E. E. Doc Smith - Lensman 3 - Galactic Patrol.pdf

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GALACTIC PATROL
Fist serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Sep '37 - Feb '38;
First book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1950;
BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH
CHAPTER 1
Graduation
Dominating twice a hundred square miles of campus, parade-ground, Airport, and
spaceport, a ninety-story edifice of chromium and glass sparkled dazzlingly in
the bright
sunlight of a June morning. This monumental pile was Wentworth Hall, in which
the
Tellurian candidates for the Lens of the Galactic Patrol live and move and have
their
being. One wing of its topmost floor seethed with tense activity, for that wing
was the
habitat of the lordly FiveYear Men, this was Graduation Day, and in a few
minutes
Class Five was due to report in Room A.
Room A, the private office of the Commandant himself, the dreadful lair
into
which an undergraduate was summoned only to disappear from the Hall and from the
Cadet Corps, the portentous chamber into which each year the handful of
graduates
marched and from which they emerged, each man in some subtle fashion changed.
In their cubicles of steel the graduates scanned each other narrowly,
making
sure that no wrinkle or speck of dust marred the space-black and silver
perfection of the
dress uniform of the Patrol, that not even the tiniest spot of tarnish or
dullness violated
the glittering golden meteors upon their collars or the resplendently polished
ray-pistols
and other equipment at their belts. The microscopic mutual inspection over, the
kit-
boxes were snapped shut and racked, and the embryonic Lensmen made their way out
into the assembly hall.
In the wardroom Kimball Kinnison, Captain of the Class by virtue of
graduating at
its head, and his three lieutenants, Clifford Maitland, Raoul LaForge, and Widel
Holmberg, had inspected each other minutely and were now simply awaiting, in
ever-
increasing tension, the zero minute.
"Now, fellows, remember that drop!" the young Captain jerked out. "We're
dropping the shaft free, at higher velocity and in tighter formation than any
class ever
tried before. If anybody hashes the formation – our last show and with the whole
Corps
looking on . . . . ."
"Don't worry about the drop, Kim," advised Maitland. "All three platoons
will take
that like clockwork. What's got me all of a dither is what is really going to
happen in
Room A."
"Uh-huh!" exclaimed LaForge and Holmberg as one, and
"You can play that across the board for the whole Class," Kinnison agreed.
"Well, we'll soon know – it's time to get going," and the four officers stepped
out into the
assembly hall, the Class springing to attention at their approach.
Kinnison, now all brisk Captain, stared along the mathematically exact
lines and
snapped.
"Report!"
"Class Five present in full, sir!" The sergeant-major touched a stud at his
belt and
all vast Wentworth Hall fairly trembled under the impact of an all-pervading,
lilting,
throbbing melody as the world's finest military band crashed into "Our Patrol."
"Squads left-March !" Although no possible human voice could have been
heard
in that gale of soul-stirring sound and although Kinnison's lips scarcely moved,
his
command was carried to the very bones of those for whom it was intended – and to
no
one else-by the tight-beam ultra-communicators strapped upon their chests.
"Close
formation - forward - March !"
In perfect alignment and cadence the little column marched down the hall.
In
their path yawned the shaft – a vertical pit some twenty feet square extending
from
main floor to roof of the Hall, more than a thousand sheer feet of unobstructed
air,
cleared now of all traffic by flaring red lights. Five left heels clicked
sharply,
simultaneously upon the lip of the stupendous abyss. Five right legs swept out
into
emptiness. Five right hands snapped to belts and five bodies, rigidly erect,
arrowed
downward at such an appalling velocity that to unpractised vision they simply
vanished.
Six-tenths of a second later, precisely upon a beat of the stirring march,
those
ten heels struck the main floor of Wentworth Hall, but not with a click.
Dropping with a
velocity of almost two thousand feet per second though they were at the instant
of
impact, yet those five husky bodies came from full speed to an instantaneous,
shockless, effortless halt at contact, for the drop had been made under complete
neutralization of inertia – "free," in space parlance. Inertia restored, the
march was
resumed -- or rather continued -- in perfect time with the band. Five left feet
swung out,
and as the right toes left the floor the second rank, with only bare inches to
spare,
plunged down into the space its predecessor had occupied a moment before.
Rank after rank landed and marched away with machinelike precision. The
dread
door of Room A opened automatically at the approach of the cadets and closed
behind
them.
"Column right -- March!" Kinnison commanded inaudibly, and the Class obeyed
in clockwork perfection. "Column left -- March! Squad right -- March! Company --
Halt!
Salute!"
In company front, in a huge, square room devoid of furniture, the Class
faced the
Ogre -- Lieutenant-Marshal Fritz von Hohendorff, Commandant of Cadets. Martinet,
tyrant, dictator -- he was known throughout the System as the embodiment of
soullessness, and, insofar as he had ever been known to show emotion or feeling
before any undergraduate, he seemed to glory in his repute of being the most
pitilessly
rigid disciplinarian that Earth had ever known. His thick, white hair was
roached fiercely
upward into a stiff pompadour. His left eye was artificial and his face bore
dozens of
tiny, threadlike scars, for not even the marvelous plastic surgery of that age
could repair
entirely the ravages of space-combat. Also, his right leg and left arm, although
practically normal to all outward seeming, were in reality largely products of
science and
art instead of nature.
Kinnison faced, then, this reconstructed potentate, saluted crisply, and
snapped.
"Sir, Class Five reports to the Commandant."
"Take your post, sir." The veteran saluted as punctiliously, and as he did
so a
semi-circular desk rose around him from the floor -- a desk whose most striking
feature
was an intricate mechanism surrounding a splint-like form.
