
In a future where interstellar travel has made commerce—and crime—galactic, the Galactic Patrol stands as the only force capable of keeping order. Its elite members, the Lensmen, wear living telepathic jewels called Lenses that bind to the wearer’s mind and cannot be duplicated. Kimball Kinnison, the top graduate of the rigorous Lensmen training, commands the cutting‑edge warship Britannia on a daring assignment to capture a pirate vessel and uncover its mysterious power source.
The mission quickly goes awry when Britannia is crippled and Kinnison’s crew is forced to abandon ship, landing on the harsh world of Delgon. There they join forces with Worsel, a winged reptilian native, and together they repel the savage Overlords that dominate the planet. With the data they retrieved, the survivors race back to Velantia, where the planet’s resources are mobilized to brace for the looming Bosconian invasion.
Language
en
Duration
~9 hours (563K characters)
Series
Lensman 5.
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Street & Smith Publications, Incorporated, 1941, copyright 1942.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2023-04-07
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1890–1965
A pioneer of big, adventurous science fiction, he helped shape the kind of galaxy-spanning storytelling that later became known as space opera. Best known for the Lensman and Skylark books, he brought huge battles, faster-than-light travel, and bold imagination to early SF.
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