Galactic Patrol

With this book we have now arrived at the first part of the Lensman series to be written. This was serialized in Astounding in 1937, and then published in book form by Fantasy Press in 1950. My first copy was a Pyramid books paperback, though I probably read a hardcover from the library first. This was the beginning of the Lensman series as conceived of by Doc Smith. Though parts of Triplanetary were written earlier, they were not part of the series. Smith rewrote them later to incorporate them into the series. And First Lensman was written later to fill in the gap between Triplanetary and Galactic Patrol.

The novel introduces Kimball Kinnison, a direct descendant of Roderick Kinnison from First Lensman, and as we know from the material in Triplanetary the Kinnisons are on of the breeding lines established by the Arisians. But he doesn’t know this, of course. When we meet him he is a cadet graduating from the Academy on Tellus. This is a dangerous time for Civilization, as the Boskonians are getting the upper hand with ships that can go faster than the ships of the Patrol.

It is interesting that Boskone, a code word introduced in First Lensman, now seems to be universally applied, and even adopted by the Boskonians themselves.

What the patrol desperately needs is an intact engine from a Boskonian ship so that they can study it and learn its secrets. And they have a plan. They have built a fast ship, but it has none of the usual ray weapons because they would likely destroy what the scientists and engineers need to study. Instead, they are going to use artillery. The idea is to grab a Boskonian ship using tractor beams, then lob explosives at parts away from the engine to disable the vessel. Then a special group of Space Marines would board the vessel for hand-to-hand combat. These are the people from the heavy gravity planet Valeria, led by Peter Van Buskirk. Coming from a heavy gravity planet they are extremely strong in a normal gravity environment, and they will be recurring characters in the story. The plan succeeds, but now they are in enemy country a long way from their base on Tellus, and all of Boskone is hunting them. They decide to split up the ship’s company into pairs and head out in all directions hoping that at least one pair would make it through with the vital information.

Kinnison gets paired with Van Buskirk for the breakaway, which is a very strong team, but that was not by accident, The drawing was rigged. In any case the story continues with those two, who manage to stumble upon a system with two races on neighboring planets. The first of them are the Velantians, who are a race presented as a mix of a snake and a dragon. They are about 10 meters long, and fly on wings which fold back when they are at rest. The other race in this system are the Delgonians, who are similar in appearance to the Velantians but with different heads. The Overlords of Delgon have enslaved all of the native Delgonians and extended their control to Velantia as well. Both races are strongly telepathic. The Overlords love to feed on the life force of dying beings, and to make it particularly good they like to employ drawn out tortures. And they love it best when it is a Velantian. Kinnison and Van Buskirk happen to land on Delgon when a Velantian named Worsel has landed to try and break the Overlord’s power, and their help is enough to make him victorious. Both races will reappear in the series, and we will learn eventually that the Velantians are one of the four races that Arisia selected for their breeding program, and Worsel would have been the penultimate step had Arisia not already decided in favor of Tellus (Earth) and the human race. But Kinnison recognizes Worsel’s quality and suggests he visit Arisia for a Lens

After this Kinnison and Van Buskirk steal a pirate ship, and Kinnison learns of “Helmuth who speaks for Boskone”. And this is a good place to recall that the Galactic Patrol is not just a military organization. It is also law enforcement, and through these books we will see Kinnison trying to find and eliminate the higher ups in the Boskonian organization, much like a police force trying to take out a Mafia organization. And to do this Kinnison frequently has to start at the bottom of the organization, go undercover, and work his way up. Helmuth is a higher up, but is he the higher up? In any case, Kinnison does get back to the base on Tellus with the critical information. And he is rewarded by getting his Release. This means he is no longer responsible to the organization of the Galactic Patrol, he is now Unattached and only responsible to himself. And to signify this status he gets a new uniform of plain gray leather. And this uniform is why Unattached Lensmen are frequently referred top as Gray Lensmen. They can command resources from the Patrol and assistance from any Patrol base. You might think this goes to his head.

Kinnison sets out to infiltrate what he thinks is an important Pirate base, but he is discovered by the telepathic Wheelmen of Aldebaran and very nearly killed before he can escape. He is seriously wounded and in bad shape, though, and sent to hospital, where is a very bad patient. He has been assigned one of the best nurses, Clarissa MacDougal, who just happens to have red hair and tawny, gold-flecked eyes. She is obviously a descendant of Virgil Samms, and part of the matching blood-line established by the Arisians. They will eventually fall in love and get married as the Arisians planned, but that is in the future. Right now Kinnison is angry with himself and rude to everyone, including Clarissa. But when he recovers he goers back to Arisia to get more training in using the Lens since he obviously is not using it to its full potential. He comes back much stronger and with new abilities including the Sense of Perception. This is what Rigellians use in place of eyes and vision.

To test his new abilities Kinnison decides to infiltrate a Patrol base on Radelix and take control of of some of the Lensmen there, which he could do if he was fairly close to them, but no more than two at a time. Then he arrives openly at the base. and is asked to examine an accused criminal, which he does. And he determines the man’s guilt, not just in this one crime but a life of crime, and projects an amalgam of all of his crimes that only the criminal can see, which instantly kills him. So his work on Radelix tells him he has learned to use his new powers. And so he inquired about any pirate bases nearby so he can try again what was so disastrous with the Wheelmen. And it so happens there is one very nearby on Boyssia II, so he goes there alone in his scout ship and infiltrates the base, where takes control of the Chief Communications Office, by the name of Blakeslee, a Tellurian, and is able to intercept a message to Helmuth. Then a report comes in that a ship has been captured by the Pirates. It is a hospital ship, and the pirates killed most of people, but kept the female nurses alive for obvious use in an all-male outpost. And one of them is Clarissa MacDougal. Kinnison is able to give a hint to MacDougal that he is on the scene and in control, and they work together to foment trouble, But Kinnison didn’t come here to rescue nurses, he infiltrated this base to get information on Helmuth, so they arrange s gun battle between Blakeslee and the Commander of the base, and Kinnison makes Sure Helmuth has been called and is watching as it happens. This lets Kinnison get a line on where Helmuth might be located. Then he puts the nurses on a pirate ship, and sends them to a Patrol base. This becomes known as “The Blakeslee Affair” and is notorious among the Boskonians, who are never entirely certain how it happened, though Helmuth is smart enough to figure out it was a Lensman, and that the Lensman staged the whole thing just to tap the communications line and figure out that Helmuth’s base was in a star cluster just outside the galaxy

From here Kinnison goes back to Wheelmen’s base that had roughed him up so badly, and manages to destroy it. then he starts on destroying Helmuth’s base. As part of his plan of attack he needs a large amount of the deadly drug Thionite, and in getting it he meets up with Tregonsee of Rigel, who we will learn is one of the Rigellians in Arisia’s breeding progrram. So that is two down, and one to go in meeting the main races. Kinnison then takes the drug with him and returns to Helmuth’s base where he succeeds in infiltrating and disabling the defenses so the Grand Fleet of the Patrol can wipe out the base.