Galactic Patrol

The Galactic Patrol was an intergalactic organization in the Lensman science fiction series written by E. E. Smith. It was also the title of the third book in the series.

In the Lensman novels, the Galactic Patrol was a combination military force and interstellar law-enforcement agency, charged with the defense and preservation of Civilization. The Lensmen were the elite of the Galactic Patrol, and Lensmen tended to hold the majority of the senior-executive positions in the Patrol, although non-Lensmen personnel were essential to the organization's success, and garnered almost as much respect as their Lens-bearing superiors. The organization had large numbers of non-humans serving in all roles, although many of the leadership positions seem to be occupied by humanity.

The Patrol had a great deal of political influence in Civilization. In First Lensman, First Lensman Virgil Samms' first Galactic Council was made up entirely of Lensmen, and there was no evidence that the situation had changed in later novels. The Patrol's influence was also present in many other levels of society, to the point where "G-P hours" or "G-P days" were generally considered the standard unit of time, and that they had what amounted to a censorship veto over many prominent news-reporting organizations. Patrol bases dotted the galaxy, ranging from low-grade spaceports to the massive headquarters bases of Prime Base on Earth (or Tellus, as it is called in the novels) and Ultra Prime on Klovia, in the second galaxy, and its possession of the inertialess (or "free") drive made it possible for its forces to deploy anywhere in known space rapidly.

This organization was also very well funded, to the point where even though the tax rate was the lowest in history with a total income tax, in the highest bracket, of only 3.592%, it possessed an expendable reserve of ten billion credits on Tellus alone. In Gray Lensman, Port Admiral Haynes noted that, were it not for the galactic war, a financial crisis might have risen over the Patrol possessing so much in the way of legal tender. (For comparison, in 1940, the year after Gray Lensman was originally published, the U. S. Gross Domestic Product was $97 billion, so the "ten thousand million credit" figure was perceived by readers as equivalent to 10% of GDP; in 2008 terms that would be almost $1.5 trillion.)

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