"Smith, E E Doc - Lensman 4 - Gray Lensman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

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 mightЧor might notЧgo 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 Samms saved her father's life, after which Kinnison
took Samms to the safest place on EarthЧdeep 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 documented 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 murderedЧsupposedly by disgruntled gangsters; actually by his
Kalonian boss, who was in turn a minion of the EddoriansЧsimply and merely because he had
failed.
North America was the most powerful continent of Earth; Earth was the Mother Planet, the
Leader, the Boss. Hence, under the sponsorship of the Cosmocratic Government of North
America, the Galactic Council and its arm, the Galactic Patrol, 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 a million: and it is sufficient characterization of the light but
effective rule of the Galactic Council to say that in all the long history of Civilization no planet
whose peoples have ever voted to adhere to Civilization has ever withdrawn from it.
Time went on; the prodigiously long blood-lines, so carefully manipulated by Mentor of
Arisia, neared culmination. Lensman Kimball Kinnison was graduated Number One of his
classЧas a matter of fact, although he did not know it, he was Number One of his time. And his
female counterpart and complement, Clarrissa MacDougall of the red-bronze-auburn hair and
the gold-flecked tawny eyes, was a nurse in the Patrol's immense hospital at Prime Base.
Shortly after graduation Kinnison was called to Prime Base by Port Admiral Haynes.
Space piracy had become an organized force; and, under the leadership of someone or something
known as "Boskone", had risen to such heights of power as to threaten seriously the Galactic
Patrol itself. In one respect Boskonia was ahead of the Patrol, its scientists having developed a
source of power vastly greater than any known to Galactic Civilization. It had fighting ships of a
new and extraordinary type, from which even convoyed shipping was no longer safe. Being
faster than the Patrol's fastest cruisers and yet more heavily armed than its heaviest battleships,
they had been doing practically as they pleased throughout space.
For one particular purpose, the engineers of the Patrol had designed and built one
shipЧthe Britannia. She was the fastest thing in space, but for offensive armament she had only
one weapon, the "Q-gun". Kinnison was put in command of this vessel, with orders to: 1)
Capture a Boskonian war-vessel of late model; 2) Learn her secrets of power; and 3) Transmit