"Eric Frank Russel - Six Worlds Yonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

were four planets in this particular family, but only the sec-
ond harbored life in any detectable form.
Eterna was a pretty sight, a great blue-green ball shining
in the blaze of full day. Its land-masses were larger than
Earth's, its oceans smaller. No vast mountain ranges were vis-
ible, no snow-caps either, yet lakes and rivers were numerous.
Watersheds lay in heavily forested hills that crinkled much
of the surface and left few flat areas. Cloud-banks lay over
the land like scatterings of cotton-wool, widely dispersed but
thick, heavy and great in number.
Through powerful glasses towns and villages could be seen,
most of them placed in clearings around which armies of trees
marched down to the rivers. There were also narrow, wind-
ing roads and thin, spidery bridges. Between the larger towns
ran vague lines that might be railroad tracks but lacked
sufficient detail at such a distance to reveal their true pur-
pose.
Pascoe, the sociologist, put down his binoculars and said,
"Assuming that the night side is very similar, I estimate their
total strength at no more than one hundred millions. I base
that on other planetary surveys. When you've counted the
number of peas per bottle in a large and varied collection,
you develop the ability to make reasonably accurate guesses.
One hundred millions at most."
"That's low for a planet of this size and fertility, isn't it?"
asked Commodore Leigh.
"Not necessarily. There were no more of us in the far past.
Look at us now."
"The implication is that these Waitabits are a comparative-
ly young species?"
"Could be. On the other hand, they may be old and se-
nile and dying out fast. Or perhaps they're slow breeders and

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their natural increase isn't much."
"I don't go for the dying out theory," put in Walterson,
the geophysicist. "If once they were far bigger than they are
today, the planet should still show signs of it. A huge inheri-
tance leaves its mark for centuries. Remember that city-site
we found on Hercules? Even the natives didn't know of it,
the markings being visible only from a considerable altitude."
They used their glasses again, sought for faint lines of or-
derliness in wide tracts of forest. There were none to be seen.
"Short in history or slow to breed," declared Pascoe.
"That's my opinion for what it's worth."
Frowning down at the blue-green ball, Leigh said heavily,
"By our space-experienced standards a world of one hundred
millions is weak. It's certainly not sufficiently formidable to