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

Back on Earth, Samms set out to find people of Lensman caliber to send to
Arisia. Kinnison's son, Jack, Jack's friend Mason Northrop, Conway Costigan, and
Samms' daughter Virgilia-who had inherited her father's hair and eyes and who was
the most accomplished muscle-reader of her time- went first. The boys got Lenses, but
Jill did not. Mentor, who was to her senses a woman seven feet tall-it should be
mentioned here that no two entities who ever saw Mentor ever saw the same
thing-told her that she did not then and never would need a Lens.
Frederick Rodebush, Lyman Cleveland, young Bergenholm and a couple of
commodores of the Patrol-Clayton of North America and Schweikert of Europe-just
about exhausted Earth's resources. Nor were the other Solarian planets very helpful,
yielding only three Lensmen-Knobos of Mars, Del Nalten of Venus, and Rularion of
Jove. Lensman material was very scarce stuff.
Knowing that his proposed Galactic Council would have to be made up
exclusively of Lensmen, and that it should represent as many solar systems as
possible, Samms visited the various systems which had been colonized by humanity,
then went on: to Rigel Four, where he found Dronvire the Explorer, who was of
Lensman grade; and next to Pluto, where he found Pilinixi the Dexitroboper, who very
definitely was not; and finally to Palain Seven, an ultra-frigid world where he found
Tallick, who might-or might not-go to Arisia some day. And Virgil Samms, being
physically tough and mentally a real crusader, survived these various ordeals.
For some time the existence of the newly-formed Galactic Patrol was precarious
indeed. Archibald Isaacson, head of Interstellar Spaceways, wanting a monopoly of
interstellar trade, first tried bribery; then, joining forces with the machine of Senator
Morgan and Boss Towne, assassination. The other Lensmen and Jill saved Samms' life;
after which Kinnison took him to the safest place on Earth-deep underground beneath
the Hill; the tremendously fortified, superlatively armed fortress which had been built to
be the headquarters of the Triplanetary Service.
But even there the First Lensman was attacked, this time by a fleet of space-
ships in full battle array. By that time, however, the Galactic Patrol had a fleet of its own,
and again the Lensmen won.
Knowing that the final and decisive struggle would of necessity be a political one,
the Patrol took over the Cosmocrat party and set out to gather detailed and
documentary evidence of corrupt and criminal activities of the Nationalists, the party
then in power. Roderick ("Rod the Rock") Kinnison ran for President of North America
against the incumbent Witherspoon; and after a knock-down-and-drag-out political
battle with Senator Morgan, the voice of the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, he was
elected.And Morgan was murdered-supposedly by disgruntled gangsters; actually by
his Kalonian boss, who was in turn a minion of Eddore-simply because he had failed.2
North America was the most powerful continent of Earth; Earth was the mother
planet, the leader and the boss. Hence, under the sponsorship of the Cosmocratic
government of North America, the Galactic Council and its arm, the Galactic Patrol,


2First Lensman (Pyramid Books, 1964).



came into their own. At the end of R. K. Kinnison's term of office, at which time he
resumed his interrupted duties as Port Admiral of the Patrol, there were a hundred
planets adherent to Civilization. In ten years there were a thousand; in a hundred years