"Arthur Porges - The Fly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Porges Arthur)

THE FLY
Arthur Forges
Man is probably not (says science fiction) the only sizable pebble on
the macrocosmic beach: other "intelligent" entities may well be pursuing
their purposes regardless of us, and indeed indifferent to us. A physically
small manifestation of this hypothesis is brilliantly postulated here. Do
such things exist? Can they exist? One thing is certain: they ought to
exist. We belong to a species much too ready to regard itself as the
highest, finest flower of Creation. To throw a little cold water on that
conceit, as for example by describing what "he" saw (and what
happened to him when he tried to interfere), is to help make us just that
fraction less complacent, that fraction more sensible.


Shortly after noon the man unslung his Geiger counter and placed it
carefully upon a flat rock by a thick, inviting patch of grass. He listened to
the faint, erratic background ticking for a moment, then snapped off the
current. No point in running the battery down just to hear stray cosmic
rays and residual radio-activity. So far he'd found nothing potent, not a
single trace of workable ore.
Squatting, he unpacked an ample lunch of hard-boiled eggs, bread,
fruit, and a Thermos of black coffee. He ate hungrily, but with the neat,
crumbless manners of an outdoorsman; and when the last bite was gone,
stretched out, braced on his elbows, to sip the remaining drops of coffee.
It felt mighty good, he thought, to get off your feet after a six-hour hike
through rough country.
As he lay there, savouring the strong brew, his gaze suddenly narrowed
and became fixed. Right before his eyes, artfully spun between two twigs
and a small, mossy boulder, a cunning snare for the unwary spread its
threads of wet silver in a network of death. It was the instinctive creation
of a master engineer, a nearly-perfect logarithmic spiral, stirring gently in
a slight up-draught.
He studied it curiously, tracing with growing interest the special cable,
attached only at the ends, that led from a silk cushion at the web's centre
up to a crevice in the boulder. He knew that the mistress of this snare
must be hidden there, crouching with one hind foot on her primitive
telegraph wire and awaiting those welcome vibrations which meant a
victim thrashing hopelessly among the sticky threads.
He turned his head, desiring a proper angle, and soon found it. Deep in
the dark crevice, the spider's eyes formed a sinister, jewelled pattern. Yes,
she was at home, patiently watchful. It was all very efficient, and in a
reflective mood, drowsy from his exertions and a full stomach, he
pondered the small miracle before him: how a speck of protoplasm, a
mere dot of white nerve-tissue which was a spider's brain, had antedated
the mind of Euclid by countless centuries. Spiders are an ancient race;
ages before man wrought wonders through his subtle abstractions of
points and lines, a spiral not to be distinguished from this one winnowed
the breezes of some prehistoric summer.
Then he blinked, his attention once more sharpened. A glowing gem,
glistening metallic blue, had planted itself squarely upon the web. As if