"Eric Frank Russel - Mesmerica" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

Green was the predominant colour with here and there
an odd patch of yellow or brown. The chlorophyll reaction
seems common to vegetation in most parts of the cosmos
where quality of solar radiation favours it. The sun's rays
showed golden where they struck through gaps between
growths. This world's primary closely resembled Old Sol
but was a trifle hotter because a little nearer.

I felt a bit uneasy as I studied the scene outside. This
strange live-and-let-live orderliness of plant-life registered
with an eerie touch of artificiality. I could distinguish no
organised regularity among the growths themselves, no
neat patches of one type or tidy rows of another. Nevertheless
I had a strong impression that they had been cultivated by
some thing or things with ideas radically different
from our own. It looked rather as though an alien agriculturalist
had mooched around with a sack of widely assorted
seeds, setting them at random just as his hand found them,
but carefully spacing them according to each one's individual
need. Like a man planting an oak twenty feet from a cabbage.

Brennand came along, remarked, "There appears to be a
deceitful law governing other worlds, to wit: that they look
completely innocent while making ready to bite your nut
off."

"You think this one is preparing some mayhem?"

"I don't know. But I'll lay no bets on it being a Garden
of Eden."

"Would you bet on it being a garden of some sort?"
"What d'you mean?" He eyed me curiously.

I pointed through the port. "Where's the usual battle for
living-space?"

He had a look outside. "That's an easy one. The ground
is poor hereabouts. It lacks fertility. So growth is sparse."

" How's that for being sparse? " I inquired, indicating a
hairy, cactus-like object half the size of the Marathon.

"The stuff grows too haphazardly, anyway," he evaded.

"You don't plant a carrot next to a gooseberry bush."
"Somebody else might."

"Why?