"Raymond Z. Gallun - Seeds of Dusk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

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SEEDS OF THE DUSK


by RAYMOND Z. GALLUN


A novelette of the days when Earth grows old and cold-when all
EarthтАЩs folk are keening wits to surviveтАФ



It was a spore, microscopic in size. Its hard shellтАФresistant to the utter
dryness of interplanetary spaceтАФharbored a tiny bit of plant protoplasm.
That protoplasm, chilled almost to absolute zero, possessed no vital
pulsation nowтАФ only a grim potentiality, a savage capacity for revival, that
was a challenge to Fate itself.
For years the spore had been drifting and bobbing er-ratically between
the paths of Earth and Mars, along with billions of other spores of the
same kind. Now the gravity of the Sun drew it a few million miles closer to
EarthтАЩs orbit, now powerful magnetic radiations from solar vortices forced
it back toward the world of its origin.
It seemed entirely a plaything of chance. And, of course, up to a point it
was. But back of its erratic, unconscious wanderings, there was
intelligence that had done its best to take advantage of the law of
averages.
The desire for rebirth and survival was the dominant urge of this
intelligence. For this was during the latter days, when Earth itself was
showing definite signs of senility, and Mars was near as dead as the Moon.
Strange, intricate spore-pods, conceived as a man might conceive a new
invention, but put into concrete form by a process of minutely exact
growth control, had burst explosively toward a black, spacial sky. In dusty
clouds the spores had been hurled upwards into the vacuum thinness that
had once been an extensive atmosphere. Most of them had, of course,
dropped back to the red, arid soil; but a comparative few, buffeted by
feeble air currents, and measured numerically in billions, had found their
way from the utterly tenuous upper reaches of MarsтАЩ gaseous envelope into
the empty ether of the void.
 With elements of a conscious purpose added, the thing that was taking
place was a demonstration of the ancient Arrhenius Spore Theory, which,
countless ages ago, had explained the propagation of life from world to
world. The huge, wonderful parent growths were left behind, to continue a
hopeless fight for survival on a burnt-out world. During succeeding
summer seasons they would hurl more spores into the interplanetary
abyss. But soon they themselves would be only brown, mummied
relicsтАФone with the other relics of Mars; the gray, carven monoliths; the
orange, hemispherical dwellings, dotted with openings arranged like the
cells of a honeycomb. Habitations for an intelligent animal folk, long
perished, who had never had use for halls or rooms, as such things are