"Julian May - Dune Roller" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

DUNE ROLLER
by Julian May

Copyright © 1951 by Julian May Dikty
Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-28-02 [v1.0]




There were only two who saw the meteor fall into Lake Michigan, long ago. One was a Pottawatomie
brave hunting rabbits among the dunes on the shore; he saw the, fire-streak arc down over the water
and was afraid, because it was an omen of ill favor when the stars left the heaven and drowned
themselves in the Great Water. The other who saw was a sturgeon who snapped greedily at the
meteor as it fell—quite reduced in size by now—to the bottom of the fresh water sea. The big fish
took it into his mouth and then spat it out again in disdain. It was not good to eat. The meteor drifted
down through the cold black water and disappeared. The sturgeon swam away, and presently, he
died. . . .

Dr. Ian Thorne squatted beside a shore pool and netted things. Under the sun of late July, the
lake waves were sparkling deep blue far out, and glass-clear as they broke over the sandbar into Dr.
Thorne's pool. A squadron of whirligig beetles surfaced warily and came toward him leading little
v-shaped shadow wakes along the tan sand bottom. A back-swimmer rowed delicately out of a green
cloud of algae and snooped around a centigrade thermometer which was suspended in the water from
a driftwood twig.

3:00 p.m., wrote Dr. Thorne in a large, stained notebook. Air temp 32, water temp—he leaned
over to get a better look at the thermometer and the back-swimmer fled —28. Wind, light variable;
wave action, diminishing. Absence of drifted specimens. He dated a fresh sheet of paper, headed
it Fourteenth Day, and began the bug count.

He scribbled earnestly in the sun, a pleasant-faced man of thirty or so. He wore a Hawaiian shirt
and shorts of delicious magenta color, decorated with most unbotanical green hibiscus. An old
baseball cap was on his head.

He skirted the four-by-six pool on the bar side and noted that the sand was continuing to pile up.
It would not be long before the pool was stagnant, and each day brought new and fascinating changes
in its population. Gyrinidae, Hydrophilidae, a Corixa hiding in the rubbish on the other end. Some
kind of larvae beside a piece of water-logged board; he'd better take a specimen or two of that. L.
intacta sunning itself smugly on the thermometer.

The back-swimmer, its confidence returned, worked its little oars and zig-zagged in and out of
the trash. N. undulata, wrote Dr. Thorne.

When the count was finished, he took a collecting bottle from the fishing creel hanging over his
shoulder and maneuvered a few of the larvae into it, using the handle of the net to herd them into
position.

And then he noticed that in the clear, algae-free end of the pool, something flashed with a light