First Lensman quotes

“But this … none of this … it isn’t … it can’t be real!” Samms blurted. “I am—I must be—imagining it … and yet I know that I can’t be hypnotized—I’ve been psychoed against it!”

“What is reality?” the Arisian asked, quietly.

“Your profoundest thinkers have never been able to answer that question. Nor, although I am much older and a much more capable thinker than any member of your race, would I attempt to give you its true answer.

and what we have done so far is literally nothing at all in comparison with what the Galactic Patrol could and must do. Why, I myself would be the first to protest against the granting of such power to anybody.

Every dictator in history, from Philip of Macedon to the Tyrant of Asia, claimed to be⁠—and probably was, in his beginnings⁠—motivated solely by benevolence.

How am I to think that the proposed Galactic Council, or even I myself, will be strong enough to conquer a thing that has corrupted utterly every man who has ever won it? Who is to watch the watchmen?”

“Exactly.” Samms blushed, but held his ground. “

Nobody does anything for nothing. Altruism is beautiful in theory, but it has never been known to work in practice.

I will pay a tremendous price—any price within reason or possibility—for the Lens; but I will have to know what that price is to be.”

“Actually. Honestly. That Arisian was a thousand times more of a woman than I ever will be, and she didn’t wear a Lens—never had worn one. Women’s minds and Lenses don’t fit. There’s a sex-based incompatibility.

Lenses are as masculine as whiskers⁠—and at that, only a very few men can ever wear them, either.

Very special men, like you three and Dad and Pops Kinnison. Men with tremendous force, drive, and scope. Pure killers, all of you; each in his own way, of course.

The Lensman climbed, not easily or joyously, into that grimly forbidding black interior. Black? It was so black that the porthole-like doorway seemed to admit no light at all.

It was blacker than a witch’s cat in a coal cellar at midnight!

Samms flinched; then, stiffening, thought at the driver.

One couple stood out, even against that opulent and magnificent background. Eyes followed them wherever they went.

The girl was tall, trim, supple; built like a symphony.

Her Callistan vexto-silk gown, of the newest and most violent shade of “radioactive” green, was phosphorescently luminous; fluorescent; gleaming and glowing.

“You boys can’t be expected to know it all, but right now you’re learning fast. Get this—paste it in your iron hats.

Virgil Samms’ life is the most important thing in this whole damned universe!

If they had got him then it would not, strictly speaking, have been my fault, but if they get him now, it will be.”

This was the dreadful “muscle-lock” so uniquely characteristic of thionite; the frenzied immobility of the ultimately passionate satisfaction of every desire.

The Galactic Patrol became for him an actuality; a force for good pervading all the worlds of all the galaxies of all the universes of all existing space-time continual.

He knew what the Lens was, and why. He understood time and space. He knew the absolute beginning and the ultimate end.

He straightened up and reached for the capsule; and that effort, small as it was, was enough to bring First Lensman Virgil Samms back under control. The craving, however, did not decrease. Rather, it increased.

Months were to pass before he could think of thionite, or even of the color purple, without a spasmodic catching of the breath and a tightening of every muscle.

Years were to pass before he could forget, even partially, the theretofore unsuspected dwellers in the dark recesses of his own mind. Nevertheless, from the store of whatever it was that made him what he was, Virgil Samms drew strength.

Nevertheless, from the store of whatever it was that made him what he was, Virgil Samms drew strength. Thumb and forefinger touched the capsule, but instead of picking it up, he pushed it across the desk toward Herkimer.

“Put it away, bub. One whiff of that stuff will last me for life.”

He stared unfathomably at the secretary, then turned to Morgan and nodded. “After all, he did not say that he ever passed this or any other test. He just didn’t contradict me when I said it.”

“I’m sure you do.

Any man, to be my boss, has got to be at least as good a man as I am. Otherwise I take his job away from him.

”

“But there is a little commerce between our worlds; your people did not ignore our psychologists; and you are not ignoring me,” Samms pointed out.

“Oh, none of us is perfect,” Pilinipsi replied, with a mental shrug and what seemed to be an airy wave of a multi-tentacled member.

“That ideal, like any other, can only be approached asymptotically, never reached; and I, being somewhat foolish and silly, as well as weak and vacillant, am much less perfect than most.”

“How utterly silly—how abysmally stupid! There would be personal discomfort, quite possibly personal danger, and two Lenses would be little or no better than one in resolving differences between our two continua, which are probably in fact incommensurable.”

“Well, then,” Samms thought, almost viciously, “can you introduce me to someone who is stupider, sillier, and more foolish than you are?”

“Not here on Pluto, no.” The Palainian took no offense. “That was why it was I who interviewed the earlier Tellurian visitors and why I am now conversing with you. The others avoided you.”

… metal bar through pick and shovel and candle, through drill and hammer and low explosive and acetylene, through Sullivan slugger and high explosive and electrics, through skoufer and rotary and burley and sourceless glow, to the complex gadgetry of today—but what, fundamentally, is the difference?

Men still crawl, snakelike, to where the metal is.

Men still, by dint of sheer brawn, jackass the precious stuff out to where our vaunted automatics can get hold of it.

Men still crawl, snakelike, to where the metal is. Men still, by dint of sheer brawn, jackass the precious stuff out to where our vaunted automatics can get hold of it.

And men still die, in horribly unknown fashions and in callously recorded numbers, in the mines which supply the stuff upon which our vaunted culture rests.

But to resume the thread of narrative, George Washington Jones went to Eridan as a common laborer; a mucker. He floated down beside the skip—a “skip” is a mine elevator—some four thousand eight hundred feet.

“Relief valve!” Jones almost screamed, “Can I dog the damn thing down?”

“Christ, what a design⁠—I could eat a handful of iron filings and puke a better emergency pump than that!”

“When it opens,” Stanley went stolidly on, “the water will go through the bypass back into the sump. So you’d better rod out one of the glory holes and. …”

“Thanks, Otto. I’ll bring you a couple of fish Monday, if I catch that many,” and it should be said in passing that he brought them.

Lensmen keep their promises, under whatever circumstances or however lightly given.

It being mid-afternoon of Friday, the traffic was already heavy. Northport was not a metropolis, of course; but on the other hand it did not have metropolitan multi-tiered, one-way, nonintersecting streets. But Olmstead was in no hurry.

“We will not!” Samms interrupted, sharply. “We want and we will have government by law, not by men. We have had too much of that already.

Speed is not of the essence; justice very definitely is.

”

“We will not!” Samms interrupted, sharply. “

We want and we will have government by law, not by men.

We have had too much of that already. Speed is not of the essence; justice very definitely is.”

“I don’t have to.” Kinnison remained obstinately cheerful. “

Morale, my boy, is what counts.

Manpower and tonnage and firepower are important, of course, but morale has won every war in history. And our morale right now is higher than a cat’s back—higher than any time since John Paul Jones—and getting higher by the day.”

Their aim is clear; they intend to tax you into slavery and death. Do not forget for one instant, my friends, that the power to tax is the power to destroy.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

Our forefathers fought and bled and died to establish the principle that taxation without rep. …”

“

I am a plugger and a slugger, with no spark of the terrific flame of inspirational genius which makes Virgil Samms what he so uniquely is.

My kind may be important, but I individually am not. There are so many of us! If they had killed me another slugger would have taken my place and the effect upon the job would have been nil.

“

Beyond a certain point military action becomes indefensible butchery, of which our Galactic Patrol will never be guilty.

That point has now been reached. If you do not agree with me, I’ll be glad to call a Council meeting to decide which of us is right.”