"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 7 - Bloodhype" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

modestly successful ecosystem: plants and animals from the one?celled to
the very complex; vertebrates, invertebrates, things warm? and coldblooded,
gymnosperms, fungi, lichens, fliers, burrowers, crawlers, runners and
swimmers. It was ruled by an undistinguished if moderately intelligent
race. It had begun to die when the Vom arrived.

As to the method of arrival, the Vom could recall neither when nor how.
Dimly it could remember a state of former greatness, of which its present
self was less than a shadow. In that state it had dominated a thousand
systems.

Arriving in this one, it had toyed with the local dominants. Its persistent
and strenuous attempts at achieving mental assimilation with another
life?form failed, as it had failed a hundred thousand times before. That
didn't keep the Vom from trying.

The race resisted with violence. It was consumed. The planet was rich in
life?force of more primitive kind. Having absorbed that of the most
intelligent beings, the Vom began on those less so. It worked its voracious
way slowly through the ecosystem, down through the simple plants and fungi
and even to the bacteria and viroids. The Vom was frighteningly efficient.
It ate until the globe was scoured clean, clean. Then nothing moved on its
surface or in its seas except wind, water, and the Vom.

Sated, the Vom rested for a long time. Then, using its always successful
ploy of contacting another intelligent race and taking control of the
curious vessels that would come to investigate, it broadcast into the space
around it. Once carried by unwilling servitors to a new planet, it would
begin the cycle of feeding anew.

But this time the Vom had waited too long. The race it contacted came, but
they were strong?stronger than any the Vom had ever encountered. Its mental
control wavered. For the first time in its well?ordered existence, the Vom
panicked. It destroyed all aboard the approaching ships. A fatal error. The
race was made aware of the true nature of the horror that had contacted it.
The next time, it sent robot warships with a single prepared Guardian. One
of their most powerful and capable minds, the Guardian was not understood
even by its own kind. The Vom now tried to attract the ships of another
species, but space?going races were scarce in this section of the galaxy.
Those few who did send ships were warned away or destroyed by the robot
watchers. As its stored energy was drained by these efforts the Vom grew
progressively weaker, shrinking in power and ability. No longer necessary,
many of the robot warships were recalled by their builders. There was a
great war with another race tormenting the center of the galaxy.

Almost, the Vom escaped. A wild photonic storm tore through that section of
space. The few remaining robot controls were incapacitated. Even the
Guardian itself was weakened. The Vom drew some strength from the strange
life?forms that rode the storm, but .... not enough. In utter terror the
Vom discovered that every space?going race within its reduced sphere of