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

The dragon was Worsel, Lensman, sitting half on his haunches, half on the base
of his
tail, horny hands on slim hips, soft palms and taloned fingers turned outward.
His narrow
head on lithe neck was cocked; a large grin of sharp and gleaming teeth split
his jaws. A
pair of his many extensible eyes was part way out on their stalks, moving
slowly up and
down in admiration.

"You," Worsel said to the war machine, "are a beauty." He did not say so out
loud; he
spoke mentally, as was his custom, for his brain was as impressive and potent
as his
body. In fact, even some of his alien friends believed he could not talk at
all. Worsel
reached out and, above the war machine's jointed hips and below the cluster of
gun
snouts, patted the smooth curves of its dureum shell body, his claws drumming
a quick
tattoo on the mental skin. He brought his snout within an inch of the oval
perception-lens
of the robot's head, his breath misting on the cool glass and plastisteel.
Worsel, stirring
another pair of eyes into use, peered now into each sensor lens and orifice,
concentrating the prodigious power of his mind on the brain of the machine.

He found it simple, perfect-and dead. Yet intuition told him he was getting
close to some
kind of revelation.

"Not you," Worsel said. "You're no troublemaker right now." He clicked his
teeth and ran
his slender tongue along the sharp edges and up over his lips. "You could be,
though,
you could be-or another potent thing like you," he said. "Too bad you aren't
what I'm
searching for; I wouldn't be wasting any more time. And it would be fun, too,
to take you
apart-over your objections."

Worsel reared back gracefully, swinging his tail gently around in a manner
more
mammalian than reptilian. He stretched his neck and looked beyond the huge
soldier
robot to the smaller, non-anthropomorphic war machines. They were all cold and
lifeless,
like the robot, though far less sinister, relics of a past of faded power and
menace. True,