"E. E. Doc Smith - Lensman 8 - The Dragon Lensman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

they were operational, some even armed, but not one had either the wit or the
ability to
turn his own key or to press his own button. No, he was getting closer, but
the mystery
that he pursued did not hide among them. Yet somewhere in The Great Hall of
the
Machines into which his investigation had led him he knew he would soon find-
something.

What was it he sought? He didn't know-there were only the reports, the strange
beliefs
that something-some thing-was amiss in Pok. At first he considered the request
frivolous.
A Lensman used to intergalactic problems didn't go mouse hunting. Only his
sentimental
attachment for Pok had brought him here. But almost from the moment of his
arrival he
had sensed the strangeness in the atmosphere. The scientists were nervous; the
Patrolmen were tense; now he himself was aware of some great event or danger.
He
was exceedingly glad he, had come.

The angular, dureum-alloy vault of The Great Hall of the Machines disappeared
into the
haze of the far distance, the lines of suspended security lights marking the
boundaries of
the main corridor. Spread out around him was a maze of transparent walls, like
shimmering three-dimensional ghosts. The silence was absolute when he was
still, but
now the noises of the clumping of his large feet, and the whispering of the
leather
toe-sheaths which padded his claws as they brushed the gleaming floor, echoed
and
re-echoed from wall to wall and reverberated like distant thunder in the high
vastness of
the ceiling's emptiness.

He had walked past armies of machines, each and every one different, through a
succession of partitioned areas over long hours. Only the mechanical humanoid
fighter
which he had just examined had given him a real taste of excitement. So far
his survey
would have been a bore, except for the fascination of the shapes he had seen,
simple
and complex, plain and grotesque, spidery, squat, bizarre and baroque, vicious
and
beautiful.

The new room into which he had just come, the standard 300-foot square, was
brightly