroom temporarily turned into a security room, in which case, Mando would have to chance a messy area-destruction instead of a single DeLameter shot.
