"Jean and Jeff Sutton - Alien From The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sutton Jean and Jeff)

Briefly he wondered if this particular system had ever been explored. He
thought not, for he recalled nothing of it in the records. That was not
surprising. In the billion-star island that was the galaxy, it was far more
likely to have escaped observation entirely.
His perusal of the sun finished, he turned the instrument on the
planets, starting with the outermost. Another thousand-fold amplification in
power brought it into the telescanner as a moonless, oblate spheroid.
Instrument analysis disclosed it to consist of a dense lithic core wrapped in
a mantle of frozen ammonia, methane, and other gaseous compounds. But that had
been expected; a planet that distant from a radiation source with the energy
characteristics of the yellow sun couldn't possibly support his kind of life.
The next four planets proved equally inhospitable, nor had he expected
more. He did, though, let his gaze linger on the sixth planet. Encircled by
rings of meteoritic dust that caught and reflected the rays from the distant
yellow sun, it exemplified the wonders of a nature he long had sought to
understand.
He pondered again the profligacy of nature, for the universe was rife
with planets and moons incapable of sustaining more than the most elementary
life-forms. Or was the ultimate design long-range? Perhaps one day such
planets might bloom while present life-rich worlds sank into the obscurity of
death. Could life as he knew it be but a test-bed for the future? The prospect
intrigued him.
He eyed the fourth planet. It alone in this system gleamed redly in the
sky. By his calculations it lay close to the outer border of the temperature
biosphere required by his kind. Hopefully, he studied it through the
telescanner. For a moment he reveled in the glory of its color, before gazing
at the instrument readouts. To his disappointment, the planet's small mass
indicated that any atmosphere it might possess would be far too tenuous to
support any major life-form. He had to erase the red planet from his hopes.
He lingered a moment over its moons. Scarcely more than jagged chunks of
rock, he reflected, they had been captured by the planet from a wide belt of
similar flotsam that lay between it and the giant fifth planet.
As he turned the telescanner on the third planet, he felt a quickening
excitement. He darted a glance at the instruments. Oxygen! The planet was rich
with it! Exhaling slowly, he continued his investigation through a myriad of
instruments. Finally satisfied, he lay back to sleep.
It was not until the end of the tenth sleep cycle that the third planet
was large in the telescanner. Splashed with blues and greens and tans, and
circled by a disproportionately large moon, it rode in majestic beauty through
the solitude of its orbit. The instruments, and the large polar icecaps,
indicated an abundance of water, a rarity on all but the most favored of
worlds. He felt his excitement mount. A lovely planet, were it not for its
brassy sun.
Another sleep cycle passed, and then another and another. He had long
since adopted a minimum-breathing posture, but now his oxygen was low. By
self-hypnosis he put himself into a timed sleep in which his oxygen intake
would be more than halved.
When he awoke again, the planet was gigantic in the telescanner. Seas,
mountains, unbelievably immense patches of verdure -- it fairly screamed of
life. Sampling the planet's electromagnetic spectrum, he received a jumble of