David A. Kyle - Lensman 10 - Z- Lensman

Z-LENSMAN

An Astonishing New Adventure in the

Lensman Series

Created By E.E. "Doc" Smith

By David A. Kyle

Foreword

The genus Homo sapiens belongs to the family of Arisia. Human beings, together

with all

their related humanoid races, were the fruit of Arisian seed, and they lived,

along with their

bizarre cousins and exotic kindred, among the millions of planets throughout

the island

universe known as our Milky Way galaxy.

Within our, space and time, the ancient Arisians were the genesis of all

intelligent life.

Where or how they began at the dawn of the Cosmos not even their records could

tell for

certain. Their home was the planet that must have been the very first upon

which life

formed. For eons, as the Arisians progressed beyond the stages of mechanics

and

technology and evolved from entities of flesh into entities of energy, they

prospered alone

and unthreatened. When their first mother sun grew old and died, they moved

their planet

to a bright, new star, until, as the eons rolled on, they had to move again.

All that time, in the

vastness of interstellar matter, they were alone.

Then came the time of the Coalescence, when the Milky Way and Lundmark's

Nebula

passed through each other, edge to edge, and billions of new planets were

born. With this

marvelous explosion of new opportunities came a sinister shadow of the

ultimate terror,

Eddore. This was another planet with another race from another existence. As

good and

Godlike as were the Arisians, so evil and Devilish were the Eddorians.

Thus began the ages-old conflict that led to the formation of the mighty

Arisian weapon, the

Galactic Patrol. On the countless new planets flourished galactic multitudes,

a thousand

million years younger than their ancestors. Slowly but relentlessly they

climbed out of the

primordial elements into, Civilization and toward perfectionism. Serving as

Guardians,

secretly encouraging them, were the mental forces of the Arisians. In

opposition, seeking

absolute power over all minds and bodies through crime and corruption, were

the

Eddorians, with their infamous chief henchmen, the Eich, masterminding their

conspiracy

of a diabolic counterculture. Civilization was tested with the task of

discovering the real

enemy, not being told of the existence of the Eddorians, while the Eddorians,

in turn, were

brainwashed into ignorance of the existence of the Arisians.

So the Arisians, stressing self-reliance among the maturing races, let them

fight their own

battles. However, Mentor, the supremely wise entity of the Arisians, gave the

elite officers

of the Patrol a quasi-living instrument of telepathy, the Lens. The only other

help offered by

the Guardians was limited to counseling.

Mentor was the unit name of the fusion of the mentalities of four of the

greatest Arisians,

also known as the Molders of Civilization. Each one was concerned with the

development

of one of four extremely different races from four widely separated planets:

Tellus (Earth),

Velantia III, Rigel IV, and Palain VII. Each planet had eventually produced

one exceptional

Lensman, specially trained by Mentor as a Second Stage Lensman. Nadreck, the

most

illustrious Z-Lensman, although not the first Palainian Lensman, was the

genuine genius

who did reach the L2 or Second Stage.

The Molder in whose charge the destiny of Palain VII was placed was called

Brolenteen.

Brolenteen had two tasks to perform simultaneously. Offensively, he had to

encourage the

growth and effectiveness of a meager number of Palainian Lensmen; defensively,

he had

to block the direct intervention of a top Master of the Innermost Circle of

the All-Highest of

Eddore and its vicious Boskonian conspiracy.

When Virgil Samms, the first wearer of the Lens, went to Palain VII to seek

recruits from

the New Thought Club, Brolenteen was, secretly, already there. Samms's minimal

success

in that encounter would have seemed more heartening had he known that

Brolenteen was

subtly helping him. Within a year, five Palainians had visited the mysterious

planet of Arisia

and had been given their Lenses. Among them was Bovreck.

Bovreck was the ancestor of Nadreck.

Nadreck, later to become the only Second Stage Lensman in the history of

Palain, has

always seemed a baling and inexplicable creature. Very little has heretofore,

been told of

his background and personal life, primarily because he is overwhelmingly a

Z-type in the

Historian Smith twelve digit classification system.

This historical adventure, out of the files of the Galactic Patrol, is not a

biography of

Nadreck; the Z-Lensman from Palain VII, but the, reporting of these events

does cast a

great deal of light upon who Nadreck really was-and why he was that way.

David A. Kyle Tellus

Prologue

Eukonidor, the youthful Watcher from Arisia, had turned back the brazen

attempt to invade

Arisia by the mighty First and Eighth councilors of the Eich. He had changed

the course of

their mammoth torpedo so that, in a sweeping circle, it had returned to slam

directly into

the great cruiser of those foremost Eich leaders.

