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

lighted and filled with compuautomates. This was the section, the final
section, which he
had been aiming for, the place he expected to find the reason for the
pervading
uneasiness, and where he would determine if there were really a problem to
solve.
Within its limited yet large space there were thousands of lifeless shapes in
serried
ranks, innocuous devices of technological cultures, large and small, angular
and curved,
shiny and dull, knobbly and smooth, metallic and plastic, some beautiful and
some ugly.
Worsel was impressed by them because he knew that these were only a fraction
of the
creations from the minds and hands of the highest cultures of Civilization.
The change in
the scale of the collection since his last visit was enormous. The magnitude
of the
fabrications spread out before him would have intimidated or frightened a
lesser person.

"Ah, my beauties!" Worsel said and coolly surveyed, from where he stood, their
inanimate bodies, their inactive limbs, their mute visages. "Is there one
among you who
would like to greet a Lensman?" He said this aloud in his basic guttural
Velantian, as it
was physically impossible for him to speak Universal English. His tone was
mocking, for
he only half believed his mission. He was here on the Planetoid of Knowledge
because,
one of the theories went, a unique intelligence was suspected to exist,
exceptionally
strange and utterly alien in that its consciousness was artificial,
mechanical, not alive.
Either it existed, or else those who reported it were psychologically
disturbed. In either
case his presence was justified. The services of Worsel, the eminent
psychologist, had
been properly requested.

"No greeting for me?" Worsel persisted. "No welcome for Worsel of Velantia?"
He
popped out a number of eyes in various degrees of mock surprise. "Perhaps you
sleep?"
His jesting had that edge of seriousness which hinted at a set trap lying just
below a
scattering of leaves. "Perhaps you do not hear me?" He flicked his tongue
casually, in the
manner of an elaborate shrug as though inviting a response. "Or maybe you're
just smart