"Murray Leinster - The Mutant Weapon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

had not been overgrown by vegetation. But it was empty-or else it was dead.
But somebody in it had tried very ferociously and with singular effectiveness to try to destroy
the Med Ship. .
Because it was a Med Ship.
Calhoun raised his eyebrows and looked at Murgatroyd.
"Why is all this?" he asked. "Have you any ideas?"
"Cheel" shrilled Murgatroyd.
CHAPTER II
"The purpose of a contemplated human action is always the attainment of a desired subjective
experience. But a subjective experience is desired both in terms of intensity and of duration. For
an individual the temptingness of different degrees of in-tensity-of experience is readily
computed. However, the tempting-ness of different durations is equally necessary for an estimate
of the probability of a given person performing a given action. This modification of desirability
by expected duration depends on the individual's time sense; its acuity and its accuracy.
Measurements of time sense ..."
Probability and Human Conduct--Fitzgerald
EVENTUALLY Calhoun left the ship and found a cultivated field and a dead man and other things. But
while in the Med Ship he found only bewilderment. The first morning he carefujly monitored the
entire communications spectrum. There were no man-made signals in the air of Maris III. That was
proof the world was uninhabited. But the ship's external microphones picked up a rocket roar in
mid-morning. Calhoun looked, and saw the faint white trail of the rocket
against the blue of the sky. The fact that he saw it was proof that it was in atmosphere. And that
was evidence that the rocket was taking photographs for signs of the crater the Med Ship should
have made in a crash landing.
The fact of search was proof that the planet was inhabited, but the silence of the radio spectrum
said that it wasn't. The absence of traffic in the city said that it was dead or empty, but there
were people there because thev'd answered CaDioun's hail, and tried to kill him when he identified


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himself. But nobody would want to destroy a Med Ship except to prevent a health inspection, and
nobody would want to prevent an inspection unless there was a situation aground that the Med
Service ought to know about. But there should not be such a situation.
There was no logical explanation for such a series of contradictions. Civilized men acted either
this way or that. There could only be civilized men here, yet they acted neither this way nor
that. Therefore-and the confusion began all over again.
Calhoun dictated an account of events to date into the emergency responder in the ship. If a
search call came from space, the responder would broadcast this data and Calhoun's intended
action. He carefully shut off all other operating circuits so the ship couldn't be found by their
radiation. He equipped himself for travel, and he and Murgatroyd left the ship. Obviously, he
headed toward the city where whatever was wrong was centered.
Travel on foot was unaccustomed, but not difficult. The Vegetation was semi-familiar. Maris III
was an Earth-type planet and circled a Sol-type sun, and given similar conditions of gravity, air,
sunlight, and temperature range, similar organisms should develop. There would be room, for
example, for low-growing ground-cover plants, and there would also be advantages to height. There
would be some equivalent of grass, and there would be the equivalent of trees, with intermediate
forms having in-between habits of growth. Similar reasoning would apply to animal We. There w6uld
be parallel ecological niches for animals to fill, and animals would adapt to fill them.