Children of The Lens (novel) - Plot Synopsis

Plot Synopsis

Children of the Lens is the sixth and final book in the classic Lensman series. This story takes place twenty years after the close of Second Stage Lensmen, and focuses on the five children of Kimball and Clarissa Kinnison: a boy and two pairs of fraternal twin girls. As Kimball and Clarissa are both Lensmen, their offspring are dubbed the "Children of the Lens". They are also, it turns out, the ultimate product of a two billion year long Arisian breeding program that has molded them into "third level" minds with such potential power that not even the Arisians themselves fully understand their capabilities.

The story of the "Children" is intertwined with the story of the five Second Stage Lensmen: Kimball, Worsel, Nadreck, Tregonsee, and Clarissa (who becomes a Second Stage Lensman {Lenswoman?} during this story). Spurred into action by a series of seeming untraceable terrorist attacks, and other unexplainable events in both the First and Second Galaxy, Kimball asks the other Second Stage Lensmen to help him trace down the source of the troubles. Each of these Lensmen, of course, rushes to his aid and each pursues the task from a different angle. Each of the Second Stage Lensmen is more or less covertly assisted by one of the Children. An interesting twist on the previous books is that the Second Stage Lensmen pretty much do all the same things they did before: Kimball is energetic and direct, Nadreck is cautious and thorough, Clarissa gets sent to Lyrane II again (she is the only Lensman who has any chance at all of influencing the matriarchs), and so on. Despite acting in ways similar to means they used in their successful missions in the earlier books, the Second Stage Lensmen seem unable to get a grip on the problems this time. We get to view events, at least partly, from the vantage point of the youthful "Third Stage" Lensmen who are helping them. Eventually, one at a time, each of the Children realizes that they need additional training, and travel to Arisia to meet with Mentor and obtain "Third Stage" training, after which each is able to help their Lensman complete his self-assigned mission, which leads all of them to essentially the same conclusion: the hitherto unknown planet of Ploor is the location of the race controlling the remnants of Boskone.

As with the other books in the series, the technology in this book far surpasses the technology of the previous books. Whereas in earlier books free planets were set astride target planets and used like giant “nut-crackers” or negative energy "negaspheres" were the ultimate in weaponry, unique items constructed with great difficulty, in Children of the Lens these weapons are deployed in the hundreds by both sides. Eddore finally develops its own version of the Lens, permitting the creation of "Black Lensmen" who, because of the basic flaws in the way the Eddorians deal with their subject races, turn out to be a surprisingly ineffective and are dismissed as not being a major threat. The hyperspace tubes, rare in earlier books, are now the standard way to insert an invading fleet into enemy territory. Not only are the massive fleets of Civilization equipped with "primary" and "secondary" beam weapons, they now have super-atomic (total conversion of mass to energy) bombs, also deployed by the thousands. The Patrol eventually revisits (see Ch. 17, Second Stage Lensmen) the strange tachyonic alternate universe called "Nth space", where nothing goes slower than light. There they render two superluminal planets "free" to use as the ultimate weapons in destroying both Ploor and its sun. Soon two Patrol hyperspace tubes open, one aimed at Ploor and another one aimed at its sun. The Ploorians are confident that their world's defences are powerful enough to handle anything the Patrol can throw at them. Then two planets traveling faster than light erupt from the ends of the tubes and strike the planet and its sun. Even Mentor is unsure of what actually happened then, but the Ploorian solar system simply ceased to exist.

After the destruction of Ploor, Mentor of Arisia alerts the Children of the threat of Eddore (and only the Children, this knowledge is apparently too dangerous for any minds below the third level of development to handle), pointing out that unless they are dealt with quickly, they too will figure out the secret of obtaining superluminal planet busters and destroy Arisia, Earth, and Klovia in short order. The Eddorians must be destroyed immediately.

Mentor sends out a call to every living Lensman and using the combined mental energy of all the Lensmen in two galaxies, the entire Arisian race, and the Children of the Lens they prepare to launch a mental bolt against the Eddorians. The Children have learned to form a 5-fold super-mind called “The Unit”. This was what the long Arisian breeding program was trying to achieve. “The Unit” is so advanced that even the Arisians don't know what it is capable of doing.

The mental bolt with the massed power of every Lensman, every Arisian, and the Children of the Lens, behind it and guided by “The Unit” strikes, and penetrates, Eddore's defenses. With the failure of those defenses, the ancient enemies of Civilization are defeated and cease to exist. The long struggle against the Eddore is finally over. At this point, Mentor reveals that the Arisians are passing on to the next plane of existence, their job as the guardians of Civilization finished. They have succeeded in developing a race far better than they to protect the galaxies, the Kinnison children. With this statement, the voice of Mentor, the last Arisian, fades and they are gone.

Finally, in an epilogue, Kit Kinnison leaves a message in a time capsule for a future Civilization, presumably under threat from a new enemy, but so far in the future that the events of the long struggle between Civilization and Boskone may have been forgotten. This message tells the story of the war against Boskone and tells how to contact the Children of the Lens. This ends the story of the Children of the Lens and it is a satisfying conclusion to one of the seminal works of science fiction.