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

GRAY LENSMAN

serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Oct '39 - Jan '40;
First book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1951;


BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH


FOREWORD

Two thousand million or so years ago, at the time of the Coalescence, when the
First and Second
Galaxies were passing through each other and when myriads of planets were coming
into
existence where only a handful had existed before, two races of beings were
already old; so old
that each had behind it many millions of years of recorded history. Both were so
old that each
had perforce become independent of the chance formation of planets upon which to
live. Each
had, in its own way, gained a measure of control over its environment; the
Arisians by power of
mind alone, the Eddorians by employing both mind and mechanism.
The Arisians were indigenous to this, our normal space-time continuum; they
had lived
in it since the unthinkably remote time of their origin; and the original Arisia
was very Earth-like
in mass, composition, size, atmosphere, and climate. Thus all normal space was
permeated by
Arisian life-spores, and thus upon all Earth-like or Tellurian planets there
came into being races
of creatures more or less resembling Arisians in the days of their racial youth.
None except
Tellurians are Homo Sapiens, of course; few can actually be placed in Genus
Homo; but many
millions of planets are peopled by races distantly recognizable or belonging to
the great class of
MAN.
The Eddorians, on the other hand, were interlopers—intruders. They were not
native to
our normal space-time system, but came to it from some other, some alien and
horribly different
other, plenum. For eons, in fact, they had been exploring the macrocosmic All;
moving their
planets from continuum to continuum; seeking that which at last they found—a
space and a time
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 space-time, they would stay; and