MacRoscope by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

discomforting degree of awe. This was a genuine extraterrestrial planetary species, and the very realization of its existence was nearly overwhelming.
    “They hardly care about Earth. Remember, we were in our tedious prehistory at the time we see them now. I have no doubt that they are extinct at present.”
    The picture framed an individual burrow. Close up, the occupants seemed a lot less like seals or squids. Their bodies were fishlike but seemingly clumsy, with heavy fins or flippers at the sides and a trunklike tube behind. Two great frog-eyes were mounted on top, pointing mainly backward. The tube appeared to be prehensile, like the proboscis of an elephant.
    “This is the closest you have found to civilization? Creatures who live in multiple-story beaver houses and splash in puddles?”
    “Don’t underestimate them, Ivo. They are technologically advanced. Ahead of us, actually. They’ve had the macroscope for a century.”
    Ivo looked harder, but saw only a small domicile with several fat fishlike creatures lolling listlessly in what he was sure was tepid water. Now and then one squirted a jet of liquid from its trunk and slid backward — or perhaps forward — from the reaction. “Maybe you’d better give me some more background. I’m missing something.”
    “I’ll give you their edited paleontology. We’ve been into their libraries and museums as well as their bedrooms — yes, they have all three, though not like ours — and we have copied some of their animated texts. We haven’t dubbed in any sound yet — this is still in progress — but I’ll provide the running commentary.” He switched from the live scene to film. “Behold: the species history of the proboscoids — ‘probs’ for short — of Sung.”
    And Ivo was immersed in it, absorbing picture and commentary as one. He witnessed Sung as it had been millions of years in the past: mighty forests of ferns upon the land, and of sponges under the ocean. From that rich water came the lungfish types, gulping the moist dense atmosphere, and soon their soft egg-capsules hatched on land. Predators broke them open before the sun did, until survival dictated hatching within the body: live birth. Even then the tiny newborn were vulnerable, and natural selection brought forth at last the successful compromise: the placentile amphibian. This was the stem stock for the class of animal that was to dominate the planet. From its fifty-million-year radiation emerged its successor.
    The primitive proboscoid was not an imposing order. Its families swam the shallow oceans by jetting water through their snouts, and climbed clumsily upon the shores with their flipper-fins. They were timid; their eyes were fixed upon the predators from whom they retreated, not upon their destinations. When they died, they died in flight, sometimes in panic, smashing into obstacles and killing themselves needlessly. Yet they were adept in motion; the funneled water could be aimed in any direction by a twist of the snout, and in some families it was impregnated with a foul-tasting substance that discouraged the pursuer. Their sense of smell sharpened; they were always alert to danger.
    One genus retreated to the rocks of the treacherous surf, the area no other mobile creature desired for a habitat. The seas varied with the tide, and that tide of two near moons seemed to have a malignant passion. The great rounded rocks rolled about, crushing whatever lay beneath and wearing channels into the beach and ocean floor, then jumping into new territory as alternate currents converged and clashed. There was safety for neither land nor sea creature.
    These probs became complete amphibians, their original breathing apparatus adaptable to either air or water and thriving on the combination. They developed the wit to read the shifting currents, to anticipate the tides, and to crawl from channel to channel when danger came. When large sea-predators ventured too far within the shoals, the probs