Inherit the Stars

by James P. Hogan

  "Well, there you are, Vic. Really on the Moon now." Albert's voice came through the speaker inside Hunt's helmet. Hunt felt the spongy dust yield beneath his boots and tried a few experimental steps up and down.

  "It's like Brighton Beach," he said.

  "Okay, you guys?" asked the voice of the UNSA corporal.

  "Okay."

  "Sure."

  "Let's go, then."

  The three brightly colored figures—one orange, one red, and one green—began moving slowly along the well-worn groove that ran up the center of the mound of rubble. At the top they stopped to gaze down at the survey vehicle, already looking toylike in the gorge below.

  They moved into the cleft, climbing between vertical walls of rocks that closed in on both sides as they approached the bend. Above the bend the cleft straightened, and in the distance Hunt could see a huge wall of jagged buttresses towering over the foothills above them—evidently the ridge described in Charlie's note. He could picture vividly the scene in this very place so long ago, when two other figures in space suits had toiled onward and upward, their eyes fixed on that same feature. Above it, the red and black portent of a tormented planet had glowered down on their final agony like . . .

  Hunt stopped, puzzled. He looked up at the ridge again, then turned to stare at the bright disk of Earth, shining far behind his right shoulder. He turned to look one way, then back again the other.

  "Anything wrong?" Alberts, who had continued on a few paces, had turned and was staring back at him.

  "I'm not sure. Hang on there a second." Hunt moved up alongside the professor and pointed up and ahead toward the ridge. "You're more familiar with this place than I am. See that ridge up ahead there—At any time in the year, could the Earth ever appear in a position over the top of it?"

  Alberts followed Hunt's pointing finger, glanced briefly back at the Earth, and shook his head decisively behind his facepiece.

  "Never. From the Lunar surface, the position of Earth is almost constant. It does wobble about its mean position a bit as a result of libration, but not by anything near that much." He looked again. "Never anywhere near there. That's an odd question. Why do you ask?"

  "Just something that occurred to me. Doesn't really matter for now."

  Hunt lowered his eyes and saw an opening at the base of one of the walls ahead. "That must be it. Let's carry on up to it."

  The hole was exactly as he remembered from innumerable photographs. Despite its age, the shape betrayed its artificial origin. Hunt approached almost reverently and paused to finger the rock at one side of the opening with his gauntlet. The score marks had obviously been made by something like a drill.

  "Well, that's it," came the voice of Alberts, who was standing a few feet back. "Charlie's Cave, we call it—more or less exactly as it must have been when he and his companion first saw it. Rather like treading in the sacred chambers of one of the pyramids, isn't it?"

  "That's one way of putting it." Hunt ducked down to peer inside, pausing to fumble for the flashlight at his belt as the sudden darkness blinded him temporarily.

  The rockfall that originally had covered the body had been cleared, and the interior was roomier than he expected. Strange emotions welled inside him as he stared at the spot where, millennia before the first page of history had been written, a huddled figure had painfully scrawled the last page of a story that Hunt had read so recently in an office in Houston, a quarter of a million miles away. He thought of the time that had passed since those events had taken place—of the empires that had grown and fallen, the cities that had crumbled to dust, and the lives that had sparkled briefly and been swallowed into the past—while all that time, unchanging, the secret of these rocks had lain undisturbed. Many minutes passed before Hunt reemerged and straightened up in the dazzling sunlight.

  Again he frowned up toward the ridge. Something tantalizing was dancing elusively just beyond the fringes of the thinking portions of his mind, as if from the subconscious shadows that lay below, something insistent was shrieking to be recognized. And then it was gone.

  He clipped the flashlight back into position on his belt and walked across to rejoin Alberts, who was studying some rock formations on the opposite wall.

  Chapter Twenty

  The giant ships that would fly on the fifth manned mission to Jupiter had been under construction in Lunar orbit for over a year. Besides the command ship, six freighters, each capable of carrying thirty thousand tons of supplies and equipment, gradually took shape high above the surface of the Moon. During the final two months before scheduled departure, the floating jumbles of machinery, materials, containers, vehicles, tanks, crates, drums, and a thousand other items of assorted engineering that hung around the ships like enormous Christmas-tree ornaments, were slowly absorbed inside. The Vega surface shuttles, deep-space cruisers, and other craft also destined for the mission began moving in over a period of several weeks to join their respective mother ships. At intervals throughout the last week, the freighters lifted out of Lunar orbit and set course for Jupiter. By the time its passengers and final complement of crew were being ferried up from the Lunar surface, only the command ship was left, hanging alone in the void. As H hour approached, the gaggle of service craft and attendant satellites withdrew and a flock of escorts converged to stand a few miles off, cameras transmitting live via Luna into the World News Grid.

