"Murray Leinster - The Lonely Planet (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

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The Lonely Planet


CHAPTER 1

PROTEAN PLANT


ALYX WAS VERY lonely before men came to it. It did not know that it was lonely, to be sure.
Perhaps it did not know anything, for it had no need for knowledge. It had need only for memory, and all
its memories were simple. Warmth and coolness; sunshine and dark; rain and dryness. Nothing else,
even though Alyx was incredibly old. It was the first thing upon its planet which had possessed
consciousness.
In the beginning there were probably other living things. Possibly there were quintillions of
animalcules, rotifera, bacteria, and amoebae in the steaming pool in which Alyx began. Maybe Alyx was
merely one of similar creatures, as multitudinous as the stars and smaller than motes, which swam and
lived and died in noisesome slime beneath a cloud-hung, dripping sky. But that was a long time ago.
Millions of years ago. Hundreds of millions of years now gone.
When men came, they thought at first the planet was dead. Alyx was the name they gave to the
globe which circled about its lonely sun. One day a Space Patrol survey-ship winked into being from
overdrive some millions of miles from the sun. It hung there, making conscientious determinations of
the spectrum, magnetic field, spot-activity and other solar data.
Matter-of-factly, the ship then swam through emptiness to the lonely planet. There were clouds
over its surface, and there were icecaps. The surface was irregular, betokening mountains, but there were
no seas. The observers in the survey-ship were in the act of making note that it was a desert, without
vegetation, when the analyzers reported protoplasm on the surface. So the survey-ship approached.
Alyx the creature was discovered when the ship descend├лd on landing jets toward the surface. As
the jets touched ground, tumult arose. There were clouds of steam, convulsive heavings of what seemed
to be brown earth. A great gap of writhing agony appeared below the ship. Horrible, rippling movements
spread over the surface and seemed alive, as far as the eye could reach.
The survey-ship shot upward. It touched solidity at the edge of the northern icecap. It remained a
month, examining the planetтАФor rather, examining Alyx, which covered all the planetтАЩs surface save at
the poles.
The report stated that the planet was covered by a single creature, which was definitely one creature
and definitely alive. The ordinary distinction between animal and vegetable life did not apply to Alyx. It
was cellular, to be sure, and therefore presumably could divide, but it had not been observed to do so. Its
parts were not independent members of a colony, like coral polyps. They constituted one creature, which
was at once utterly simple and infinitely diverse.
It broke down the rocks of its planet, like microorganisms, and made use of their mineral content
for food, like plankton. It made use of light for photosynthesis to create complex compounds, like plants.
It was capable of amoeboid movement, like a low order of animal life. And it had consciousness. It
responded to stimuliтАФsuch as the searing of its surfaceтАФwith anguished heavings and withdrawals from

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