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

cellulose and free oxygen were being produced.



So far, these processes were quite like those of common terrestrial flora.
But there were differences. For one thing, the oxygen was not liberated to
float in the atmosphere. It had been ages since such lavish waste had been
possible on Mars, whose thin air had contained but a small quantity of
oxygen in its triatomic form, ozone, even when Earth was young.
The alien thing stored its oxygen, compressing the gas into the tiny
compartments in its hard, porous, outer shell. The reason was simple.
Oxygen, combining with starch in a slow, fermentative combustion, could
produce heat to ward off the cold that would otherwise stop growth.
The spore had become a plant now. First, it was no bigger than a
pinhead. Then it increased its size to the dimensions of a small marble, its
fuzzy, green-brown shape firmly anchored to the soil itself by its long,
fibrous roots. Like any terrestrial growth, it was an intricate chemical
laboratory, where transformations took place that were not easy to
comprehend completely.
And now, perhaps, the thing was beginning to feel the first glimmerings
of a consiousness, like a human child rising out of the blurred,
unremembering fog of birth. Strange, oily nodules, scattered throughouut
its tissues, connected by means of a complex network of delicate, white
threads, which had the functions of a nervous system, were developing and
growingтАФgiving to the spore plant from Mars the equivalent of a brain.
Here was a sentient vegetable in the formative stage.
A sentient vegetable? Without intelligence it is likely that the ancestors
of this nameless invader from across the void would long ago have lost
their battle for survival.
What senses were given to this strange mind, by means of which it
could be aware of its environment? Undoubtedly it possessed faculties of
sense that could detect things in a way that was as far beyond ordinary
human conception as vision is to those individuals who have been born
blind. But in a more simple manner it must have been able to feel heat
and cold and to hear sounds, the latter perhaps by the sensitivity of its fine
cilia-like spines. And certainly it. could see in a way comparable to that of
a man.
For, scattered over the round body of the plant, and imbedded deep in
horny hollows in its shell, were little organs, lensed with a clear vegetable
substance. These organs were eyes, developed, perhaps, from far more
primitive light-sensitive cells, such as many forms of terrestrial flora
possess.



But during those early months, the spore plant saw little that could be
interpreted as a threat, swiftly to be fulfilled. Winter ruled, and the native
life of this desolate region was at a standstill.
There was little motion except that of keen, cutting winds, shifting dust,
and occasional gusts of fine, dry snow. The white, shrunken Sun rose in