The worst was yet to come.

Far, far away, in the Second Galaxy, was Jarnevon, the home planet of the

Eich, and it was

soon to be the scene of one of the most titanic space battles in -the history

of Civilization,

personally directed by the Tellurian Lensman Kimball Kinnison. The victory

that was to

come-an absolutely crucial one for the Galactic Patrol would bring about the

utter

destruction of the Eich planet, crushed between the nutcracker of two guided

worlds

colliding.

But, as a Watcher, Eukonidor had discovered another plot, one in which the

Eich could

have a victory that would be nearly as great for Boskonia as the battle of

Jarnevon would

be for Arisian Civilization. This plot was developing in the Palainian system,

the system

least integrated into the plans of the Galactic Council and the most

vulnerable-as Palain

was a Z-type planet to the designs of blackguard Z-type relations in other

parts of the

universe. Of those scheming monstrosities, the worst by far, of course, were

the servile

followers of the Eich high in the councils of Boskonia.

The plot had evolved out of the defeat of the notorious villain, Gray Roger,

who had been

defied by the Triplanetary Patrol, forerunner of the Galactic Patrol. Gray

Roger, a

manifestation of the mighty Gharlane of Eddore, had then turned his attention

to other

systems and other planets, and Palain seemed the most likely victim.

Eukonidor was encouraged to find that two Palainian Lensmen already

intuitively

suspected the gathering onslaught against them. These two were the most

outstanding

members of a cadre of Patrolmen and Lensmen, which, though excellent in

quality, was

vexingly small in numbers. They did not know that it was the supermind of

Gharlane that

they were preparing to confront, but independently they were investigating and

preparing to

defend their world against anything on any plane. To encourage them, Eukonidor

informed

Brolenteen, the Mentorian Guardian overseeing that area. This resulted in the

convening of

a special Court of Gray Lensmen to promote the two Palainians into this elite

corps of

Unattached Lensmen who wore the distinctive gray leather harnesses of the Gray

Legion.

That was how Angzex and Nadreck became Gray Lensmen. As such, they were free

agents, no longer tied to a regular unit of the Patrol, able to formulate

their own plans to

protect the Palainian system, authorized to draw upon any asset of the Patrol

without

accountability.

Angzex concerned the personal self, that which could not be properly described

as either

"his" or "her" self, with defensive plans. This self gathered intelligence,

monitored the First

and Second Galaxy, and stood guard between them, for it was from the Second,

the site of

the mother world of the Eich, that the strength of the Boskonian conspiracy

was drawn.

Angzex enlisted an ancestor, old-Ymkzex, into sentinel duty, making Bovreck's

deep-space

laboratory the key picket-post.

Nadreck concentrated himself, in this case "himself" was a relatively accurate

term, on the

offensive side, looking for ways to attack the enemy before it could attack

them, upsetting

plans before they could be executed. This took Nadreck out among the stars and

into

direct involvement with the far-flung activities of the Patrol. As Angzex was

to old-Ymkzex,

so Nadreck was to old-Bovreck. Nadreck found that his relationship with

old-Bovreck fitted

perfectly into the elaboration of his plans. Bovreck's space lab became not

only the

early-warning station for Angzex, it also became the communications base for

Nadreck's

extensive operations. just as the two zex-line family members harmonized

perfectly in the

intricacies of their thought processes, so did the reek-line family members.

Nadreck had

the decided advantage of Bovreck's Lens for increasing his ability for rapid

and precise

informational interchanges across the light-years.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the existence of the Palainian Research

Laboratory Five

should have precipitated what happened.

Not since the days of the Triplanetary League, with its Triplanetary Patrol,

the predecessor

of the Galactic Patrol, had Civilization's once audacious and dreadful foe

attempted to fight

back from his humiliating defeat. That once mighty entity, who singlehandedly

had brought

Tellus close to unsalvageable ruin, was Gharlane.

Gharlane, Master Number Two of the Innermost Circle of the All-Highest of the

Eddorians,

had never ceased planning for the day when he would again personally challenge

the

Patrol. Finally, he had decided to initiate his personal battle against

Civilization by

choosing Palain VII as his target.

1 Space Pirates Attack

The attack of the space pirates on the intergalactic space station was sudden

and

unopposed. Brolenteen, his attention fixed tenaciously on his own plans,

arrived too late to

stop it. He was not perturbed, however. His prodigious power as Arisian

Guardian of

Palain was reserved for the true peril, which came not from the guns of the

Boskonian

outlaws but from the menace that traveled with them.

