"E. E. Doc Smith - Masters of Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"Structurally, it was high-alloy steel. There were many bulges, possibly
containing
mechanisms. There were drive-units of a non-Terran type. There were many
projectors,
which-at a rough guess-were a hundred times as powerful as any I have ever seen
before. There were no indications that the thing had ever been enclosed, in
whole or in
part. It certainly never had living quarters for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing
eaters of
organic food."

Sawtelle snorted. "You mean it never had a crew?" "Not necessarily . . .

"Bah! What other kind of intelligent life is there?"

"I don't know. But before we speculate too much. let's look at the tri-di. The
camera
may have caught something I missed."

It hadn't. The three-dimensional pictures added nothing.

"It probably was operated either by programmed automatics or by remote
control,"
Hilton decided, finally. "But how did they drain all our power? And just as bad,
what and
how is that other point source of power we're heading for now?" "What's wrong
with it?"
Sawtelle asked.

"Its strength. No matter what distance or reactant I assume, nothing we know
will fit.
Neither fission nor fusion will do it. It has to be practically total
conversion!"
Chapter 2

The Perseus snapped out of overdrive near the point of interest and Hilton
stared,
motionless and silent.

Space was full of madly warring ships. Half of them were bare, giant skeletons
of steel,
like the "derelict" that had so unexpectedly blasted away from them. The others
were
more or less like the Perseus, except in being bigger, faster and of vastly
greater
power.

Beams of starkly incredible power bit at and clung to equally capable defensive
screens of pure force. As those inconceivable forces met, the glare of their