"Tom Purdom - Fossil Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

quasi-plants had become a major component of the atmosphere. The relentless
forces of competition had favored creatures who were more complex than their
rivals.
And then, after less than two billion years of organic evolution, the
laws of physics had caught up with the process. No planet the size of this one
could hold an atmosphere forever.
The plants and the volcanoes could produce oxygen and CO2 almost as fast
as the gas molecules could drift into space. But almost wasn't good enough.

****

They didn't piece the whole story together right away, of course. There
were even people who weren't convinced the first find was a fossil. If the
scout machines hadn't found ten more fossils in the first five daycycles, the
skeptics would have spent years arguing that Exhibit A was just a collection
of rocks-- a random geologic formation that just happened to resemble a big
shell, with appendages that resembled limbs.
On Earth, the dominant land animals had been vertebrates-- creatures
whose basic characteristic was a bony framework hung on a backbone. The
vertebrate template was such a logical, efficient structure it was easy to
believe it was as inevitable as the streamlined shape of fish and porpoises.
In fact, it had never developed on this planet.
Instead, the basic anatomical structure had been a tube of bone.
Creatures with this rigid, seemingly inefficient, structure had acquired legs,
claws, teeth and all the other anatomical features vertebrates had acquired on
Earth. Thousands of species had acquired eyes that looked out of big eyeholes
in the front of the shell, without developing a separate skull. Two large
families had developed "turrets" that housed their eyes and their other sense
organs but they had kept their brains securely housed in the original shell,
in a special chamber just under the turret.
On Earth, the shell structure would have produced organisms that might
have collapsed from their own weight. On this planet, with its weaker
gravitational field, the shells could be thin and even airy. They reminded
Morgan of building components that had been formed from solidified foam-- a
common structural technique in space habitats.

****

For Ari, the discovery was the high point of his lifespan-- a development
that had to be communicated to the Solar System at once. Ari's face had been
contorted with excitement when he had called Morgan an hour after the machines
reported the first find.
"We've done it, Morgan," Ari proclaimed. "We've justified our whole
voyage. Three thousand useless, obsolete people have made a discovery that's
going to transform the whole outlook in the Solar System."
Morgan had already been pondering a screen that displayed a triangular
diagram. The point at the bottom of the triangle represented the Solar System.
The two points at the top represented 82 Eridani and Rho Eridani. The Island
of Adventure and the Green Voyager had been creeping up the long sides of the
triangle. The Green Voyager was now about three light years from Rho--