"Murray Leinster - The Lonely Planet (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

strained into imagined shapes. The command that such machines run, though, was useless, because swift
motion produced pain and the machines writhed into shapelessness.
Since men have never had enough servants—not even the machines which other machines turn out
by millions—they immediately planned to be served by Alyx. It was one planet which was conquered
without warfare. Preliminary studies showed that Alyx could not survive more than the smallest human
propulation. When many men were gathered together in one place, their conflicting, individual thoughts
exhausted the surface which tried, to respond to every one. Parts of Alyx died of exhaustion, leaving
great spots like cancers that healed over only when the men moved away. So Alyx was assigned to the
Alyx Corporation, with due instructions to be careful.
Technical exploration disclosed great deposits oL rotenite—the ore which makes men’s metals
everlasting— under the shield of living flesh. A colony of six carefully chosen humans was established,
and under their direction Alyx went to work. It governed machines, scooped out the rotenite ore and
made it ready for shipment. At regular intervals great cargo ships landed at the appropriate spot, and
Alyx loaded the ore into theit holds. The ships could come only so often, because the presence of the
crews with their multitudinous and conflicting thoughts was not good for Alyx.
It was a very profitable enterprise. Alyx, the most ancient living thing in the galaxy, and the hugest,
provided dividends for the Alyx Corporation for nearly five hundred years. The corporation was the
stablest of institutions, the staidest, and the most respectable. Nobody, least of all its officials, had the
least idea that Alyx presented the possibility of the greatest danger humanity ever faced.

CHAPTER II
AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS


IT WAS ANOTHER Jon Haslip who discovered the dangerous facts. He was a descendant, a great-
grandson a dozen times removed, of the junior lieutenant who first guessed the nature of Alyx’s
consciousness. Three hundred years had passed when he was chosen to serve a tour of duty on Alyx. He
made discoveries and reported them enthusiastically and with a certain family pride. He pointed out new
phenomena which had developed so slowly in Alyx through three centuries that they had attracted no
attention and were taken for granted.
Alyx no longer required supervision. Its consciousness had become intelligence. Until the coming
of men, it had known warmth and cold and light and dark and wetness and dryness. But it had not
known thought, had had no conception of purpose beyond existence and feeding. But three centuries of
mankind had given it more than commands. Alyx had perceived their commands: yes. And it obeyed
them. But it had also perceived thoughts which were not orders at all. It had acquired the memories of
men and the knowledge of men. It had not the desires of men, to be sure. The ambition of men to
possess money must have puzzled a creature which possessed a planet. But the experience of thought
was pleasurable. Alyx, which covered a world, leisurely absorbed the knowledge and the thoughts and
the experiences of men—six at a time—in the generations which lived at the one small station on its
surface.
These were some of the consequences of three centuries of mankind on Alyx that Jon Haslip XIV

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...paar/Murray%20Leinster%20-%20The%20Lonely%20Planet.txt (3 of 19)24-2-2006 20:45:18
 file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documenten/spaar/Murray%20Leinster%20-%20The%20Lonely%20Planet.txt

reported.
Between cargo ships, the protean substance which was Alyx flowed over and covered the blasted-
rock landing field. Originally, when a ship came, it had been the custom for men to imagine the landing-
field uncovered, and that area of Alyx obediently parted, heaved itself up hugely, and drew back. Then
the ships came down, and their landing jets did not scorch Alyx. When the rock had cooled, men