"Murray Leinster - Planets of Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Now, too, the star-ships were faster. A hundred light-years was a short journey. A
thousand was not impractical. Explorers had gone many times farther, and reported
worlds still waiting for mankind on beyond. But still the great majority of discovered
planets did not contain life. Whole solar systems floated in space with no single living
cell on any of their members.
So the Seed-Ships came into being. Theirs was not a glamorous service. They merely
methodically contaminated the sterile worlds with life. The Seed-Ship Orana landed on
this planet—which still had no name. It carefully infected it. It circled endlessly above
the clouds, dribbling out a fine dust—the spores of every conceivable microorganism
which could break down rock to powder, and turn that dust to soil. It was also a seeding
of molds and fungi and lichens, and everything which could turn powdery primitive soil
into stuff on which higher forms of life could grow. The Orana polluted the seas with
plankton. Then it, too, went away.
More centuries passed. Human ships again improved. A thousand light-years became
a short journey. Explorers reached the Galaxy's very edge, and looked estimatingly across
the emptiness toward other island universes. There were colonies in the Milky Way.
There were freight-lines between star-clusters, and the commercial center of human
affairs shifted some hundreds of parsecs toward the Rim. There were many worlds where
the schools painstakingly taught the children what Earth was, and where, and that all
other worlds had been populated from it. And the schools repeated, too, the one lesson
that humankind seemed genuinely to have learned. That the secret of peace is freedom,
and the secret of freedom is to be able to move away from people with whom you do not
agree. There were no crowded worlds any more. But human beings love children, and
they have them. And children grow up and need room. So more worlds had to be looked
out for. They weren't urgently needed yet, but they would be.
Therefore, nearly a thousand years after the Orana, the Ecology-Ship Ludred swam to
the planet from space and landed on it. It was a gigantic ship of highly improbable
purpose. First of all, it checked on the consequences of the Orana's visit.
They were highly satisfactory, from a technical point of view. Now there was soil
which swarmed with minute living things. There were fungi which throve monstrously.
The seas stank of minuscule life-forms. There were even some novelties, developed by
the strictly local conditions. There were, for example, paramecia as big as grapes, and
yeasts had increased in size until they bore flowers visible to the naked eye. The life on
the planet was not aboriginal, though. All of it was descended and adapted and modified
from the microorganisms planted by the seed-ship whose hulk was long since rust, and
whose crew were merely names in genealogies—if that.
The Ludred stayed on the planet a considerably longer time than either of the ships
that had visited it before. It dropped the seeds of plants. It broadcast innumerable
varieties of things which should take root and grow. In some places it deliberately seeded
the stinking soil. It put marine plants in the oceans. It put alpine plants on the high
ground. And when all its stable varieties were set out it added plants which were
genetically unstable. For generations to come they would throw sports, some of which
should be especially suited to this planetary environment.
Before it left, the Ludred dumped finny fish into the seas. At first they would live on
the plankton which made the oceans almost broth. There were many varieties of fish.
Some would multiply swiftly while small; others would grow and feed on the smaller
varieties. And as a last activity, the Ludred set up refrigeration-units loaded with insect
eggs. Some would release their contents as soon as plants had grown enough to furnish
them with food. Others would allow their contents to hatch only after certain other
varieties had multiplied to be their food-supply.