Second Stage Lensman Kimball Kinnison

The male penultimate of Arisia's eons-long breeding program on Tellus; father of the Children of the Lens. While far from the first Lensman of the Galactic Patrol to receive his Release, Kim became known as The Gray Lensman through his exploits in two Galaxies. He was captain of his graduating class, which included Lensmen Maitland, LaForge, Holmberg, Tillotson, Snowden, Voelker, Flewelling, and Murphy, among others.

After graduation, Port Admiral Haynes commissioned Kinnison as Captain of the experimental Q-gun ship Brittania and sent him out to find the secret of Boskone's recent military successes against Civilisation. The Patrolmen captured a pirate ship and learned that the Boskonians had developed cosmic energy power. The vital information was copied onto a hundred spools of tape, one spool to each crewman in lifeboats which fled as the Britannia was destroyed to delay pursuit. Quartermaster Allerdyce rigged the selection of lifeboat partners so that Kim would be teamed with vanBuskirk, Valerian sergeant of the Space Marines.

Kim and Bus captured a pirate warship which the exploding Brittania and crippled, and left it while passing through the Velantian system. On Velantia II they met Worsel of Velantia III, and the three overthrew the reign of the Overlords of Delgon. Scientists on Velantia III helped Kim get a right-line on Helmuth's Grand Base, and Worsel's powerful mind working through Kim's Lens called the survivors of the Brittania to Velantia. They captured six pirate vessels and recommissioned them Patrol ships, for the attempt to reach Tellus.

An ailing Bergenholm forced Kim to land at teh Patrol base on stormy, thionite-producing Trenco, where he touched the mind of Lageston of Mercantor V just as the latter died. The Rigellian Lensman running the base, Tregonsee, replaced Kim's Bergenholm and sped him on his way. When Haynes received Kim's call via Lens, he leaped from bed and broke out all of Prime Base's armament to help Kim esscape the pursuing pirates. Safe on Tellus, Kim gave his report and the Patrol re-armed to push back Boskone. From this trip Civilisation gained not only cosmic energy power, but great knowledge of the Boskonian culture, contact with the Lens-grade Velantians, such as Worsel, and Kim's idea of a detector-nullifier.

As full Captain of a new heavy battle cruiser named Brittania, Kim tried to find Helmuth and failed - and then locked with a pirate ship, only to come to a stalemate, indicating that Boskonian science had advanced one more step, and something new was needed. Haynes handed Kim his Release - making him Unattached, a Gray Lensman, and henceforth responsible to no one - and assigned im a new slim speedster, equipped with the nullifier.
Using the freighter Prometheus as a decoy, Kim located a pirate crew and followed them to the Aldebaran I stronghold, where the Wheelmen detected and nearly killed him. Kim returned to Tellus wounded almost to death; Admiral Haynes inerted his helpless body, and Surgeon-Marshal Lacy and Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall operated, andnorsed him back to health - despite his strenuous objection that all he needed was exercise and thick steak. Haynes and LAcy happily played match-makers behind the scenes for the beautiful red-headed lady nurse and the stubborn brown-haired young Lensman.

Healed, Kim travelled to Arisia for advanced training - ordinarily, a Lensman went to Arisia only once, to be measured for his Lens, and was told never to return; Kinnison had not been so commanded. The Arisians expected him, and Mentor gave him his Second STage training, vastly increasing Kim's mental power and giving him the sense of perception and the ability to control other minds telepathically. He helped the Lensmen of Radelix clean up a murder case, and discovered that a Second-Stage Lensman has power indeed.

Kim went to Boyssia, where he took over the mind and body of a pirate communications officer named Blakeslee, and used the occasion to rescue Clarrissa MacDougall and a group of nurses from the pirates who had captured them on a hospital ship. The excitement attracted and held Helmuth's attention long enough for Kim to get a second right-line on Helmuth's Grand Base, and sent the nurses on to Tellus, accompanied by Blakeslee and some other pirates who had reformed and would be pardoned. Kim then destroyed the Wheelmen's base on Alderbaran I, and scouted Helmuth's base preparatory to invasion.
Kim obtained fifty kilograms of thionite from Trenco, with the aid of Tregonsee and 'Spike', a Trenco native. Then, with the Patrol's Grand Fleet set to hit Helmuth's planet at a particular moment, Kim infiltrated into Grand Base and poisoned all the personnel but Helmuth with the thionite. While the Patrol fleet attached Grand Base from space, Kinnison, wearing a special high-test suit of armour, invaded Helmuth's sanctum and killed him. Helmuth had always referred to himself as the SPeaker for Boskone, but Kinnison believed that Helmuth himself was the top; now he discovered in Helmuth's office an intergalactic communicator that showed that Boskone's centre of operations was not in this Galaxy at all, but in Lundmark's Nebula (also called the Second Galaxy). The Patrol wiped out the Boskonian space fortresses around Grand Base, and learned the hard way how to make super-macrobeams (called Primaries) of their main projectors.

