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

the pain.
For the rest, the observers on the survey-ship were inclined to gibber incoherently. Then a junior
lieutenant named Jon Haslip made a diffident suggestion. It was only a guess, but they proved he was
right.
The creature which was Alyx had consciousness of a type never before encountered. It responded
not only to physical stimuli but to thoughts. It did whatever one imagined it doing. If one imagined it
turning green for more efficient absorption of sunlight, it turned green. There were tiny pigment-
granules in its cells to account for the phenomenon. If one imagined it turning red, It turned red. And if
one imagined it extending a pseudopod, cautiously, to examine an observation-instrument placed at its
border on the ice cap, it projected a pseudopod, cautiously, to examine that instrument.
Haslip never got any real credit for his suggestion. It was mentioned once, in a footnote of a
volume called the Report of the Hatycon Expedition to Alyx, Vol. IV, Chap., 4, p. 97. Then it was
forgotten. But a biologist named Katistan acquired some fame in scientific circles for his exposition of
the origin and development of Alyx.
тАЬIn some remote and mindless age,тАЭ he wrote, тАЬthere was purely automaton-like response to stimuli
on the part of the one-celled creatures whichтАФas on Earth and elsewhereтАФwere the earliest forms of
life on the planet. Then, in time, perhaps a cosmic ray produced a mutation in one individual among
those creatures: Perhaps a creature then undistinguishable from its fellows, swimming feebly in some
fetid pool. By the mutation, that creature became possessed of purpose, which is consciousness in its
most primitive form, and its purpose was food. Its fellows had no purpose, because they remained
automata which responded only to external stimuli. The purpose of the mutated creature affected them
as a stimulus. They responded. They swam to the purposeful creature and became its food. It became the
solitary inhabitant of its pool, growing hugely. It continued to have a purpose, which was food.
тАЬThere was nourishment in the mud and stones at the bottom of that pool. It continued to grow
because it was the only creature on its planet with purpose, and the other creatures had no defense
against purpose. Evolution did not provide an enemy, because chance did not provide a competitive
purpose, which implies a mind. Other creatures did not develop an ability to resist its mind-stimuli,
which directed them to become its prey.тАЭ
Here KatistanтАЩs theorizing becomes obscure for a while. Then:
тАЬOn Earth and other planets, telepathy is difficult because our remotest cellular ancestors developed
a defensive block against each otherтАЩs mind-stimuli. On Alyx, the planet, no such defense came into
being, so that one creature overwhelmed the planet and became Alyx, the creature; which in time
covered everything. It had all food, all moisture, everything it could conceive of. It was content. And
because it had never faced a mind-possessing enemy, it developed no defense against mind. It was
defenseless against its own weapon.
тАЬBut that did not matter until men came. Then, with no telepathic block, such as we possess, it was
unable to resist the minds of men. It must, by its very nature, respond to whatever a man wills or even
imagines. Alyx is a creature which covers a planet, but is in fact a slave to any man who lands upon it. It
will obey his every thought. It is a living, self-supporting robot, an abject servant to any creature with
purpose it encounters.тАЭ
Thus Katistan's The Report of ihe Halycon Expedition to Alyx contains interesting pictures of the
result of the condition he described. There are photographs of great jungles which the creature Alyx
tortured itself to form of its own substance when men from other planets remembered and imagined

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them. There are photographs of great pyramids into which parts of Alyx heaved itself on command.
There are even pictures of vast and complex machines, but these are the substance of Alyx, twisted and