Brolenteen was himself most particularly involved in the lives of the two

Palainians who

were in danger of being killed. Bovreck had been one of the first of the

strange frigid

beings to have received the Lens of Arisia from Brolenteen's superentity,

Mentor. As for

Bovreck's coresearcher, Ymkzex-although not measuring up to being a Lensman

had

nevertheless joined the Galactic Patrol as a technician assigned permanently

to Bovreck .

Their deaths were not the worst of what could happen to them: they could be

made into

traitors, instruments to destroy the Galactic Patrol and thereby all Civilized

progress in that

sector of the galaxy.

The seriousness of the situation could be judged by the fact that Mentor

allowed

Brolenteen to be here and not in the other galaxy where Armageddon, it

appeared, was

about to happen at the place called Jarnevon.

Here, almost within the First Galaxy, a different, though nonetheless

momentous, conflict

was about to happen, unnoticed by all but a handful of participants. A small

Palainian

space station, manned by old-Bovreck and old-Ymkzex, was to be the focal point

for an

equally important defeat of an insidious plan of the ultimate enemy, the

Innermost Circle of

Eddore.

The pirate spaceship, motionless, now hung in deep space with all its

instruments targeted

ahead on an invisible speck. Although no light illuminated the distant object,

it registered

as a faint dot on the vitascope; it was a small, inhabited space station. -On

the front

screen, the life form radiation pulsed against the electromagnetic net of

distant stars

sprinkled across the, jet-velvet blanket of the universe. On the rear screen,

a trillion miles

behind the rear of the fifteen -hundred-ton, cylindrical black raider, was

spread the glorious

edge of the Milky Way-galaxy, a hundred thousand light-years from end to end.

Ahead, on

the forward screen, a glowing smear above the calibrated bull's-eye, millions

of light-years

beyond the space station, was the barely discernible disc of the Second

Galaxy,

Landmark's Nebula.

The pirate captain, a half-caste with slick dark hair and bluish skin,

nervously cast his eyes

back and forth from his instruments to his charts. His arms were stiff, hands

spread wide,

pressing back his curious mates who kept crowding against him on either side.

"Humpf!" he said aloud. "Damn if you're not right, Val-d or. It's the

Palainian Research

Laboratory Five. The chart coordinates are wrong, like you said. No doubt

deliberate."

"No doubt," said Val-d'or, the navigator. "No doubt, Captain Balltis. It's

their wealth they're

afraid for." "Humpf. You're damned good as a navigator, Val-d'or. I admit it.

We're lucky to

have you. Finding you when Joey got himself killed was the only good thing

that's

happened to us in the last three months. You got us out of the galaxy right

past the Patrol.

And then to find this place is practically a miracle. Now we hope you're right

about the

treasure."

``I'm right. My source is infallible. There will be practically no resistance.

And no

Patrolmen."

"No defenses, no Patrol," said the second-in-command, undisguised suspicion in

his

voice. "How do you know that?"

"Stands to reason. A small Palainian lab," Val-d'or said. "Strictly oddball,

elderly

Palainians, in a toxic atmosphere. Two or three of them, at most. You afraid?"

"I'm cautious, smart guy. We all are. That's how we keep alive. There are such

things as

Palainian Patrolmen." "Palainian Patrolmen? Not many of them around. Very few.

And very

unlikely out here. You got no worries."

Captain Balltis was keenly glancing from one to the other, in his fidgety way,

out of the

corners of his puffy black eyes. When the exchange of remarks was over, he

examined the

faces of the rest of his crew crowded into the tiny pilothouse. He intimately

knew eight of

the nine of them, all tough, experienced rogues. He saw that he would have to

make the

decision. They were all on edge, ready to crack from frustration, desperate

for some action

and some profit, and concerned about being in uncharted deep-space; where they

had

been driven by a Patrol ship that their clever navigator, a stranger, had

managed to outwit.

"I say we attack," Captain Balltis said. "We'll make it quick. Quick success

or quick retreat.

Palainians are cowards, but we'll take no chances."

"Palainians are also known to be poor," one spaceburned pirate said, pink

scarred flesh

permanently drawn back from his big, yellow teeth. "Talk of treasure still

seems foolish to

me. But I don't really care. I've never seen a Palainian, let alone killed

one. That chance

makes it interesting."

"You can't really see Palainians;" the captain said. "They distort your

vision. They're always

moving, so even pictures are worthless. They can't be depicted. I've seen a

few and even I

can't describe them."

"Well, I can describe them," one of the crew said. "They're repulsive,

poisonous monsters.

Unless there's money to steal, or we can sell their bones or skin, I say let's

forget 'em and

find a safe port and bust loose from this tin can."