At the Grand Ball on Tellus cenebrating the victory over Helmuth, Kim met with Clarrissa again and experienced a momentary wide-open two-way with her, through which they discovered their mutual love. Kim took command of his new yacht-warship, the super-dreadnought Dauntless, and headed out to the Second Galaxy, while Haynes and Lacy plotted to keep the lovers apart for a while, sending Clarrissa out as Chief Nurse of the Pasteur.

The Dauntless rescued the Second Galaxy planet Medon from Boskonia; the the Medonians mounted super-Bergenholms on the planet and moved it to the First Galaxy, bringing Medonian technology to Civilisation. The Medonians gave Kim the nickname 'Keen'. Back on Tellus Kim revealed to Haynes his growing conception of Boskonia, including an accurate deduction that fifth-year cadets had been lost on their trip to Arisia, indicating that they were Boskonian agents weeded out by the Arisians.

Newly bearded and disguised as Chester Q. Fordyce, Kim followed narcotics leads to Radelix, where he mingled with society and removed the Countess Avondrin from the zwilnik trade, which drew Dessa Desplaines to the planet. Kim had met Dessa before, and this time he cut her thought-screen and learned what he could before Boskonian science wiped out her conscious mind. Having enough information to track the zwilnik chieftain Bominger, Kim left Dessa a partial amnesiac and a convert to Civilisation after a session of mind-rebuilding. As a Posenian, and then as a Tellurian dock-walloper, Kim traced Bominger until the latter contacted his superior, Prellin of Kalonia, whereupon Kim took everything Bominger knew, and killed him, siccing cateagles and a load of duodec on the second-line Boskonian observers.

To beat Boskone, Kim continually had to devise new approaches - his disguises were aided by the discovery that he could work without physical contact with his Lens; his inventiveness produced the concepts of the negasphere, the inherently indetectable speedster, and the nutcracker. When he bounced off Prellin's ironclad front of Ethan D. Wembleson and Sons, Inc., he became Wild Bill Williams, the fire-breathing, bentlam-eating meteor-miner in the Borovan system. He built Wild Bill into a solid identity from which he could spy Strongheart's Boskonian conferences, learning of Crowninshield's Regional headquarters on Tressilia III.
Xylpic of Chickladoria brought to Prime Base a tale of Overlords using a hyper-spatial tube to raid spaceships for torture victims. Kim and the Dauntless made two forays into the tube, knocking out the Eich-Overlord base from which the raiders had operated, and furnishing valuable scientific data to supercargo Sir Austin Cardynge.

In his finale in the role of Wild Bill Williams, Kim made a rich strike that turned the miner into a wealthy 'gentleman' to spy elegantly on Crowninshield, discovering significant leads to Jalte, the Galactic director. Kim sneaked into Jalte's base through a sewer, read Jalte's records with his sense of perception, and finally, with the aid of a spider, disconnected Jalte's thought-screen and read his mind indetectably, learning that Jalte took orders from the Eich of Jarnevon in the Second Galaxy. Haynes and Kim now brought interplanetary-scale war to Bronseca to do away with Prellin.

Worsel and Kim journeyed directly to Jarnevon, where Worsel hypnotised Kim to aid in scouting - when captured by the Eich, the Lensman 'became' shavetail Lensman Philip Morgan, an identity which did not break even under an Overlord's torture. 'Morgan' convinced the Eich that Kim's work was that of many Lensmen, controlled by an almost super-human director called Star A Star. The Overlord broke Kim's limbs, blinded him, cut him up, and infected his wounds with ugly growing things, with the intention of sending the barely living remains back to Star A Star as a warning. Even limited by hypnorism, the Lensman was able to direct a large worm to cut the torturer's thought-screens; instantly Worsel and the whole Kim mentality conquered the Overlord, and they escaped, leaving the Overlord and the Eich unaware that anything had gone wrong.

Clarrissa's hospital ship, the Pasteur, and a Patrol flotilla made rendezvous to bring in Kim and Worsel, and Clarrissa insisted, to Lacy's dismay, on attending at the operation which amputated so much of her man. The Posenian surgeon Phillips had brought his regeneration technique to the stage where he dared experiment on Haynes and von Hohendorff, and they, and later Kim, regained all lost limbs and organs. Kim felt he could not wed Clarrissa with a job undone, she promised to wait, and he went out with Grand Fleet to destroy Jalte's base with the negasphere and Jarnevon with the nutcracker. Thus passed the Eich and the Council of Boskone.

Kim was appointed Coordinator of the Second Galaxy, and he and Clarrissa were set to be married, when Mentor interrupted to forbid the banns, and commanded Kim really to THINK! Kim then realised there was no reason to suppose that Jarnevon had been the top of Boskone. Clarrissa again promised to wait, and Kim and Haynes went to work to defend Tellus from a surmismed attack - which came to pass (the Battle of Tellus). A Boskonian fleet arrived via hyper-spatial tube, and was defeated principally by the newly invented Sunbeam. Meanwhile Worsel invented a personal vibratory killing device that Kim wore in a jewel; it would kill infallibly and untraceably by destroying the key protein required for thought, and thus life.

