"David A. Kyle - Lensman 10 - Z- Lensman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kyle David A)

Their deaths were not the worst of what could happen to them: they could be
made into
traitors, instruments to destroy the Galactic Patrol and thereby all Civilized
progress in that
sector of the galaxy.
The seriousness of the situation could be judged by the fact that Mentor
allowed
Brolenteen to be here and not in the other galaxy where Armageddon, it
appeared, was
about to happen at the place called Jarnevon.
Here, almost within the First Galaxy, a different, though nonetheless
momentous, conflict
was about to happen, unnoticed by all but a handful of participants. A small
Palainian
space station, manned by old-Bovreck and old-Ymkzex, was to be the focal point
for an
equally important defeat of an insidious plan of the ultimate enemy, the
Innermost Circle of
Eddore.
The pirate spaceship, motionless, now hung in deep space with all its
instruments targeted
ahead on an invisible speck. Although no light illuminated the distant object,
it registered
as a faint dot on the vitascope; it was a small, inhabited space station. -On
the front
screen, the life form radiation pulsed against the electromagnetic net of
distant stars
sprinkled across the, jet-velvet blanket of the universe. On the rear screen,
a trillion miles
behind the rear of the fifteen -hundred-ton, cylindrical black raider, was
spread the glorious
edge of the Milky Way-galaxy, a hundred thousand light-years from end to end.
Ahead, on
the forward screen, a glowing smear above the calibrated bull's-eye, millions
of light-years
beyond the space station, was the barely discernible disc of the Second
Galaxy,
Landmark's Nebula.
The pirate captain, a half-caste with slick dark hair and bluish skin,
nervously cast his eyes
back and forth from his instruments to his charts. His arms were stiff, hands
spread wide,
pressing back his curious mates who kept crowding against him on either side.
"Humpf!" he said aloud. "Damn if you're not right, Val-d or. It's the
Palainian Research
Laboratory Five. The chart coordinates are wrong, like you said. No doubt
deliberate."
"No doubt," said Val-d'or, the navigator. "No doubt, Captain Balltis. It's
their wealth they're
afraid for." "Humpf. You're damned good as a navigator, Val-d'or. I admit it.