  As the final minutes ticked by, a million viewscreens showed the awesome mile-and-a-quarter-long shape drifting almost imperceptibly against the background of stars; the serenity of the spectacle seemed somehow to forewarn of the unimaginable power waiting to be unleashed. Exactly on schedule, the flight-control computers completed their final-countdown-phase checkout, obtained "Go" acknowledgment from the ground control master processor, and activated the main thermonuclear drives in a flash that was visible from Earth.

  The Jupiter Five Mission was under way.

  For the next fifteen minutes the ship gained speed and altitude through successively higher orbits. Then, shrugging off the restraining pull of Luna with effortless ease, Jupiter Five soared out and away to begin overtaking and marshalling together its flock of freighters, by this time already strung out across a million miles of space. After a while the escorts turned back toward Luna, while on Earth the news screens showed a steadily diminishing point of light, being tracked by the orbiting telescopes. Soon even that had vanished, and only the long-range radars and laser links were left to continue their electronic exchanges across the widening gulf.

  Aboard the command ship, Hunt and the other UNSA scientists watched on the wall screen in mess twenty-four as the minutes passed by and Luna contracted into a full disk, partly eclipsing that of Earth beyond. In the days that followed, the two globes waned and fused into a single blob of brilliance, standing out in the heavens to signpost the way they had come. As days turned into weeks, even this shrank to become just another grain of dust among millions until, after about a month, they could pick it out only with difficulty.

  Hunt found that it took time to adjust to the idea of living as part of a tiny man-made world, with the Cosmos stretching away to infinity on every side and the distance between them and everything that was familiar increasing at more than ten miles every second. Now they depended utterly for survival on the skills of those who had designed and built the ship. The green hills and blue skies of Earth were no longer factors of survival and seemed to shed some of their tangible attributes, almost like the aftermath of a dream that had seemed real. Hunt came to think of reality as a relative quantity—not something absolute that can be left for a while and then returned to. The ship became the only reality; it was the things left behind that ceased, temporarily, to exist.

  He spent hours in the viewing domes along the outer hull, slowly coming to terms with the new dimension being added to his existence, gazing out at the only thing left that was familiar: the Sun. He found reassurance in the eternal presence of the Sun, with its limitless flood of life-giv
ing warmth and light. Hunt thought of the first sailors, who had never ventured out of sight of land; they too had needed something familiar to cling to. But before long, men would turn their prow toward the open gulf and plunge into the voids between the galaxies. There would be no Sun to reassure them then, and there would be no stars at all; the galaxies themselves would be just faint spots, scattered all the way to infinity.

  What strange new continents were waiting on the other side of those gulfs?

  * * *

  Danchekker was spending one of his relaxation periods in a zero-gravity section of the ship, watching a game of 3-D football being played between two teams of off-duty crew members. The game was based on American-style football and took place inside an enormous sphere of transparent, rubbery plastic. Players hurtled up, down, and in all directions, rebounding off the wall and off each other in a glorious roughhouse directed—vaguely—at getting the ball through two circular goals on opposite sides of the sphere. In reality, the whole thing was just an excuse to let off steam and flex muscles beginning to go soft during the long, monotonous voyage.

  A steward tapped the scientist on the shoulder and informed him that a call was waiting in the videobooth outside the recreation deck. Danchekker nodded, unclipped the safety loop of his belt from the anchor pin attached to the seat, clipped it around the handrail, and with a single effortless pull, sent himself floating gracefully toward the door. Hunt's face greeted him, speaking from a quarter of a mile away.

  "Dr. Hunt," he acknowledged. "Good morning—or whatever it happens to be at the present time in this infernal contraption."

  "Hello, Professor," Hunt replied. "I've been having some thoughts about the Ganymeans. There are one or two points I could use your opinion on; could we meet somewhere for a bite to eat, say inside the next half hour or so?"

  "Very well. Where did you have in mind?"

  "Well, I'm on my way to the restaurant in E section right now. I'll be there for a while."

  "I'll join you there in a few minutes." Danchekker cut off the screen, emerged from the booth, and hauled himself back into the corridor and along it to an entrance to one of the transverse shafts leading "down" toward the axis of the ship. Using the handrails, he sailed some distance toward the center before checking himself opposite an exit from the shaft. He emerged through a transfer lock into one of the rotating sections, with simulated G, at a point near the axis where the speed differential was low. He launched himself back along another rail and felt himself accelerate gently, to land thirty feet away, on his feet, on a part of the structure that had suddenly become the floor. Walking normally, he followed some signs to the nearest tube access point, pressed the call button, and waited about twenty seconds for a capsule to arrive. Once inside, he keyed in his destination and within seconds was being whisked smoothly through the tube toward E section of the ship.

  The permanently open self-service restaurant was about half full. The usual clatter of cutlery and dishes poured from the kitchens behind the counter at one end, where a trio of UNSA cooks were dishing out generous helpings of assorted culinary offerings ranging from UNSA eggs and UNSA beans to UNSA chicken legs and UNSA steaks. Automatic food dispensers with do-it-yourself microwave cookers had been tried on Jupiter Four but hadn't proved popular with the crew. So the designers of Jupiter Five had gone back to the good old-fashioned methods.