Kim soon detected the presence on Tellus of Helen of Lyrane and Illona of Lonabar, and he trailed them to Lyrain II. He defeated Cleonie and Elder Sister Helen in mental combat, leaving with Illona to lead him to Boskonian operations on Lonabar. Kim reasoned that Clarrissa would be an ideal operative among the Lyranian matriarchs, and himself gave her the mental training usually performed by Mentor; she thus became the first female Lensman.

While Clarrissa went to Lyrane, Kim followed up the information from Illona; Second Stage Lensman Nadreck of Palain VII helped him locate Lonabar. Kim became Cartiff, the jeweler-fence-murderer. Cartiff met and killed the Lonabariantyrant Menjo Bleeko and all his retainers, using Worsel's vibratory killing device. He learned from Bleeko's dying mind that Lyrane must be really important to Boskone - for the tyrand seemingly knew nothing of it, though he had directed the expedition to Lyrane that had taken Illona there. With his new co-worker Nadreck, Kim sped to Lyrane in time to save Helen from a cavern of Overlords situated on her own planet. Following the lead from the Overlords to an Eich base on Lyrane VIII, Nadreck learned of the connection between these Boskonians aand the great Thrale-Onlonian Empire in the Second Galaxy.

Nadreck worked on Onlo in his individual way, while Kim went to Thrale and substituted himself for Traska Gannel, and ambitious and able young officer who subsequently beat his captain in a duel, and out-manoeuvred other officers to gain promotion to the personal troops of Alcon, the Tyrant of Thrale. Kim and the Dauntless tried to follow Kandron of Onlo through a hyper-spatial tube, but he suspected pursuit and dumped them out into Nth space, whence they were rescued by Mentor and Sir Austin Cardynge. In the guise of Gannel, Kim killed Alcon, and as Tyrant Gannel began enlarging and re-arming Boskonia's Grand Fleet to battle the Patrol's new base on Klovia in the Second Galaxy.

Gradually Kim realised that Prime Minister Fossten was the real power on Thrale, and at the critical moment in the Battle of Klovia the Lensman engaged Fossten in a mental duel to the death. Unsuspected Arisian aid enabled Kim to emerge victorious, having slain Fossten - really Gharlane, the Second of Eddore - although Mentor saw to it that Kim afterwards always believed that Fossten had been an aberrant Arisian. The Boskonian fleet, crippled by the loss of its flagship, lost a bloody dogfight to the Patrol, and Gannel-Kinnison returned to Thrale and convinced his Cabinet to turn to Civilisation.

With the Thrale-Onlonian Empire broken, Kim and Clarrissa were married, with all the pomp of Civilisation, on Klovia, their new home, and Kim took up his duties as Galactic Coordinator.

Twenty-odd years later, Kim began to realise that Thrale had not been the top, and that only his son Christopher, about to graduate from the Patrol's Academy on Tellus, could make a coherent picture from the data of aberrant behaviour and deep-space mysteries that were being filed with the Coordinator. The four Kinnison girls - Camilla, Constance, Karen and Kathryn - decided to tag along with each of the Second Stage Lensmen; Kathryn elected to follow her father.

On Antigan, Kim was too late to save President Renwood from a strange abduction by hyper-spatial tube. Disguised as the writer Sybly Whyte, he averted a repetition of the crime on Radelix; when President Thompson was threatened, it was Kinnison in his place who was swept up by invisible pirates - to discover that it was a trap specifically designed to take Kinnison. Kathryn intervened indetectably to ause the pirate captain to cut his thought-screen 'accidentally'; enabling Kim to undo his bonds. Once free, Kim's brawling and tactical abilities enabled him to escape the tube and return to Radelix.

Kim reasoned that Boskone would need high-level operatives such as Lensmen, and Vice-Coordinator Maitland found a lead to one through a space-louse named Eddie on Meneas II. Eddie had been tortured by a Kalonian 'Black Lensman'. Kim and his son Kit collected all available information on Kalonia with the help of Nadine Ernley's librarians on Thrale, proving that Thrale was not the top, as Kalonia and Thrale had had virtually no contact with each other. As the drug-runner Bradlow Thyron, Kim got to Kalonia itself and, with the help (unknown to him) of all his Children working for the first time as a Unit, he captured, pumped, and killed a Black Lensman. Kathryn concluded that, because of inheretnt weaknesses in their training, Black Lensmen would never be a serious threat.
Kim commanded the Z9M9Z in the Defence of Arisia, and took the Space Laboratory Twelve into Nth space to build a super-nutcracker (Nth space planets) - two planets of totally unimaginable intrinsic velocities which were used to destroy Ploor and its sun.

Kim then voluntarily entered the trap set for him by Ploor and manned by an Eddorian: the Hell-Hole in Space, through which he passed to be sent by a binding that he go so far and fast through countless space-time continua, remaining alive and well for at least fifty more years, for the Eddorian operator feared that not even death could stop The Lensman. First the Unit, then Mentor, then Clarrissa failed to locate him. Finally, the Children of the Lens banded with their mother in a six-ply Unit, and with her love and driving need for Kim, they found him, and Mentor then returned him safe and whole to his own space and time. So ended the Boskonian War.

Record 1248 - character - Last update 28 Mar 2007, 23:10:59

Entry written by: Nonoxynol9

Update this entry - Your update will be submitted for moderation.