CHILDREN OF THE LENS
BY E. E. SMITH
Illustrated by Rogers
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction November, December 1947,
January, February 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
MESSAGE OF TRANSMITTAL
SUBJECT: The Conclusion of the Boskonian War; A Report:
BY: Christopher Kinnison, L3, of Klovia:
TO: The Entity Able to Obtain and to Read It.
To you, the third-level intellect who has been guided to thisimperishable container and who is able to break the Seal and to readthis tape, and to your fellows, greetings:
For reasons which will become obvious, this report will not bemade available for an indefinite but very long time; perhaps tenmillion, perhaps ten million million Galactic-Standard years; mypresent visualization of the Cosmic All does not extend to the timeat which such action will become necessary. Therefore it is desirableto review briefly the most pertinent facts of the earlier phases ofCivilization's climatic conflict; information which, while widely knownat present, will probably in that future time exist otherwise only inthe memories of my descendants.
In early Civilization law enforcement lagged behind crime becausethe police were limited in their spheres of action, while criminalswere not. Each technological advance made that condition worse untilfinally, when Bergenholm so perfected the crude inertialess space-driveof Rodebush and Cleveland that commerce throughout the Galaxy became anactuality, crime began to threaten Civilization's very existence.
Of course it was not then suspected that there was anything organized,coherent, or of large purpose about this crime. Centuries were topass before my father, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus, now GalacticCo-ordinator, was to prove that Boskonia, an autocratic, dictatorialculture diametrically opposed to every ideal of Civilization—was, infact, back of practically all of the pernicious activities of the FirstGalaxy. Even my father, however, has never had any inkling either ofthe existence and the doings of the Eddorians or of the fundamentalraison d'etre of the Galactic Patrol—facts which can never berevealed to any mind not inherently stable at the third level of stress.
Virgil Samms, then Chief of the Secret Service of the TriplanetaryLeague, perceived the general situation and foresaw the shape of theinevitable. He realized that unless and until his organization couldsecure an identifying symbol which could not be counterfeited, policework would remain relatively ineffectual. Tellurian science had doneits best in the golden meteors of Triplanetary's Secret Service, andits best was not good enough.
Virgil Samms became the first wearer of Arisia's Lens, and during hislife he began the rigid selection of those worthy of wearing it. Forcenturies the Patrol grew and spread. It became widely known that theLens was a perfect telepath, that it glowed with colored light onlywhen worn by the individual to whose ego it was attuned, that it killedany other living being who attempted to wear it. Whatever his raceor shape, any wearer of the Lens was accepted as the embodiment ofCivilization.
Kimball Kinnison wa