  Carrying their trays, Hunt and Danchekker threaded their way between diners, card players, and vociferous debating groups and found an empty table against the far wall. They sat down and began transferring their plates to the table.

  "So, you've been entertaining some thoughts concerning our Ganymean friends," Danchekker commented as he began to butter a roll.

  "Them and the Lunarians," Hunt replied. "In particular, I like your idea that the Lunarians evolved on Minerva from terrestrial animal species that the Ganymeans imported. It's the only thing that accounts acceptably for no traces of any civilizations showing up on Earth. All these attempts people are making to show it might be different don't convince me much at all."

  "I'm very gratified to hear you say so," Danchekker declared. "The problem, however, is proving it."

  "Well, that's what I've been thinking about. Maybe we shouldn't have to."

  Danchekker looked up and peered inquisitively over his spectacles. He looked intrigued. "Really? How, might I ask?"

  "We've got a big problem trying to figure out anything about what happened on Minerva because we're fairly sure it doesn't exist anymore except as a million chunks of geology strewn around the Solar System. But the Lunarians didn't have that problem. They had it in one piece, right under their feet. Also, they had progressed to an advanced state of scientific knowledge. Now, what must their work have turned up—at least to some extent?"

  A light of comprehension dawned in Danchekker's eyes.

  "Ah!" he exclaimed at once. "I see. If the Ganymean civilization had flourished on Minerva first, then Lunarian scientists would surely have deduced as much." He paused, frowned, then added: "But that does not get you very far, Dr. Hunt. You are no more able to interrogate Lunarian scientific archives than you are to reassemble the planet."

  "No, you're right," Hunt agreed. "We don't have any detailed Lunarian scientific records—but we do have the microdot library. The texts it contains are pretty general in nature, but I couldn't help thinking that if the Lunarians discovered an advanced race had been there before them, it would be big and exciting news, something everybody would know about; you've only got to look at the fuss that Charlie has caused on Earth. Perhaps there were references through all of their writings that pointed to such a knowledge—if we knew how to read them." He paused to swallow a mouthful of sausage. "So, one of the things I've been doing over the last few weeks is going through everything we've got with a fine-tooth comb to see if anything could point to something like that. I didn't expect to find firm proof of anything much—just enough for us to be able to say with a bit more confidence that we think we know what planet we're talking about."

  "And did you find very much?" Danchekker seemed interested.

  "Several things," Hunt replied. "For a start, there are stock phrases scattered all through their language that refer to the Giants. Phrases like 'As old as the Giants' or 'Back to the year of the Giants' . . . like we'd say maybe, 'Back to the year one.' In another place there's a passage that begins 'A long time ago, even before the time of the Giants' . . . There are lots of things like that. When you look at them from this angle, they all suddenly tie together." Hunt paused for a second to allow the professor time to reflect on these points, then resumed: "Also, there are references to the Giants in another context, one that suggests superpowers or great knowledge—for example, 'Gifted with the wisdom of the Giants.' You see what I mean—these phrases indicate the Lunarians felt a race of giant beings—and probably one that was advanced technologically—had existed in the distant past."

  Danchekker chewed his food in silence for a while.

  "I don't want to sound overskeptical," he said at last, "but all this seems rather speculative. Such references could well be to nothing more than mythical creations—similar to our own heroes of folklore."

  "That occurred to me, too," Hunt conceded. "But thinking about it, I'm not so sure. The Lunarians were the last word in pragmatism—they had no time for romanticism, religion, matters of the spirit, or anything like that. In the situation they were in, the only people who could help them were themselves, and they knew it. They couldn't afford the luxury and the delusion of inventing gods, heroes, and Father Christmases to work their problems out for them." He shook his head. "I don't believe the Lunarians made up any legends about these Giants. That would have been too much out of character."

  "Very well," Danchekker agreed, returning to his meal. "The Lunarians were aware of the prior existence of the Ganymeans. I suspect, however, that you had more than that in mind when you called."

  "You're right," Hunt said. "While I was goi
ng through the texts, I pulled together some other bits and pieces that are more in your line."

  "Go on."

  "Well, supposing for the moment that the Ganymeans did ship a whole zoo out to Minerva, the Lunarian biologists later on would have had a hell of a problem making any sense out of what they found all around them, wouldn't they? I mean, with two different groups of animals loose about the place, totally unrelated—and bearing in mind that they couldn't have known what we know about terrestrial species . . ."

  "Worse than that, even," Danchekker supplied. "They would have been able to trace the native Minervan species all the way back to their origins; the imported types, however, would extend back through only twenty-five million years or so. Before that, there would have been no record of any ancestors from which they could have descended."