"Smith, E E 'Doc' - Lensman 05 - Second Stage Lenman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)



SECOND STAGE LENSMAN
First serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Nov '41 - Feb '42;
Fist book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1953


BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH

FOREWORD

A couple of billion years ago, when the first and Second Galaxies were passing
through each other and when myriads of planets were coming into being where only a
handful had existed before, two races of beings were already ancient. Each had
become independent of the chance formation of planets upon which to live. Each had
won a large measure of power over its environment; the Arisians by force of mind alone,
the Eddorians by employing both mind and mechanism.
The Arisians were native to this, our normal space-time continuum. They had
lived in it since the unthinkably remote time of their origin. The original Arisia was very
much like Earth. Thus all our normal space was permeated by Arisian life-spores, and
thus upon all Earth-like planets there came into being races more or less like what the
Arisians had been in the days of their racial youth.
The Eddorians, on the other hand, were interlopers. They came to our space-
time continuum from some horribly different plenum. For eons they had been exploring
the Macrocosmic All; moving their planets from plenum to plenum; seeking that which at
last they found-one in which there were enough planets, soon to be inhabited by
intelligent life, to sate even the Eddorian lust for dominance. Here, in our own universe,
they would stay; and here supreme they would rule.
The Elders of Arisia, however, the ablest thinkers of the race, had known of and
had studied the Eddorians for many cycles of time. Their integrated Visualization of the
Cosmic All showed what was to happen. No more than the Arisians themselves could
the Eddorians be slain by any physical means; nor could the Arisians, unaided, kill all
the invaders by mental force. Eddore's All-Highest and his Innermost Circle, in their
ultrashielded citadel, could be destroyed only by a mental bolt of such nature and
magnitude that its generator, which was to become known as the Galactic Patrol, would
require several long Arisian lifetimes for its building.
Nor would that building be easy. The Eddorians must be kept in ignorance, both
of Arisia and of the proposed generator, until too late to take effective counter-
measures. Also, no entity below the third level of intelligence could ever be allowed to
learn the truth, for that knowledge would set up an inferiority complex that would rob the
generator of its ability to do the work.
On the four most promising planets of the First Galaxy -our Earth or Sol Three,
Velantia, Rigel Four, and Palain Seven-breeding programs, to develop the highest
mentality of which each race was capable, were begun as soon as intelligent life
appeared.
On our Earth there were only two blood lines, since humanity has only two sexes.
One was a straight male line of descent, and was always named Kinnison or its