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

the information to Prime Base.
He found and took such a warship. Sergeant Peter vanBuskirk led the storming party of
ValeriansЧmen of human ancestry, but of extraordinary size, strength, and agility because of
the enormous gravitation of the planet ValeriaЧin wiping out those of the pirate crew not killed
in the battle between the two vessels.
The Brittania's scientists secured the desired data. It could not be transmitted to Prime
Base, however, as the pirates were blanketing all channels of communication. Boskonian
warships were gathering for the kill, and the crippled Patrol ship could neither run nor fight
Therefore each man was given a spool of tape bearing a complete record of everything that had
occurred; and, after setting up a director-by-chance to make the empty ship pursue an
unpredictable course in space, and after rigging bombs to destroy her at the first touch of a ray,
the Patrolmen paired off by lot and took to the lifeboats.
The erratic course of the cruiser brought her near the lifeboat manned by Kinnison and
vanBuskirk, and there the pirates tried to stop her. The ensuing explosion was so violent that
flying wreckage disabled practically the entire personnel of one of the attacking ships, which did
not have time to go free before the crash. The two Patrolmen boarded the pirate vessel and drove
her toward Earth, reaching the solar system of Velantia before the Boskonians headed them off.
Again taking to their lifeboat, they landed upon the planet Delgon, where they were rescued
from a horde of Catlats by one WorselЧlater to become Lensman Worsel of VelantiaЧa highly
intelligent winged reptile.
By means of improvements upon Velantian thought-screens the three destroyed a group
of the Overlords of Delgon, a sadistic race of monsters who had been preying upon the other
peoples of the system by sheer power of mind. Worsel then accompanied the two Patrolmen to
Velantia, where all the resources of the planet were devoted to the preparation of defenses
against the expected attack of the Boskonians. Several other lifeboats reached Velantia, guided
by Worsel's mind working through Kinnison's ego and Lens.
Kinnison intercepted a message from Helmuth, who "spoke for Boskone", and traced his
communicator beam, thus getting his first line upon Boskone's Grand Base. The pirates attacked
Velantia, and six of their warships were captured. In these six ships, manned by Velantian crews,
the Patrolmen again set out for Earth and Prime Base.
Then Kinnison's Bergenholm, the generator of the force which makes inertialess flight
possible, broke down, so that he had to land upon Trenco for repairs. Trenco, the tempestuous,
billiard-ball-smooth planet where it rains forty-seven feet and five inches every night and where
the wind blows at eight hundred miles an hourЧTrenco, the source of thionite, the deadliest of
all deadly drugsЧTrenco, whose weirdly-charged ether and atmosphere so distort beams and
vision that it can be policed only by such beings as the Rigellians, who possess the sense of
perception instead of those of sight and hearing!
Lensman Tregonsee, of Rigel Four, then in command of the Patrol's wandering base upon
Trenco, supplied Kinnison with a new Bergenholm and he again set out for Tellus.
Meanwhile Helmuth had deduced that some one particular Lensman was the cause of all
his set-backs; and that the Lens, a complete enigma to all Boskonians, was in some way
connected with Arisia. That planet had always been dreaded and shunned by all spacemen. No
Boskonian who had ever approached that planet could be compelled, even by the certainty of
death, to go near it again.
Thinking himself secure by virtue of thought-screens given him by a being from a
higher-echelon planet named Floor, Helmuth went alone to Arisia, determined to learn all about
the Lens. There he was punished to the verge of insanity, but was permitted to return to his
Grand Base alive and sane: "Not for your own good, but for the good of that struggling young
Civilization which you oppose."
Kinnison reached Prime Base with the all-important data. By building super-powerful