"Otis Adelbert Kline - Man from the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kline Otis Adelbert)

The Story of PтАЩan-ku
subsequently been visited at regular intervals by

H our scientific expeditions for the purpose of
AVING attained the advanced age of two
tabulating the evolutionary changes taking place
hundred and ninety-eight earthly years, and
on them, Mercury had developed nothing but the
feeling the hands of San-miau, the devourer,
most lowly vegetable organisms. Venus teemed
grim messenger of the Supreme God, TтАЩien, ever
with life, ranging from the microscopic, unicellular
closing tighter on my throat, slowly squeezing out
animalcules to gigantic, four-footed reptiles, which
my soul from this old shell of a body, I, PтАЩan-ku,
roamed through her great forests of fern and fungi,
lord of thousands, founder of a new race, and last
some of them feeding on these and other
survivor of an old, have retired from my manifold
primordial thallophytic growths, some preying on
duties and pleasures тАУ the ordering of the affairs of
these herbivora or on the lesser creatures
my subjects, the company of my wives, my
coexistent with them on that planet. Some of them
children, and my childrenтАЩs children, who will
had evolved membranous wings with which they
someday be numerous as the stars of heaven тАУ to
flapped clumsily from place to place, but there
write this history of my own people for those to
were no birds or mammals. Among the plants,
come who will have the intelligence and the desire
none flowered or bore fruit or seeds. All
to understand it.
reproduced by spores or spawn or by simple
For a million historical years, men of my race
fission.
inhabited Magong when she was yet a planet
On the Earth, a higher order of evolution was
among planets, a free, rotating sphere with her own
in progress. Many of the plants, having developed
undisturbed orbit, midway between the orbits of
specialized sexual organs, flowered and bore fruit.
this planet and that of the terrible, devastating war-
Birds forsook the ways and forms of their reptilian
world, Mars. For a half of those million historical
ancestors тАУ тАУ evolved a thousand shapes and hues
years, an ancestor of mine тАУ a PтАЩan-ku тАУ sat on the
тАУ cultivated glorious plumage and melodious
imperial throne of Magong and held dominion over
voices. Mammals suckled and reared their young,