"Woods, Laurence - The Colossus Of Maia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Woods Laurence)

MICHAEL BOYER looked up. "Lyman was stretching the case, quite a bit, of
course," he smiled. "If the fauna and flora of Maia was in proportion to the
size of Maia as Terrestrial flora and fauna are to Earth's diameter, then he and
David could not have discovered them with a microscope. To go on with the
diary..."
--We have been making a map of Maia, getting great delight out of naming the
various places. There is, for example, David Ocean and Richard Ocean, Triangle
Continent and Lyman Continent. We have given romantic names to everything. One
large body of land we named Tuttle Continent after the man who discovered this
world. I might mention here that our cabin is situated in the middle of
Astrodart Desert, close by the River Nile which flows from Gnome Mountains to
the David Sea.
--We both sleep outdoors at night; indeed, David can no longer come inside; he
is too big.
--David has extended our crops. He has proceeded to cut a canal a mile long
diverting another river to ours. This work took only a few days. He is quite
strong even for his size and it is easy for him. He says that he will need
plenty of food, setting out also to plant wheat and corn seeds by all the rivers
and waters nearby. lt will go hard with the native vegetation.
--Four years. We expect fully to live our lives here. No space ships visit the
asteroids--they would never come to this world save by accident. Why do I keep
this diary, I wonder?
David is now thirteen feet tall, even though he is only eleven years old. As for
myself, I am seven feet tall. Not much difference now, though; I am used to
seeing my son grow. He is taller every morning; it is detectable at once.
Our life has settled down to a dull routine. David is busy at the present time
exploring the ocean bottoms. All he has to do is stand in the middle of the
oceans, hold his breath, and plunge his head under water. He can thus observe at
first hand the contours of the sea bottom; he thinks he has discovered several
lost continents.
As for myself, the only kick I get out of life is lying for hours on my stomach
at the edge of the desert where the forest comes right up to it. I have a
magnifying glass in hand and stare through it at the tiny animals going about
their business. Most of them are insect-like, but I am sure some of them are
mammals or reptiles. However, they resemble none on earth.
--Seven years have passed since the wreck. Three since I last made a note in
this book. I had almost forgotten about it. But I decided to keep it up. David
is a full twenty-five feet as best as I can measure; I am eight. He no longer
lives with me; he is afraid of doing damage to the cabin and the crops. He
emigrated to Triangle Continent on the other side of the world; there he lives,
having uprooted most of the native plants there and flattened out the ground.
He's planted his own fields all over the place so that the planet looks like a
vast farm; the desert cabin and river crops are mine. To irrigate his great farm
he has dug many canals across his land from the seas; thus we still manage to
get enough food. He is still young, only fourteen years old. I am sure that he
pines for more company but he does not reveal this to me; I am used to being a
hermit.
--In these years I have been making a catalogue and classification of all the
different forms of life on Maia. I've rigged up a simple microscope out of
several lenses salvaged from broken astronomical instruments. With this, I have