"Campbell, John W Jr - Who Goes There" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"When the dogs attacked it, it turned into the best fighting thing it could think of. Some other-world beast apparently."
"Turned," snapped Garry. "How?"
"Ever living thing is made up of jelly -protoplasm and minute, submicroscopic things called nuclei, which control the bulk, the protoplasm. This thing was just
a modification of that same worldwide plan of Nature; cells made up of protoplasm, controlled by infinitely tiner nuclei. You physicists might compare it -an
individual cell of any living thing -with an atom; the bulk of the atom, the space-filling part, is made up of electron orbits, but the character of the thing
is determined by the atomic nucleus.


"This isn't wildly beyond what we already know. It's just a modification we haven't seen before. It's as natural, as logical, as any other manifestation of
life. It obeys exactly the same laws. The cells are made of protoplasm, their character determined by the nucleus.


"Only in this creature, the cell-nuclei can control those cells at will. It digested Charnauk, and as it digested, studied every cell of his tissue, and
shaped its own cells to imitate them exactly. Parts of it -parts that had time to finish changing -are dog-cells. But they don't have dog-cell nuclei." Blair
lifted a fraction of the tarpaulin. A torn dog's leg with stiff gray fur protruded. "That, for instance, isn't dog at all; it's imitation. Some parts I'm
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uncertain about; the nucleus was hiding itself, covering up with dog-cell imitation nucleus. In time, not even a microscope would have shown the
difference."


"Suppose," asked Norris bitterly, "it had had lots of time?"
"Then it would have been a dog. The other dogs would have accepted it. We would have accepted it. I don't think anything would have distinguished it, not
microscope, nor X-ray, nor any other means. This is a member or a supremely intelligent race, a race that has learned the deepest secrets of biology, and
turned them to its use."


"What was it planning to do?" Barclay looked a the humped tarpaulin.
Blair grinned unpleasantly. The wavering halo of thin hair round his bald pate wavered in the stir of air. "Take over the world, I imagine."


"Take over the world! Just it, all by itself?" Connant gasped. "Set itself up as a lone dictator?"
"No," Blair shook his head. The scalpel he had been fumbling in his bony fingers dropped; he bent to pick it up, so that his face was hidden as he spoke. "It would
become the population of the world."


"Become -populate the world? Does it reproduce asexually?"
Blair shook his head and gulped. "It's -it doesn't have to. It weighed 85 pounds. Charnauk weighed about 90. It would have become Charnauk, and had 85 pounds left,
to become -oh, Jack for instance, or Chinook. It can imitate anything -that is, become anything. If it had reached the Antarctic Sea, it would have become a seal,
maybe two seals. They might have attacked a killer whale, and become either killers, or a herd of seals. Or maybe it would have caught an albatross, or a skua
gull, and flown to South America."


Norris cursed softly. "And every time it digested something, and imitated it-"
"It would have had its original bulk left, to start again," Blair finished. "Nothing would kill it. It has no natural enemies, because it becomes whatever it
wants to. If a killer whale attacked it, it would become a killer whale. If it was an albatross, and an eagle attacked it, it would become an eagle. Lord, it might
become a female eagle. Go back, build a nest and lay eggs!"