"Well, that's the point," the captain said, scratching his whiskers and

obviously becoming

inpatient. "I don't believe they're poor. I think Val-d'or's right. The way

they're forever

furtively poking around the weirdest corners of the galaxy, always loners,

acting like misers,

my guess is they got unlimited funds. Ill bet they have hoards of valuable

things waiting for

some enterprising freebooters like us to lift 'em. Val-d'or got us here. I say

we attack. How

say you?"

There were two mild dissents, but after the briefest of arguments, there was

an unanimous

agreement. Captain Balltis wasted no time. He accelerated toward the station,

barking

orders. The crew scrambled into frantic action, five of them suiting up in

armor and arming

themselves as a boarding party, although seven wanted to go and only two or

three should

have been going.

"Gimme a reading," the captain said. "What're we up against?"

"Nothing. Absolutely. No defense screen. No weapons. A lead-pipe cinch."

With the speed and skill developed over their years as an outlaw team, the

pirates, their

ship firmly pressed against the docking port of the station, assaulted the

space station.

Three of the five penetrated the station's inner hull in a shower of sparks

and swirling

smoke, while the other two covered them. Brownish-green gas, the station's

deadly

atmosphere, boiled out under pressure and crystallized in space.

The trio in the vanguard died first, inexplicably. At one moment they were

charging forward,

irresistible; in the next moment, for no apparent reason, they were sprawled

out in the

passageway, dead. They had made no .outcry, showed no reaction.

Then the other two, weapons weightlessly spinning free, collapsed in silence,

equally

unmarred and equally dead.

In the pilothouse there was panic among the remaining pirates. The captain

attempted to

disengage and flee, even with plates extended, the side of his ship open. His

hands froze

over the control buttons, quivering, and his face rippled under his whiskers

as though from

a continuous series of electric shocks. He fell forward on the console. Then

the

second-in-command and the helmsman collapsed, falling upon the back of the

dead

captain.

Only Val-d'or, with a queer, incomprehensible expression around his wide,

brilliant eyes,

remained alive, his body fixed in a grotesque pose against the room's main

stanchion.

Brolenteen, although en route and still light-years away, knew instantaneously

what had

happened. He was not surprised, for he long ago had visualized the event. When

he

reached the station within hours after the deadly attack, he found exactly

what the newly

arrived Lensman Armstrong had found earlier.

Tellurian Lensman Dick Armstrong was thoroughly puzzled. The station was

without life.

There was no Bovreck, no Ymkzex, nor any trace of them. He stood in the

passageway of

windowless, unlighted Laboratory Five, staring down at the three human bodies

disclosed

by his headlamp, talking to himself.

"Three bodies in the pilothouse, two more inside the open air lock. Eight

corpses with no

signs of wounds, but certainly death by some kind of violence. . ."

He set the time of death at from ninety to a hundred minutes before he' had

sped to the

scene under full emergency power. He had been in a globular cluster, picking

up supplies

at the outpost GP base, when the urgent Lensed message had arrived from

Research

Laboratory Five.

The message had been directed to "Ang, Dingwall outpost" and stated: "Boskone

imminent. Category 23x 4y blackpatch. B plus Y." For some inexplicable reason,

Armstrong was the sole recipient of the Lensed signal. When he attempted to

acknowledge it, however; he made no contact. Instead, a third mind impressed

itself upon

his own with an explanation: `Armstrong, you are to act in the absence of Ang.

Laboratory

Five is shortly to suffer a pirate attack, categorized as a minor menace but

possibly a

forerunner of a different disaster, as judged by both Bovreck and Ymkzex.

Leave Dingwall

at once, go to their aid. Keep a tight thought-screen, no Lens.

Armstrong, his ship already fueled and packed with the priority freight, left

Dingwall outpost

in less than eight GP minutes. He had traveled thousands of lightyears already

without

incident; he was close to his destination; as an armchair Lensman he had

expected

anything to happen out there on the frontier. So, although he was extremely

excited, he

wasn't as bothered as he should have been about the unorthodox and illogical

situation.

That was, as he was to learn, why he had been chosen to be involved.

His trip across the light-years to the station in less than two hours had been

as swift as

possible. He had, however, been too late. He wished he could have Lensed

Bovreck on

his way, but he had obeyed his commanding instructions. Instead, he reviewed

his

assignment, something that had come about overnight, completely without

warning. He

was to go to Palainian Research Laboratory Five. Sealed orders would await him

there.

