David A. Kyle - Lensman 8 - The Dragon Lensmen

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THE DRAGON LENSMAN
An Astonishing New Adventure in the
Lensman Series
Created By E.E. “Doc” Smith
By David A. Kyle
Introduction
When David Kyle told me he was writing the story of Worsel the Velantian as the first
book in the continuation of the Lensman series, I was pleasantly surprised-though, if truth
be told, a bit apprehensive. Bantam Books had approved his original outline, and the
Smith heirs had given their consent to the effort-but, I thought, better no additional
Lensman stories than poor Lensman stories.
More than two decades ago, as Fantasy Press, I published the original hard-back
editions of the Lensman tales. I was responsible for the expansion of the original four
books into the seven that now make up the series. With the publication of The Vortex
Blaster I thought, with regret, that I had enjoyed my last excursion into the Universe of
Arisia and the Lens. At one time Doc Smith had considered writing the stories of two of
the non-human Lensman-Worsel of Velantia Three and Nadreck of Palain Seven-but
because of a lack of market, with the specialty science fiction book publishers faltering or
out of business, he had abandoned the idea.
Now David Kyle was writing the saga of Worsel, the Dragon Lensman. The passing
years bad not dimmed my interest in the Universe of the Galactic Patrol-but could Dave
pick up the threads of another writer's creation? Could he recreate the atmosphere and
characters of E. E. "Doc" Smith. It was a tall order-and I was skeptical.
In February 1979 I was a house guest of the very hospitable Ruth and David Kyle at
Hobe Sound, Florida. There I read the manuscript of The Dragon Lensman-and I was
surprised and delighted! Not only had Dave captured the style of a Doc Smith epic, not
only had he blended his own original concepts into the Lensman series, but he had
written an exciting, first rate science fiction novel, fully able to stand on its own merits.
Were he able to read it, Doc, I'm sure, would be pleased. In The Dragon Lensman,
through David A. Kyle, E. E. "Doc" Smith has returned to literary life!
Lloyd Arthur Eshbach Myerstown, Pennsylvania March 1979
-2-
Foreword
For all those of you who have previously read E. E. "Doc" Smith's accounts of the
Galactic Patrol and the Arisian-Eddorian conflict, most of this Foreword is redundant.
You are hereby waved on to the last three paragraphs beginning with "The chronicler . .
." For those of you who are newcomers, or whose memories have clouded with the
years, a few words of background are certainly desirable.
Billions of years ago Mankind began to evolve on a small planet of the star Sol. Billions of
years before that, Tellus, also known as Earth, had been created in the time of the great
Coalescence. And billions of years before that event, our Milky Way galaxy, also known
as the First Galaxy, was inhospitable to life, almost barren of planets and virtually
deserted.
The life-spores of Man existed before all these things, incredibly far back for uncountable
eons. The ancestral source was the race of the Arisians from the beginning of Time,
Visualizers of the Cosmic All, future guardians of Civilization.
Fully as ancient, nearly equal in macrocosmic mind power, and as evil as the Arisians
were good, were the Eddorians of the Second Galaxy. Whereas the Arisians were of our
own space-time continuum, the Eddorians were not, coming on their wandering planet to
the Second Galaxy from a different, horribly alien plenum. They were dedicated to a
continuing search for more worlds to sate their lust for dominance. Their ambition was at
last to be glutted by the Coalescence. In that cataclysmic event their enslaved star island
passed, end to end, through our own galaxy. The stupendous interstellar forces which
were unleashed thus created billions of new worlds. The inevitable conflict between the
Arisians and the Eddorians, the prototype confrontation between Good and Evil, had
arrived. The struggle began for the lives and souls of the many races that were evolving.
As Civilization grew, the Elders of Arisia surreptitiously encouraged the new life forms to
resist the tyranny and to shape their independent ways toward perfection.
In the universal deceit which developed around the rise of the Eddorian-inspired
Boskonian outlaws, the greatest secret of all was kept by the Arisians. Their immortal
enemies, the Eddorians, were kept forever ignorant of their existence. The Arisians were
the covert and incognito patrons of those opposing the evil Eddorians; they were the real,
formidable counterforce in the eons-long contest with Boskonia and its masters.
