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

here supreme
they would rule.
The Elders of Arisia, however, the ablest thinkers of the race, had known
and had studied
the Eddorians for many cycles of time. Their integrated Visualization of the
Cosmic All showed
what was to happen. No more than the Arisians themselves could the Eddorians be
slain by any
physical means, however applied; nor could the Arisians, unaided, kill all of
the invaders by
mental force. Eddore's All-Highest and his Innermost Circle, in their ultra-
shielded citadel, could
be destroyed only by a mental bolt of such nature and magnitude that its
generator, which was to
become known throughout two galaxies as the Galactic Patrol, would require
several long
Arisian lifetimes for its building.
Nor would that building be easy. The Eddorians must be kept in ignorance,
both of Arisia
and of the proposed generator, until too late to take effective counter-
measures. Also, no entity
below the third level of intelligence, even—or especially?—of the Patrol, could
ever learn the
truth; for that knowledge would set up an inferiority complex and thus rob the
generator of all
ability to do the work for which it was designed.
Nevertheless the Arisians began building. On the four most promising
planets of the First
Galaxy—our Earth or Sol Three, Velantia, Rigel Four, and Palain Seven—breeding
programs,
aiming toward the highest mentality of which each race was capable, were begun
as soon as
intelligent life developed.
On our Earth there were only two blood lines, since humanity has only two
sexes. One
was a straight male line of descent, and was always named Kinnison or its
equivalent.
Civilizations rose and fell; Arisia surreptitiously and unobtrusively lifting
them up, Eddore
callously knocking them down as soon as it became evident that they were not
what Eddore
wanted. Pestilences raged, and wars, and famines, and holocausts and disasters
that decimated
entire populations again and again, but the direct male line of descent of the
Kinnisons was never
broken.
The other line, sometimes male and sometimes female, which was to culminate
in the
female penultimate of the Arisian program, was equally persistent and was
characterized