That was it, plain and simple. He had the right, because of his age and

disability, to decline

to go, but, naturally, he didn't. His swift courier-freighter, empty until his

stop at Dingwall,

was sufficiently automated to have made the trip without him. He was no mere

truck driver.

Why had he been chosen to come all the way from Tellus? Why was a

racial-psychologist

needed? Why him? He had never met a Palainian in all his thirty-nine years of

duty in the

Galactic Patrol, despite his specialization. He had never left the Solar

System in all that

time. The reason for his insular service had been explained as his being "too

brilliant" to

be taken away from Prime Base, the gigantic Patrol base on Tellus,

headquarters for the

Grand Fleet. Unspoken was the fact that he was "too disabled"-something more

technically

true than actually true. His shorter, stiff left arm was unimportant; it was

the missing

twentyfive percent of his brain, a fluid-filled section covered by a plastic

skull-plate, that put

him on limited duty. The zwilnik bullet that had done that to him, however,

had turned him

into a sentient encyclopedia of "racial sensibilities" and a GP "resource" to

be given

special treatment. Anyhow, the few Palainians that he had almost seen had

always been

encased in heavily refrigerated atmosuits, and even these glimpses had

occurred a mere

half -dozen times. Usually each Palainian "visit" to Prime Base was made in

synchronous

orbit overhead in a personal speedster, obviously only a person of great

importance to

rate such a vehicle.

Dick Armstrong, he told himself, was the most unlikely Lensman to have been

sent on this

most bewildering mission. He had asked for. an explanation on Tellus and again

at

Dingwall, but he had received none. As for his retirement, he was assured that

"a few

weeks temporaryduty" would make no difference.

Armstrong was a slim and handsome man, with strands of white in his thick

black hair,

which he combed over his plate, a true Tellurian with the blood of all the

human races of

Earth flowing in his aging veins. He had risen, in his two working lifetimes,

to high

administrative responsibility within the elite GP officer corps. He had had

opportunities to

be sent off Tellus; one offer had been . excellent, but he had refused, and

his decision had

been exactly right, for he had then been given the disciplined life of a

special GP

assignment at Prime Base. He had become "racial psychology analyst," an

important but

sedentary task far removed from the popular idea of an adventurous Lensman,

and he

thoroughly enjoyed this regimented life. He had planned to end the second of

his working

lifetimes shortly by taking his third full Life-Restoration and retiring into

some research

center.

How could it be that he was here, on the border of nowhere, between two

galaxies, on a

deserted alien space station, standing amid the corpses of pirates, and faced

with a weird

riddle?

At the heart of the puzzle was the disappearance of Bovreck and Ymkzex. They

had

presumably both been on the station less than two hours ago, at the time of

the attack. Now

there was no physical trace of them, of that Armstrong was certain, having

searched all

monitors and records. The only clue was the recording, on nonelectronic,

telepathic

broadwave, filed on the message board. He had played it three times to be

certain he had

registered it properly.

"This is Bovreck. If I die and Ymkzex lives, neutralize Ymkzex as

untrustworthy. Do not

destroy this order, Ymkzex, if you hear it; instead, destroy yourself. If,

however, Ymkzex

dies and I live, I must be purged. I order myself not to destroy this message,

but to act on it.

In any case, Angzex must be informed of all this, and he is to determine who

else must be

informed."

To Armstrong the message was perfectly clear, although the reasoning behind it

was not.

Who was Angzex?

Could it be that Bovreck and Ymkzex were already dead, perhaps even as a

consequence

of this order by Bovreck?

Armstrong could have used at that moment a Palainian sense of perception, that

mental

ability to perceive the innermost structure of physical objects, that

incredibly effective

substitute for sight. He did have, though never adequately tested, the use of

an extremely

sensitive rapport with all lifeforms, but this talent now was producing

nothing but chaotic

feelings within him. Any hope of understanding was dependent upon his ability

as a

Lensman. It was time to use his Lens.

He raised his left wrist and stared at the thing strapped there. On the

palladium-iridium

bracelet was a convex disc, like silver-pink nacre or a tinted piece of sunset

cloud,

suggesting fires burning deep within it. Under the waves of thought in which

he was now

bathing it, the disc, his own unique Lens of Arisia, swirled to life. A

thousand thousand tiny

gems seemed to travel across its surface in straight lines. and curves,

palpitating to the

rhythm of his own life forces. The beauty of its speckled mass of

polychromatic colors was

awesome: His thoughts were being gathered by its crystalline structure,

amplified, and

disseminated at infinite speed.

"Bovreck. Ymkzex. Where are you?"

At first, he swept the ether with his mind, probing for a sense of life, then

David A. Kyle - Lensman 10 - Z- Lensman

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