"Laumer, Keith - Hybrid-01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

"Why do we want to wear ourselves out?" Malpry said.
"We need the exercise. It'll be four months before we get another chance."
"What are we, tourists, we got to see the sights?" Malpry stopped, leaned against a boulder, panting. He stared upward at the crater and the pattern of uptilted roots and beyond at the forest-like spread of the branches of the fallen tree.
"Makes our sequoias look like dandelions," Gault said. "It must have been the storm, the one we dodged coming in."
"So what?" "A thing that big--it kind of does something to you."
"Any money in it?" Malpry sneered.
Gault looked at him sourly. "Yeah, you got a point there. Let's go."
"I don't like leaving the Creep back there with the ship."
Gault looked at Malpry. "Why don't you lay off the kidl"
"I don't like loonies."
"Don't kid me, Malpry. Pantelle is highly intelligent--in his own way. Maybe that's what you can't forgive."
"He gives me the creeps." "He's a nice-looking kid; he means well--"
"Yeah," Malpry said. "Maybe he means well--but it's not enough.. ."

From the delirium of concussion, consciousness returned slowly to the tree. Random signals penetrated the background clatter of shadowy impulses from maimed senses--
"Air pressure zero; falling... air pressure 112, rising ... air pressure negative ...
"Major tremor radiating from--Major tremor radiating from--
"Temperature 171 degrees, temperature --40 degrees, temperature 26 degrees...
"Intense radiation in the blue only ... red only ... ultra violet ...
"Relative humidity infinite... wind from north-northeast, velocity ifinite ... wind rising vertically, velocity infinite ... wind from east, west ..."
Decisively, the tree blanked off the yammering nerve-trunks, narrowing its attention to the immediate statusconcept. A brief assessment suffiiced to reveal the extent of its ruin.
There was no reason, it saw, to seek extended personal survival. However, certain immediate measures were necessary to gain time for emergency spore-propagation. At once, the tree-mind triggered the survival syndrome. Capillaries spasmed, forcing vital juices to the brain. Synaptic helices dilated, heightening neural conductivity. Cautiously, awareness was extended to the system of major fibres, then to individual filaments and interweaving capillaries.
Here was the turbulence of air molecules colliding with ruptured tissues, the wave pattern of light impinging on exposed surfaces. Microscopic filaments contracted, cutting off fluid loss through the wounds.
Now the tree-mind fine-tuned its concentration, scanning the infinitely patterned cell matrix. Here, amid confusion, there was order in the incessant restless movement of particles, the how of fifluids, the convoluted intricacy of the alphaspiral. Delicately, the tree-mind readjusted the functionmosaic, in preparation for spore generation.

Malpry stopped, shaded his eyes. A tall thin figure stood in the shade of the uptilted root mass on the ridge.
"Looks like we headed back at the right time," Malpry said.
"Damn," Gault said. He hurried forward. Pantelle came to meet him.
"I told you to stay with the ship, Pantellel"
"I finished my job, Captain. You didn't say--"
"OK, OK. Is anything wrong?"
"No sir. But I've just remembered something--"
"Later, Pantelle. Let's get back to the ship. We've got work to do."
"Captain, do you know what this is?" Pantelle gestured toward the gigantic fallen tree.
"Sure; it's a tree." He turned to Gault. "Let's-"
"Yes, but what kind?"
"Beats me. I'm no botanist."
"Captain, this is a rare species. In fact, it's supposed to be extinct. Have you ever heard of the Yanda?"
"No. Yes." Gault looked at Pantelle. "Is that what this is?"
"I'm sure of it. Captain, this is a very valuable find--"
"You mean it's worth money?" Malpry was looking at Gault.
"I don't know. What's the story, Pantelle?"
"An intelligent race, with an early animal phase; later, they root, become fixed, functioning as a plant. Nature's way of achieving the active competition necessary for natural selection, then the advantage of conscious selection of a rooting site."
"How do we make money on it?"
Pantelle looked up at the looming wall of the fallen trunk, curving away among the jumble of shattered branches, a hundred feet, two hundred, more, in diameter. The bark was smooth, almost black. The foot-wide leaves were glossy, varicolored.
"This great tree-" Malpry stooped, picked up a fragment from a burst root.
"This great club," he said, "to knock your lousy brains out with--"
"Shut up, Mal."
"It lived, roamed the planet perhaps ten thousand years ago, in the young faunal stage. Then instinct drove it here, to fufill the cycle of nature. Picture this ancient champion, looking for the first time out across the valley, saying his farewells as metamorphosis begins."
"Nuts," Malpry said.