"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Proteus Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

had been charted only recently. He noted the fern forests ahead, like those of New Zealand, the Kauri
pine and dammarтАФdark wood hills, a curve of white beach, and between them a moving dotтАФan
apteryx mantelli, thought CarverтАФa kiwi.
The proa worked cautiously shoreward.

"Taboo," Malloa kept whispering. "Him plenty bunyip!"

"Hope there is," the white man grunted. "I'd hate to go back to Jameson and the others at Macquarie
without at least one little bunyip, or anyway a ghost of a fairy." He grinned. "Bunyip Carveris. Not bad,
eh? Look good in natural-history books with pictures."

On the approaching beach the kiwi scuttled for the forestтАФif it was a kiwi after all. It looked queer,
somehow, and Carver squinted after it. Of course, it had to be an apteryx; these islands of the New
Zealand group were too deficient in fauna for it to be anything else. One variety of dog, one sort of rat,
and two species of batтАФthat covered the mammalian life of New Zealand.

Of course, there were the imported cats, pigs and rabbits that ran wild on the North and Middle Islands,
but not here. Not on the Aucklands, not on Macquarie, least of all here on Austin, out in the lonely sea
between Macquarie and the desolate Balleny Islands, far down on the edge of Antarctica. No; the
scuttling dot must have been a kiwi.

The craft grounded. Kolu, in the bow, leaped like a brown flash to the beach and drew the proa above
the gentle inwash of the waves. Carver stood up and stepped out, then paused sharply at a moan from
Malloa in the stern.

"See!" he gulped. "The trees, wahi! The bunyip trees!"

Carver followed his pointing figure. The treesтАФwhat about them? There they were beyond the beach as
they had, fringed the sands of Macquarie and of the Aucklands. Then he frowned. He was no botanist;
that was Halburton's field, back with Jameson and the Fortune at Macquarie Island. He was a zoologist,
aware only generally of the variations of flora. Yet he frowned.

The trees were vaguely queer. In the distance they had resembled the giant ferns and towering kauri pine
that one would expect. Yet here, close at hand, they'had a different aspectтАФnot a markedly different
one, it is true, but none the less, a strangeness. The kauri pines were not exactly kauri, nor were the tree
ferns quite the same Cryptogamia that flourished on the Aucklands and Macquarie. Of course, those
islands were many miles away to the north, and certain local variations might be expected. All the
sameтАФ

"Mutants," he muttered, frowning. "Tends to substantiate Darwin's isolation theories. I'll have to take a
couple of specimens back to Halburton."

"Wahi," said Kolu nervously, "we go back now?"

"Now!" exploded Carver. "We just got here! Do you think we came all the way from Macquarie for one
look? We stay here a day or two, so I have a chance to take a look at this place's animal life. What's the
matter, anyway?"

"The trees, wahi!" wailed Malloa. "Bunyip!тАФthe walking trees, the talking trees!"