"H. Beam Piper - Uller Uprising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Calcium and chlorine are rarer than on earth, sodium is somewhat commoner. As a result of the
shortage of calcium there is a higher ration of silicates to carbonates than exists on earth. The
water is slightly alkaline and resembles a very dilute solution of sodium silicate (water glass).
It would have a pH of 8.5 and tastes slightly soapy. Also, when it dries out it leaves a sticky,
and then a glassy, crackly film. Rocks look fairly earthlike, but the absence or scarcity of
anything like limestone is noticeable. Practically all the sedimentary rocks are of the sandstone
type.

All rivers are seasonal, running from the polar regions to the central seas in the spring only, or
until the polar cap is completely dried out.

4. ANIMAL LIFE

As on Earth life arose in the primitive waters and with a carbon base, but because of the
abundance of silicone, there was a strong tendency for the microscopic organisms to develop
silicate exoskeletons, like diatoms. The present invertebrate animal life of the planet is of this
type and is confined to the equatorial seas. They run from amoeba-like objects to things like
crayfish, with silicate skeletons. Later, some species of them started taking silicone into their
soft tissues, and eventually their carbon-chain compounds were converted to silicone type chains,
from

- C - C - C- to O - Si-O - Si-O - Si


with organic radicals on the side links. These organisms were a transitional type, with silicone
tissues and water body fluids, resembling the earthly amphibians, and are now practically extinct.
There are a few species, something like segmented worms, still to be seen in the backwaters of the
central seas.

A further development occurred when the silicone chain animals began to get short-chain silicones
into their circulatory systems, held in solution by OH or NH2 groups on the ends and branches of
the chains. The proportion of these compounds gradually increased until the water was a minor and
then a missing constituent. The larger mobile species were, then, practically anhydrous. Their
blood consists of short-chain silicones, with quartz reinforcing for the soft parts and their
armor, teeth, etc., of pure amorphous quartz (opal). Most of these parts are of the milky variety,
variously tinted with metallic impurities, as are the varieties of sapphires.

These pure silicone animals, due to their practical indestructibility, annihilated all but the
smaller of the carbon animals, and drove the compromise types into odd corners as relics. They
developed into a fish-like animal with a very large swim-bladder to compensate for the rather
higher density of the silicone tissues, and from these fish the land animals developed. Due to
their high density and resulting high weight, they tend to be low on the ground, rather reptilian
in look. Three pairs of legs are usual in order to distribute the heavy load. There is no sharp
dividing line between the quartz armor and the silicone tissue. One merges into the other.

The dominant pure silicone animals only could become mobile and venture far from the temperate
equatorial regions of Uller, since they neither froze nor stiffened with cold, nor became
incapacitated by heat. Note that all animal life is cold-blooded, with a negligible difference
between body and ambient temperatures. Since the animals are silicones, they don't get sluggish