"David A. Kyle - Lensman 8 - The Dragon Lensmen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kyle David A)

Two utterly different kinds of Galactic Patrolmen met at that moment in the docking-port
reception chamber when he slithered, then leaped, from his personal spacecraft. Most
Patrolmen were fighting men, accustomed to deadly battle in the far depths of space, but
some were laboratory soldiers, forever sheltered in their quiet isolation, at war only with
facts and figures. Worsel was the epitome of the superlative warrior, one of the unique
quartet of Lensmen, the elite of the elite; the other was an elderly scientist, still
non-combatant even in his Third-and-Final Life-Restoration. The old man in the youthful
body was content to end his days on the Pok research team in his endless quest for
knowledge. He had never met a Velantian; he had never met a Second Stage Lensman;
now he met both in the living flesh of a single creature.

The actual meeting was the most excitement he had had in his life, more exciting by far
than even his appointment as Curator of Pok. And now he was terrified by the encounter.
No books, no three-D pictures had prepared him for what he saw: the incredible
appearance of the reknowned hero who looked and smelled of the violence that had
swirled, and still swirled, around the Galactic Patrol.

The human was in the twilight of his life, but the Velantian Lensman, suggesting a cross

-5-
between a winged pterosaur and a long-necked Tyrannosaurus Rex with brains, was at
the peak of his magnificent physical and mental powers. Like a serpentine dragon, the
creature emerged from his polished shell, metal door clanging against metal wall, and
loomed before the man. The twelve-foot ceiling was touched by a monstrous reptilian
head. The walls were crowded by a massive body with its multiple arms, two
conventional but two bat-winged, with clawed thumb and hooked fingers. The face
seemed to be entirely sharp white teeth. Several bright eyes tilted down toward him on
the ends of waving stalks, each glittering eye fixed on him. One of the pair of regular
limbs reached out to him, muscles rippling along scaly forearm, claws retracted at the
end of a sinewy palm and long slender fingers. The Curator shrank back, even as he
reached out his own fingers for a timid welcoming handshake.

That the saurian wore a GP uniform, so scanty it was more like a harness, was
reassuring, though the conspicuous gray leather of a Second Stage Lensman was
immensely intimidating. This snake-thing was the most remarkable Lensman among a
most remarkable group in the Civilized Universe. And yet, for all its potent might, it was
most honored by the good entities of the billions of planets and most feared by the bad,
not for its titantic strength, but for its intellect. Here was Worsel, within touch, the
greatest pragmatic thinker in the Galactic Patrol-such greatness left the old scientist's
mind numb. His whole body, in fact, was numb.

Then he knew that the numbness was the spell of the extraordinary power of the
dragon's telepathic mind. Worsel, who did not speak, was in his mind, greeting him,
reassuring him, making him feel at ease. The dragon which had come to Pok was not a
plebeian Occidental one, symbolizing evil, but a patrician Oriental one, intrinsically
benevolent.

The human being, for the first time in his life, felt that he himself might be a member of an
inferior race-and to his surprise he was pleased to consider such an unthinkable idea.
Thus Worsel, the Dragon Lensman, came to Pok.