Four widely-scattered planets with advanced life forms were the nucleus of the
resistance in the First Galaxy: Tellus, known as Earth or Terra, Velantia, Rigel Four, and
Palain Seven. Each, subtly encouraged by the Arisians, developed four dissimilar races,
but it was Tellus which became the focal point for the organized force against Boskone
and its puppet-masters. From Tellus came the formation of the Galactic Patrol, to be the
instrument of Eddorian destruction. Also from Tellus came the Kinnison and Samms fam-
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ilies leading to their zenith, the union of their foremost leaders, Kimball Kinnison, the Gray
Lensman, and Clarrissa MacDougall, the Red Lensman.
Within generations of the First Lensman, Virgil Samms, many Lensmen had been
recruited into a special corps of Patrolmen. They were outstanding military leaders and
scientists, possessing extraordinary natural, non-mutated abilities. The Lensman name
came from the peculiar semi-living Lens each one wore, usually on a wrist, a unique gift
obtained from Mentor of Arisia. These incredible instruments, radiant crystal
complexities, were badges of honor, forgery-proof identification, and amplifiers of
psychic powers. They were awarded only to those chosen by Mentor itself, the
amorphous fusion-entity of the four intellectually greatest Arisian Molders of Civilization.
The psychical match to the quintessential individuality of the Lensman was exact-so
perfect, in fact, that it released latent parapsychic or psi powers, telepathy in particular.
Only the original recipient of the Lens could wear it-for anyone else it brought instant
death.
The best Lensmen eventually were chosen for the highest honor which the Patrol could
offer: Unattached status. Known as Gray Lensmen from the plain leather uniforms they
now wore, unlike the black-and-silver-and-gold ones of the rest of the officers and men,
these distinguished fellows of the Service were free agents. With their freedom for
independent action they were the personification of the Patrol itself, accountable to no
one but the highest authorities.
Although Kimball Kinnison was not the first Gray Lensman, he was, despite his youth,
one of the outstanding ones. His demonstrated ability led to his being recalled to Arisia
by Mentor to receive the next level of training as a Second Stage Lensman. Kimball was
the first of four to come from each of the original planets, even ahead of Worsel the
Velantian, whose mind actually was better developed and trained, and of vastly greater
power. The Tellurian, however, was chosen for greater capacity and more varied growth,
especially for the force of his driving will, so characteristic of his race.
As the legion of Lensmen grew with its special leaders, so did the scale of the conflict,
until, finally, both galaxies and their neighboring star clusters were involved.
The climax came at last. Kimball Kinnison, as the fighting leader of the Galactic Patrol,
the military arm of the Galactic Council which by now represented all of Civilization,
directed the decisive battles by the Grand Fleet against the massive forces of the
Boskonians. The culmination of the years of galactic struggle came with the giant
dogfight of spaceships which was The Battle of Klovia. The Boskonian conspiracy was
considered destroyed. Kimball Kinnison, the newly-appointed Galactic Coordinator, and
his bride Cris were taking on their new responsibilities for Civilization. Peace was
spreading through the two galaxies.
-4-
Only Mentor knew that the Eddorians bad not been defeated, merely delayed, in their
goal to conquer the galaxies and to make them their playthings.
The chronicler of these events has been, up to now, the famous research historian of the
Galactic Patrol, E. E. "Doc" Smith. His efforts have been monumental; a half dozen
books by him have traced the rise of Tellurian culture and the formation of the Patrol, all
part of the struggle to protect and advance Civilization in the Milky Way. His reports have
been presented in his inimitable way as popularized novels. More than a decade ago Doc
Smith, a warm-hearted and virile man, passed on to "the next plane of existence" to join
the Arisians. Since then no books describing the exploits of the fabulous Lensmen have
been written, although there really has been no need, because the end of the terrible
Boskonian threat was told and the evil Eddorians were shown to have been obliterated.
Doc Smith, the historian, did his work well-and thoroughly-to lead us to the plateau of the
evolution of the Universe with the coming of the Children of the Lens.