"Number One, Kimball Kinnison !" von Hohendorff barked. "Front and center -
-
March ! . . . . . The oath, sir."
"Before the Omnipotent Witness I promise never to lower the standard of the
Galactic Patrol," Kinnison said reverently, and, baring his arm, thrust it into
the hollow
form.
From a small container labelled "#1, Kimball Kinnison," the Commandant
shook
out what was apparently an ornament -- a lenticular jewel fabricated of hundreds
of tiny,
dead-white gems. Taking it up with a pair of insulated forceps he touched it
momentarily to the bronzed skin of the arm before him, and at that fleeting
contact a
flash as of many-colored fire swept over the stones. Satisfied, he dropped the
jewel into
a recess provided for it in the mechanism, which at once burst into activity.
The forearm was wrapped in thick insulation, molds and shields snapped into
place, and there flared out an instantly-suppressed flash of brilliance
intolerable. Then
the molds fell apart, the insulation was removed, and there was revealed the
LENS.
Clasped to Kinnison's brawny wrist by a bracelet of imperishable, almost
unbreakable,
metal in which it was imbedded it shone in all its lambent splendor – no longer
a whitely
inert piece of jewelry, but a lenticular polychrome of writhing, almost fluid
radiance
which proclaimed to all observers in symbols of ever-changing flame that here
was a
Lensman of the GALACTIC PATROL.
In similar fashion each man of the Class was invested with the symbol of
his
rank. Then the stern-faced Commandant touched a button and from the bare metal
floor there arose deeply-upholstered chairs, one for each graduate.
"Fall out," he commanded, then smiled almost boyishly -- the first
intimation any
of the Class ever had that the hard-boiled old tyrant could smile -- and went on
in a
strangely altered voice.
"Sit down men, and smoke up. We have an hour in which to talk things over,
and
now I can tell you what it is all about. Each of you will find his favorite
refreshment in the
arm of his chair.
"No, there's no catch to it," he continued in answer to amazedly doubtful
stares,
and lighted a huge black cigar of Venerian tobacco as he spoke. "You are Lensmen
now. Of course you have yet to go through the formalities of Commencement, but
they
don't count. Each of you really graduated when his Lens came to life.
"We know your individual preferences, and each of you has his favorite
weed,
from Tilotson' s Pittsburgh stogies up to Snowden's Alsakanite cigarettes --
even though
Alsakan is just about as far away from here as a planet can be and still lie
within the
galaxy.
"We also know that you are all immune to the lure of noxious drugs. If you
were
not, you would not be here today. So smoke up and break up -- ask any questions
you
care to, and I will try to answer them. Nothing is barred now
this room is shielded against any spy-ray or communicator beam operable
upon
any known frequency."
There war a brief and rather uncomfortable silence, then Kinnison
suggested,
diffidently.
"Might it not be best, sir, to tell us all about it, from the ground up? I
imagine that
most of us are in too much of a daze to ask intelligent questions."
"Perhaps. While some of you undoubtedly have your suspicions, I will begin
by
telling you what is behind what you have been put through during the last five,
yearn.
Feel perfectly free to break in with questions at any time. You know that every
year one
million eighteen-year-old boys of Earth are chosen as cadets by competitive
examinations. You know that during the first year, before any of them see
Wentworth
Hall, that number shrinks to less than fifty thousand. You know that by
Graduation Day
there are only approximately one hundred left in the class. Now I am allowed to
tell you
that you graduates are those who have come with flying colors through the most
brutally rigid, the moat fiendishly thorough process of elimination that it has
been
possible to develop.
"Every than who can be made to reveal any real weakness is dropped. Most of
these are dismissed from the Patrol. There are many splendid men, however, who,
for
some reason not involving moral turpitude, are not quite what a Lensman must be.
These men make up our organization, from grease-monkeys up to the highest
commissioned officers below the rank of Lensman. This explains what you already
know -- that the Galactic Patrol is the finest body of intelligent beings yet to
serve under
one banner.
"Of the million who started, you few are left. As must every being who has
ever
worn or who ever will wear the Lens, each of you has proven repeatedly, to the
cold
verge of death itself, that he is in every respect worthy to wear it. For
instance, Kinnison
here once had a highly adventurous interview with a lady of Aldebaran II and her
friends. He did not know that we knew all about it, but we did
Kinnison's very ears burned scarlet, but the Commandant went imperturbably
on.
"So it was with Voelker and the hypnotist of Karalon, with LaForge and the
bentlam-eaters, with Flewelling when the Ganymede-Venus thionite smugglers tried
to
bribe him with ten million in gold . . . . .
"Good Heavens, Commandant!" broke in one outraged youth. "Do you -- did you
-- know everything that happened?"
"Not quite everything, perhaps, but it is my business to know enough. No
man
who can be cracked has ever worn, or ever will wear, the . Lens.. And none of
you need
be ashamed, for you have passed every test. Those who did not pass them were
those
who were dropped.
"Nor is it any disgrace to have been dismissed from the Cadet Corps. The
million
who started with you were the pick of the planet, yet we knew in advance that of
that
selected million scarcely one in ten thousand would measure up in every
essential.
Therefore it would be manifestly unfair to stigmatize the rest of them because
they were
not born with that extra something, that ultimate quality of fiber which does,
and of
necessity must, characterize the wearers of the Lens. For that reason not even
the man
himself knows why he was dismissed, and no one save those who wear the Lens
knows why they were selected -- and a Lensman does not talk.
"It is necessary to consider the history and background of the Patrol in
order to

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