"Lensman 10 - Z-Lensman - with David A Kyle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

Z-LENSMAN

An Astonishing New Adventure in the
Lensman Series
Created By E.E. "Doc" Smith

By David A. Kyle



Foreword

The genus Homo sapiens belongs to the family of Arisia. Human beings, together with all
their related humanoid races, were the fruit of Arisian seed, and they lived, along with their
bizarre cousins and exotic kindred, among the millions of planets throughout the island
universe known as our Milky Way galaxy.
Within our, space and time, the ancient Arisians were the genesis of all intelligent life.
Where or how they began at the dawn of the Cosmos not even their records could tell for
certain. Their home was the planet that must have been the very first upon which life
formed. For eons, as the Arisians progressed beyond the stages of mechanics and
technology and evolved from entities of flesh into entities of energy, they prospered alone
and unthreatened. When their first mother sun grew old and died, they moved their planet
to a bright, new star, until, as the eons rolled on, they had to move again. All that time, in the
vastness of interstellar matter, they were alone.
Then came the time of the Coalescence, when the Milky Way and Lundmark's Nebula
passed through each other, edge to edge, and billions of new planets were born. With this
marvelous explosion of new opportunities came a sinister shadow of the ultimate terror,
Eddore. This was another planet with another race from another existence. As good and
Godlike as were the Arisians, so evil and Devilish were the Eddorians.
Thus began the ages-old conflict that led to the formation of the mighty Arisian weapon, the
Galactic Patrol. On the countless new planets flourished galactic multitudes, a thousand
million years younger than their ancestors. Slowly but relentlessly they climbed out of the
primordial elements into, Civilization and toward perfectionism. Serving as Guardians,
secretly encouraging them, were the mental forces of the Arisians. In opposition, seeking
absolute power over all minds and bodies through crime and corruption, were the
Eddorians, with their infamous chief henchmen, the Eich, masterminding their conspiracy
of a diabolic counterculture. Civilization was tested with the task of discovering the real
enemy, not being told of the existence of the Eddorians, while the Eddorians, in turn, were
brainwashed into ignorance of the existence of the Arisians.
So the Arisians, stressing self-reliance among the maturing races, let them fight their own
battles. However, Mentor, the supremely wise entity of the Arisians, gave the elite officers
of the Patrol a quasi-living instrument of telepathy, the Lens. The only other help offered by
the Guardians was limited to counseling.
Mentor was the unit name of the fusion of the mentalities of four of the greatest Arisians,
also known as the Molders of Civilization. Each one was concerned with the development
of one of four extremely different races from four widely separated planets: Tellus (Earth),
Velantia III, Rigel IV, and Palain VII. Each planet had eventually produced one exceptional
Lensman, specially trained by Mentor as a Second Stage Lensman. Nadreck, the most
illustrious Z-Lensman, although not the first Palainian Lensman, was the genuine genius
who did reach the L2 or Second Stage.