Kzanol

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Kzanol is a Thrint, a fictional alien character, and the main antagonist in Larry Niven's Known Space story World of Ptavvs.

While traveling to his homeworld, Kzanol's ship suffered catastrophic failure, rendering it unable to get to any world in Thrintun space. While it could still physically reach any world, it did not have the power to shed its velocity at the end of the trip. Therefore he was doomed to fly past his homeworld, beyond hope of rescue.

In desperation, he used the ships remaining power to aim himself at an uninhabited food planet nearest to his position. He donned his space suit and activated the emergency stasis field, which will protect him from impact. Hopefully this would be seen by the overseers palace on the planet's moon and he would be rescued.

This did not occur. During the time Kzanol was in stasis, a great war had wiped out the Thrintun and all the races enslaved by them. By the time he reached the food planet, there were no overseers there to rescue him. Over many aeons, the "food planet" mutated and evolved to become Earth as we know it today.

The last of his species, he was found by dolphins on the bottom of the ocean, after having been buried there for over 2 billion years. Protected by his stasis field, he was first believed to be a statue of some sort. He was on display for several years as the "Sea Statue", before scientists realized that he was in fact an alien in a stasis field.

The scientists managed to deactivate the field, in the interest of attempting telepathic contact. Kzanol subsequently enslaved several humans with his telepathic power. He commandeered a spacecraft in attempt to reach his "amplifier helmet", hidden in his other suit (which he had previously aimed at the outermost planet). This would have allowed him to control the entire human population of Earth (and presumably the Belt as well).

He was eventually stopped by Larry Greenberg, the human who first attempted telepathic contact. For a time Greenberg believed himself to be Kzanol, due to the latter's experience with inhabiting and controlling other minds. As a result, Greenberg knew exactly what Kzanol was thinking, and was able to trap him within the stasis field of his suit.

Kzanol, safely back in stasis, was put back on permanent display in the Smithsonian as the Sea Statue. The second suit, was dropped into Jupiter, putting the amplifier helmet safely out of reach of humanity.