War and Space
Page 12
The Interstellar Exploration ship, the Boulevard of Happiness and Interest under the captaincy of Paul Ivanovitch, Christopher’s identical twin brother returned to the Earth after a very frustrating three years in the Triangulum Galaxy, M33. They had received radio signals that were definitely from an intelligent source, and had spent the three years trying unsuccessfully to track its source. The signals were degraded as if they had been travelling in space for about 200 years.
Other Universes
The A and S universes were informed about all the things that had happened using the interuniversal communicators located on Earth in all three universes.
The Earth Humans in the other universes made plans to contact the Idaltus of their universes without any misunderstandings. The modest Sam would follow the normal designation of the three inhabited universes in communication but he avoided mentioning that the S of the S universe stood for ‘Sam’, and referred to himself.
There were Giants
"There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."
Genesis Chapter 6, verse 4
Andy was nominally Catholic, but he read religious books much more widely than most Catholics. This included the sacred books of other religions.
He and Ali had been talking about what was known about Homo sapiens idaltu from the fossil evidence. Ali had said:
“The fossil evidence from Ethiopia and other places suggest strongly that idaltu was bigger than our subspecies, as well as having a larger brain and a slightly more dome shaped head.
“It was from the shape of the head and the smaller face that I first got the idea that these people were idaltu.
“The larger brain may be misleading when comparing intelligence. For example, Bonobos are probably slightly more intelligent than common Chimpanzees despite having a slightly smaller brain.”
Andy was familiar with Genesis chapter six. Although there was disagreement about the exact meaning of the passage, it definitely mentioned giants. Giants were also common to many other cultures. Another thing that the Holy Bible mentioned was the long life of early Humans, for example Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years. It was interesting how well these things fit the Idaltu Humans.
Andy mused at how much of the Theory of Evolution and the Holy Bible supported each other, if you looked for it. He had never considered there was any conflict between his religious beliefs and his interest in science.
Of course, the gentle Andy tended to look for agreement. Other people preferred to look for disagreement between the Holy Bible and the theory of evolution. They could also find plenty of passages to support their views.
Andy also wondered if the story of Noah’s Ark came from the large numbers of animals taken onto the huge colony ships of the Idaltu. But he thought he was getting too fanciful. A major thing wrong with the theories he was weaving was the enormous time between the Idaltu people leaving the Earth and the present day. The stories of what had happened seemed unlikely to have persisted for so long, even in a distorted form.
Dissent
Pete’s youngest son Karl and his wife Carla from the S universe had been on the Earth. They had made the deliberate decision to take a break from space travel until their twin boys had finished high school. Nigel and Chance Jones were identical and were the first people known to be homozygous with the gene that was believed to be partly responsible for Pete’s abnormal abilities as well as some of his weaknesses. They could link minds to a very limited extent.
The two little boys were having a friendly wrestling match while they discussed the recent war.
Chance was on top on his bother, and said:
“Yes, of course Captain Jack guessed right, but his logic was faulty. There are many ways that a space faring species could be warlike. Our species has fooled itself as usual.”
This is the first book of the ‘War and Space Trilogy of novellas. The next one is ‘The Local War’. It is set a few years after the end of ‘War and Space’. Despite Captain Jack and his friends’ comfortable conclusions that interstellar war is impossible, there are several things wrong with their logic. As people often do they had convinced themselves that what they wanted to believe was true.
The Local War
The Earth and its colony planets have been at peace for over 150 years, apart from the first encounter with the peaceful Idaltu. The very idea of war is politically incorrect, so when the identical tele-empathic 11 year old twins, Nigel and Chance Jones conclude in a school project that malicious aliens are wiping out life in the 30 galaxies of the Local Group, they get zero marks. Their powerful family takes them more seriously, and they travel outside the Local Group in the Highway to Heaven, nominal flagship of Earth's interstellar fleet, to test the theory.
They are unaware of the developing attack on planet B2 in the Andromeda Galaxy. It is up to Captain Brown of the Investigator scientific habitat to save the planet with limited resources.
Captain Jack leads the expedition to the home world of the aliens, but Chance Jones doesn’t like the caution of his older relatives and his unauthorized flight gets him shot down by a ground based laser and marooned on the alien planet and injured by a laser blast. The others believe that Chance is dead, and the little boy has to cope with hostile aliens, omnivorous animals, nocturnal predators and blood suckers.
This novella is nearly twice as long as War and Space.
The third novella of the War and Space Trilogy continues on from ‘The Local War’.