Galactic Patrol Read Free Page A

with any life to which it is not attuned that that life is destroyed forthwith."
    A brief silence fell, during which the young men absorbed the stunning import of what their Commandant had been saying. More, there was striking into each young consciousness a realization of the stark heroism of the grand old Lensman before them, a man of such fiber that although physically incapacitated and long past the retirement age, he had conquered his human emotions sufficiently to accept deliberately his ogre's role because in that way he could best further the progress of his Patron
    "I have scarcely broken the ground," von Hohendorff continued. "I have merely given you an introduction to your new status. During the next few weeks, before you are assigned to duty, other officers will make clear to you the many things about which you are still in the dark. Our time is growing short, but we perhaps have time for one more question."
    "Not a question, sir, but something more important," Kinnison spoke up. "I speak for the Class when I say that we have misjudged you grievously, and we wish to apologize.""I thank you sincerely for the thought, although it is unnecessary. You could not have thought otherwise of me than as you did. It is not a pleasant task that we old men have, that of weeding out those who do not measure up. But We are too old for active duty in space -- we no longer have the instantaneous nervous responses that are for that duty imperative -- so we do what we can. However, the work has its brighter side, since each year there are about a hundred found worthy of the Lens. This, my one hour with the graduates, more than makes up for the year that precedes it, and the other oldsters have somewhat similar compensations.
    "In conclusion, you are now able to understand what kind of mentalities fill our ranks. You know that any creature wearing the Lens is in every sense a Lensman, whether he be human or, hailing from some strange and distant planet, a monstrosity of a shape you have as yet not even imagined. Whatever his form, you may rest assured that he has been tested even as you have been, that he is as worthy of trust as are you yourselves. My last word is this -- Lensmen die, but they do not fold up, individuals come and go, but the Galactic Patrol goes on!”
    Then, again all martinet.
    "Class Five, attention!" he barked. "Report upon the stage of the main auditorium!"
    The Class, again a rigidly military unit, marched out of Room A and down the long corridor toward the great theater in which, before the massed Cadet Corps and a throng of civilians, they were formally to be graduated.
    And as they marched along the graduates realized in what way the wearers of the Lens who emerged from Room A were different from the candidates who had entered. it such a short time before. They had gone in as boys, nervous, apprehensive, and still somewhat unsure of themselves, in spite of their survival through the five long years of grueling tests which now lay behind them They emerged from Room A as men, men knowing for the first time the real meaning of the physical and mental tortures they had undergone, men able to wield justly the vast powers whose scope and scale they could even now but dimly comprehend.

CHAPTER 2
    In Command
    Barely a month after his graduation, even before he had entirely completed the post-graduate tours of duty mentioned by von Hohendorff, Kinnison was summoned to Prime Base by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes himself. There, in the Admiral's private aero, whose flaring lights cut a right-of-way through the swarming traffic, the novice and the veteran flew slowly over the vast establishment of the Base.
    Shops and factories, city-like barracks, landing-fields stretching beyond the far horizon, flying craft ranging from tiny one-man helicopters through small and large scouts, patrol-ships and cruisers up to the immense, globular superdreadnaughts of space -- all these were observed and commented upon.