"E. E. Doc Smith - Lensman 3 - Galactic Patrol" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

GALACTIC PATROL

Fist serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Sep '37 - Feb '38;
First book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1950;


BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH

CHAPTER 1

Graduation

Dominating twice a hundred square miles of campus, parade-ground, Airport, and
spaceport, a ninety-story edifice of chromium and glass sparkled dazzlingly in
the bright
sunlight of a June morning. This monumental pile was Wentworth Hall, in which
the
Tellurian candidates for the Lens of the Galactic Patrol live and move and have
their
being. One wing of its topmost floor seethed with tense activity, for that wing
was the
habitat of the lordly FiveYear Men, this was Graduation Day, and in a few
minutes
Class Five was due to report in Room A.
Room A, the private office of the Commandant himself, the dreadful lair
into
which an undergraduate was summoned only to disappear from the Hall and from the
Cadet Corps, the portentous chamber into which each year the handful of
graduates
marched and from which they emerged, each man in some subtle fashion changed.
In their cubicles of steel the graduates scanned each other narrowly,
making
sure that no wrinkle or speck of dust marred the space-black and silver
perfection of the
dress uniform of the Patrol, that not even the tiniest spot of tarnish or
dullness violated
the glittering golden meteors upon their collars or the resplendently polished
ray-pistols
and other equipment at their belts. The microscopic mutual inspection over, the
kit-
boxes were snapped shut and racked, and the embryonic Lensmen made their way out
into the assembly hall.
In the wardroom Kimball Kinnison, Captain of the Class by virtue of
graduating at
its head, and his three lieutenants, Clifford Maitland, Raoul LaForge, and Widel
Holmberg, had inspected each other minutely and were now simply awaiting, in
ever-
increasing tension, the zero minute.
"Now, fellows, remember that drop!" the young Captain jerked out. "We're
dropping the shaft free, at higher velocity and in tighter formation than any