First Lensman, E. E. Smith [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

“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 nonhuman 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 nonhuman 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.”

“Well⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠…” 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 reran those brainwave 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 interplanetary, 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