Of those who drop out alive, most are dismissed from the Patrol. There are many splendid men, however, who for some reason not involving moral turpitude are not quite what a Lensman must be. These men make up the organization, from grease monkeys up to the highest commissioned officers below the rank of Lensman. This fact explains what is already so widely known: that the Galactic Patrol is the finest body of intelligent beings yet to serve under one banner.
But even Lensmen are not all alike; some are more richly endowed than others. Most Lensmen work more or less under direction; that is, they have headquarters and, at the completion of one investigation or project, are assigned to another by the port admiral. Occasionally, however, a Lensman shows himself to be of such outstanding ability, even for a Lensman, that he is given his Release. Technically, he is now an "Unattached Lensman"; in popular parlance he is a "Gray Lensman," from the color of the leather he wears.
The Release! The goal toward which all Lensmen strive, but which so relatively few attain, even after years of work! The Gray Lensman is as nearly absolutely free an agent as it is possible for any flesh-and-blood being to be. He is responsible to no one and to nothing save his own conscience. He is no longer of Earth, nor of the Solarian System, but of the Universe as a whole. He is no longer a cog in the immense machine of the Galactic Patrol; wherever he may go throughout the reaches of unbounded space, he is the Galactic Patrol:
He goes anywhere he pleases and does anything he pleases, for as long as he pleases. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, with or without giving reasons or anything except a thumb-printed credit slip in return—if he chooses to do so. He reports when, where, and to whom he pleases—or not, as he pleases. He has no headquarters, no address; he can be reached only through his Lens. He no longer gets even a formal salary; he takes that, too, as he goes, whatever he finds needful.
To the man on the street that would seem to be a condition of perfect bliss. It is not. All Lensmen strive mightily for the Release, even though they realize dimly what it will mean—but only an Unattached Lensman really understands what a frightful, what a man-killing load the Release brings with it. However, Gray Lensmen being what they must be, it is a load which they are glad and proud to bear.
Hence, to say that Kimball Kinnison ranked Number One in his graduating class is to say a great deal—but even more revealing of his quality is to add that he was the first to perceive that what was known as Boskonia was not merely an organization of outlaws and pirates, but was in fact a Galaxy-wide culture diametrically opposed in fundamental philosophy to that of Galactic Civilization. The most illuminating thing I can say of him in a few words, however, is this:
Of all the millions of entities who through the years had worn the symbol of the Lens, Kinnison was the first to perceive that the Arisians had endowed the Lens with powers theretofore undreamed of, powers which no brain without special training could either evoke or control. Thus, he was the first Lensman to return to Arisia for that advanced training; and during that instruction he learned why no other Lensman had been so trained before. It was such an ordeal that only a mind of power sufficient to perceive of itself the real need of such treatment could endure it without becoming starkly insane.
Shortly after Kinnison won his Lens, he was called to Prime Base by Port Admiral Haynes, the Patrol's chief of staff. There, in a room sealed against spy rays, an appalling situation was bared. Space piracy, always rife enough, had become an organized force; and, under the leadership of a half-mythical entity about whom nothing was known save the name "Boskone," had risen to such heights of power as to threaten seriously the Galactic Patrol itself. Indeed, in one respect, Boskonia was ahead of the Patrol, its scientists having developed a source of power vastly greater than any known to Galactic Civilization. It had fighting ships of a new and extraordinary type, from which even convoyed shipping was no longer safe. Being faster than the Patrol's fast cruisers, and more heavily armed than its heaviest battleships, they had been doing practically as they pleased in space.
For one particular purpose, the engineers of the Patrol had designed and built one ship—the Brittania. She was the fastest thing in space, but for offensive armament she had only one weapon, the "Q-gun." This depended upon chemical explosives, which, in warfare at least, had been obsolete for centuries. Nevertheless, Kinnison was put in command of the Brittania and was told to take her out, capture a pirate war vessel of late model, learn her secrets of power, and transmit the information to Prime Base with the least possible delay.