"H. Beam Piper - First Cycle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Twice a year the sun would stand at zenith as it spiralled back and forth around the planet, briefly
parching the treetops and driving the flying and scampering beasts down into the lower shadows. The
winds would follow, with violent storms of lightning and down-sheeting rain; the rivers would rise,
spreading over the whole jungle and driving the creatures of the ground up into the trees. Sometimes
whole islands would disintegrate, and matted masses of trees would be swept out to sea. Then the storms
would end; the air would grow colder; often there would be thin skims of ice on the ponds, and
sometimes a few flakes of snow would sift down through the leaf-roof above. And then the air would
warm again, there would be fresh vegetation on the flats where the silt had caught, and the jungles would
vibrate with life again.

Eventually a small, mammal-like creature made its appearance among these swamps and jungles, living in
the trees, sometimes dropping to the ground in search of food. It had four limbs, each terminating in
handlike members with four fingers and two opposing thumbs. Its head was almost spherical, a little
lopsided at the bottom from heavy jaws. It would eat almost anythingтАФfruit, nuts, grubs, fish, smaller
animals, leathery reptile eggs dug out of the mud, and mollusks which it would break out of their shells.
At first it used its teeth for this, later it learned to lay the shellfish on a stone and hammer it open with
another stone. It learned to use stones to break through the ice in cold weather to catch fish, and to
throw when attacked. Eventually it learned to carry quite large stones into the trees and cache them in
crotches to drop on larger animals.

The changes of temperature forced it to develop an efficient internal cooling system, and, in addition, its
body was covered with a soft down, really microscopic feathers. During the hot season it would moult it
away and sweat copiously; as the temperature dropped the down would grow out again. The creature
built nests in the trees, lining them with soft grasses and with its own down.

As generations passed, it spent more and more of its time on the ground, taking to the trees only to
escape the floods or dangerous carnivores; and its physical structure became more and more adapted to
life out of the trees. It developed stronger muscles in its rear limbs, and came to rely upon them alone for
loc&motion, using the hands of its forelimbs for food-gathering. Its posture became more erect; its body
grew larger, until, where its little arboreal ancestor had massed eight to ten kilograms, the average mass
was now around eighty kilos. It was still covered with greenish down, but it shed it more readily and
grew it only in the coldest weather. Its legs became short and sturdy, its arms long. Its hands were well
adapted to grasping and manipulating; its feet broad and webbed between the toes to give support in the
soft mud and speed in the water.

Like its ancestors, it still built tree-nests, in which it slept. The chance cobbles which its ancestors had
used for missiles or hammers no longer satisfied it; it chose stones discriminatingly and improved them by
chipping. It manufactured hand-choppers and flake knives. It gained ability to control and produce fire,
and, most important of all, it learned to communicate with its fellows by oral sounds which gradually
acquired specific informational values and became words.

Among the ponds and salt-marshes of Hetaira's Horizon Zone another small animal looked up to face a
mighty destiny. Its immediate ancestor had been a lizard-like rock-dweller which had enjoyed a brief
prosperity when, as a result of a complex chain of ecological events, an order of beetle-like insects on
which it had fed had suddenly multiplied in numbers. The increased food supply had caused an explosion
in the population of the rock dwellers, which resulted in the rapid over-hunting and extermination of the
food-insect. Facing a hungry future, the rock-dwellers were forced into readjustments. Some specialized
themselves for feeding on another type of insect, developing a long snout and a beautifully efficient
digging-paw. Some took to robbing the nests of an oviparous pterodactyl-thing among the high rocks.