There is, however, a period in the history, as reported by the doctor, which has not been
documented. A score of years lie between the marriage of Kinnison to his Cris and the
emergence from childhood of their offspring. There was in these decades no "energy
stasis"-that which always moves forward just to stand still inevitably leads upward and
downward simultaneously. Historical events were taking place-but they become history
only when they are recorded and reported.
The well-established historical research department which E. E. Smith so successfully
created is still at work collecting and assembling facts and eye-witness accounts. There
is a wealth of material available for further tales of the Patrol and its personnel. This
book is the first one written without the direct supervision of the doctor. Your new
historian knew "Doc" for many years, having met him in his space-roamer's garb of
"Northwest Smith of Earth," at the Second Worldcon in Chicago, Tellus-and, having had
him for a lifetime as a guide, appreciates that he was unique. Let no one be deluded,
least of all your present historian, into thinking that this new series of books will be
indistinguishable from the presentations of the original histories. Unique "Doc" was, and
unique he will remain. But the spirit will not be changed-the entire historical research
department will see to that. This historian, whose responsibility is not taken lightly,
pledges fidelity to the "E. E. Smith way" knowing that The Galactic Roamers will not
tolerate anything less.
David A. Kyle Tellus
-5-
Prologue
After the destruction of Onlo and the fall of Thrale and the "cleaning up" of Lyrane VIII,
with the Boskonians no longer fomenting trouble in the First Galaxy, the Galactic Patrol
was prepared to become a police force instead of a military machine. The Patrol's four
greatest operatives, the illustrious Second Stage Lensmen, were confronted with their
most difficult tasks-making adjustments to peace. Each one faced his problem in his own
way, representative as he was of his own distinctive race and culture. Kimball Kinnison,
the Tellurian, humankind's incredible hero, had little choice but to accept the responsibility
of being Galactic Coordinator. Nadreck, the Palainian, frigid-blooded poison-breather
with his metabolic extension into the fourth dimension, carried on his psychological
research and pursued his personal death feud against the escaped Kandron of Onlo.
Tregonsee, the hard-shelled Rigellian, profound meditator on the Cosmos, "put away his
Grays" and explored the galaxies with his superior sense of perception, completely
committed to his "Project Quicksilver.”
The fourth Second Stage Lensman, Worsel, the Velantian, the biggest, smartest and
most ferocious of all the million Patrolmen, remained in heart and in soul-and on active
duty -a Gray Lensman.
Worsel was a frightening apparition to anyone who had never met a Velantian before. At
first glance he seemed grotesquely hideous, a nightmarish reptile, all fangs and claws.
The day he arrived at Pok, the Planetoid of Knowledge, to begin the most incredible of
his adventures, he frightened the old soldier-scientist assigned to meet him.
Two utterly different kinds of Galactic Patrolmen met at that moment in the docking-port
reception chamber when he slithered, then leaped, from his personal spacecraft. Most
Patrolmen were fighting men, accustomed to deadly battle in the far depths of space, but
some were laboratory soldiers, forever sheltered in their quiet isolation, at war only with
facts and figures. Worsel was the epitome of the superlative warrior, one of the unique
quartet of Lensmen, the elite of the elite; the other was an elderly scientist, still
non-combatant even in his Third-and-Final Life-Restoration. The old man in the youthful
body was content to end his days on the Pok research team in his endless quest for
knowledge. He had never met a Velantian; he had never met a Second Stage Lensman;
now he met both in the living flesh of a single creature.
The actual meeting was the most excitement he had had in his life, more exciting by far
than even his appointment as Curator of Pok. And now he was terrified by the encounter.
No books, no three-D pictures had prepared him for what he saw: the incredible
appearance of the reknowned hero who looked and smelled of the violence that had
swirled, and still swirled, around the Galactic Patrol.
The human was in the twilight of his life, but the Velantian Lensman, suggesting a cross
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between a winged pterosaur and a long-necked Tyrannosaurus Rex with brains, was at
the peak of his magnificent physical and mental powers. Like a serpentine dragon, the
creature emerged from his polished shell, metal door clanging against metal wall, and
loomed before the man. The twelve-foot ceiling was touched by a monstrous reptilian
head. The walls were crowded by a massive body with its multiple arms, two
conventional but two bat-winged, with clawed thumb and hooked fingers. The face
seemed to be entirely sharp white teeth. Several bright eyes tilted down toward him on
the ends of waving stalks, each glittering eye fixed on him. One of the pair of regular
limbs reached out to him, muscles rippling along scaly forearm, claws retracted at the
end of a sinewy palm and long slender fingers. The Curator shrank back, even as he
reached out his own fingers for a timid welcoming handshake.
That the saurian wore a GP uniform, so scanty it was more like a harness, was
reassuring, though the conspicuous gray leather of a Second Stage Lensman was
immensely intimidating. This snake-thing was the most remarkable Lensman among a
most remarkable group in the Civilized Universe. And yet, for all its potent might, it was
most honored by the good entities of the billions of planets and most feared by the bad,
not for its titantic strength, but for its intellect. Here was Worsel, within touch, the
greatest pragmatic thinker in the Galactic Patrol-such greatness left the old scientist's
mind numb. His whole body, in fact, was numb.
Then he knew that the numbness was the spell of the extraordinary power of the
dragon's telepathic mind. Worsel, who did not speak, was in his mind, greeting him,
reassuring him, making him feel at ease. The dragon which had come to Pok was not a
plebeian Occidental one, symbolizing evil, but a patrician Oriental one, intrinsically
benevolent.
The human being, for the first time in his life, felt that he himself might be a member of an
inferior race-and to his surprise he was pleased to consider such an unthinkable idea.
Thus Worsel, the Dragon Lensman, came to Pok.
-7-
Chapter 1
Section 60
Two figures stood facing each other. Both were sleek and powerful, both stood twenty
feet tall, both were mighty engines of destruction. One was alive, a dragon, and one was
not, a machine.
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,
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.
-8-
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
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
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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
enough to play it this way?" These were more words than he had spoken in perhaps a
year. He heard them physically through the vibrations from his chest, but he did not hear
them through his ears because they had atrophied by disuse. It was characteristic of his
race to interpret sound vibrations through sense organs in the skin around nose and
throat.
Worsel knew that he had come to the most critical room. He was positive that something
would happen here. This room on Level 97 wasn't overwhelmingly large, limited, as it
was, to only the most sophisticated of items, but it contained all the "wits" and the
"smarts" of the mech world.
They were all potentially in working order, a rather stupid situation he thought, ready to
go into their dances and sing their songs of science or business, war or crime at the flick
of a switch or the touch of a mind. Probably most of them could calculate, compute and
make logical deductions as fast, maybe faster, than any Lensman, including himself.
Maybe they weren't creative thinkers, like their creators, but then again ... Maybe the
magnitude of Pok was getting him down. It was no longer the small place he had helped
establish years before. The sheer numbers of apparatuses now collected on the
Planetoid of Knowledge was staggering, representing thousands of civilizations from
which the Patrol had obtained the exhibits. Appreciation of this came only after he had
walked through a half thousand rooms and skipped an equal number. It wasn't their sizes
which were intimidating-considering that Worsel himself was thirty feet long and built like
a piece of heavy-labor machinery covered with tough, flexible scales, he dwarfed most of
the mechanisms. No, not their sizes, it was the extent of the alien collection which im-
pressed him.
Pok, the Planetoid of Knowledge, was unique. It was an artificially constructed sphere
eighteen miles in diameter, originally the project of The Velantian Council of Scientists
before becoming a Galactic Patrol installation. When Velantia had discovered Civilization
and had joined the Galactic Council, the planetoid had been established to collect the
new knowledge available, and to make it possible for the Velantians to become quickly
one of the foremost interstellar communities. Worsel, the hero of the hour, undertook the
project and, with the Patrol's extensive help in collecting and furnishing material, soon had
an extensive library and museum. Then, within one year, he had left to establish his own
Institute.
摘要：

-1-THEDRAGONLENSMANAnAstonishingNewAdventureintheLensmanSeriesCreatedByE.E.“Doc”SmithByDavidA.KyleIntroductionWhenDavidKyletoldmehewaswritingthestoryofWorseltheVelantianasthefirstbookinthecontinuationoftheLensmanseries,Iwaspleasantlysurprised-though,iftruthbetold,abitapprehensive.BantamBookshadappro...

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