billion choices open to him. This is the game of evolution. To
suppose that two such independent sequences could result in end
products that are identical would surely be demanding too much of
our credulity. The laws of chance and statistics are quite firm
when applied to sufficiently large numbers of samples. The laws of
thermodynamics, for example, are nothing more than expressions of
the probable behavior of gas molecules, yet the numbers involved
are so large that we feel quite safe in accepting the postulates as
rigid rules; no significant departure from them has ever been
observed. The probabifity of the parallel line of evolulion that
you suggest is less than the probability of heat flowing from the
kettle to the fire, or of all the air molecules in this room
crowding into one corner at the same time, causing us all to
explode spontaneously. Mathematically speaking, yes-the possibility
of parallelism is finite, but so indescribably remote that we need
consider it no further."
A young electronics engineer took the argument up at this point
"Couldn't God get a look in?" he asked. "Or at least, some kind of
guiding force or principle that we don't yet comprehend? Couldn't
the same design be produced via different lines in different
places?"
Danchekker shook his head and smiled almost benevolently.
"We are scientists, not mystics," he replied. "One of the funda
mental principles of scientific method is that new and speculative
hypotheses do not warrant consideration as long as the facts that
are observed are adequately accounted for by the theories that
already exist. Nothing resembling a universal guiding force has
ever been revealed by generations of investigation, and since the
facts observed are adequately explained by the accepted principles
I have outlined, there is no necessity to invoke or invent
additional causes. Notions of guiding forces and grand designs
exist only in the mind of the misguided observer, not in the facts
he observes."
"But suppose it turns out that Charlie came from somewhere else,"
the metallurgist insisted. "What then?"
"Ah! Now, that would be an entirely different matter. If it should
be proved by some other means that Charlie did indeed evolve
somewhere else, then we would be forced to accept that parallel
evolution had occurred as an observed and unquestionable fact.
Since this could not be explained within the framework of
contemporary theory, our theories would be shown to be woefully
inadequate. That would be the time to speculate on additional
influences. Then, perhaps, your universal guiding force might find
a rightful place. To entertain such concepts at this stage,
however, would be to put the cart fairly and squarely before the
horse. In so doing, we would be guilty of a breach of one of the
most fundamental of scientific principles."
Somebody else tried to push the professor from a different angle.
"How about convergent lines rather than parallel lines? Maybe the
selection principles work in such a way that different lines of
development converge toward the same optimum end product. In other
words, although they start out in different directions, they will
both eventually hit on the same, best final design. Like . . ." He
sought for an analogy. "Like sharks are fish and dolphins are
mammals. They both came from different origins but ended up hitting
on the same general shape."
Danchekker again shook his head firmly. "Forget the idea of
perfection and best end products," he said. "You are unwittingly
falling into this trap of assuming a grand design again. The human
form is not nearly as perfect as you perhaps imagine. Nature does
not produce best solutions-it will try any solution. The only test
applied is that it be good enough to survive and reproduce itself.
Far more species have proved unsuccessful and become extinct
than have survived-far, far more. It is easy to contemplate a kind
of preordained striving toward something perfect when this
fundamental fact is overlooked-when looking back dawn the tree, as
it were, with the benefit of hindsight from our particular
successful branch and forgetting the countless other branches that
got nowhere.
"No, forget this idea of perfection. The developments we see in the
natural world are simply cases of something good enough to do the
job. Usually, many conceivable alternatives would be as good, and
some better.
"Take as an example the cusp pattern on the first lower molar tooth
of man. It is made up of a group of five main cusps with a complex
of intervening grooves and ridges that help to grind up food. There
is no reason to suppose that this particular pattern is any more
efficient than any one of many more that might be considered. This
particular pattern, however, first occurred as a mutation somewhere
along the ancestral line leading toward man and has been passed on
ever since. The same pattern is also found on the teeth of the
great apes, indicating that we both inherited it from some early
common ancestor where it happened through pure chance.
"Charlie has human cusp patterns on all his teeth.
"Many of our adaptations are far from perfect. The arrangement of
internal organs leaves much to be desired, owing to our inheriting
a system originally developed to suit a horizontal and not an
upright posture. In our respiratory system, for example, we find
that the wastes and dirt that accumulate in the throat and nasal
regions drain inside and not outside, as happened originally, a
prime cause of many bronchial and chest complaints not suffered by
four-footed animals. That's hardly perfection, is it?'~' Danchekker
took a sip of water and made an appealing gesture to the room in
general.
"So, we see that any idea of convergence toward the ideal is not
supported by the facts. Charlie exhibits all our faults and
imperfections as well as our improvements. No, I'm sorry-I
appreciate that these questions are voiced in the best tradition of
leaving no possibility unprobed and I commend you for them, but
really, we must dismiss them."
Silence enveloped the room at his concluding words. On all
sides, everybody seemed to be staring thoughtfully through the
table, through the walls, or through the ceiling.
Caldwell placed his hands on the table and looked around until
satisfied that nobody had anything to add.
"Looks like evolution stays put for a while longer," he grunted.
"Thank you, Professor."
Danchekker nodded without looking up.
"However," Caldwell continued, "the object of these meetings is to
give everyone a chance to talk freely as well as listen. So far,
some people haven't had much to say-especially one or two of the
newcomers." Hunt realized with a start that Caidwell was looking
straight at him. "Our English visitor, for example, whom most of
you already know. Dr. Hunt, do you have any views that we ought to
>
hear about. . . ?"
Next to Caldwell, Lyn Garland was making no attempt to conceal a
wide smile. Hunt took a long draw at his cigarette and used the
delay to collect his thoughts. In the time it took for him to
coolly emit one long, diffuse cloud of smoke and ifick his hand at
the ashtray, all the pieces clicked together in his brain with the
smooth precision of the binary regiments parading through the
registers of the computers downstairs. Lyn's persistent
cross-examinations, her visits to the Ocean, his presence
here-Caldwell had found a catalyst.
Hunt surveyed the array of attentive faces. "Most of what's been
said reasserts the accepted principles of comparative anatomy and
evolutionary theory. Just to clear the record for anyone with
misleading ideas, I've no intention of questioning them. However,
the conclusion could be summed up by saying that since Charlie
comes from the same ancestors as we do, he must have evolved on
Earth the same as we did."
"That is so," threw in Danchekker.
"Fine," Hunt replied. "Now, all this is really your problem, not
mine, but since you've asked me what I think, I'll state the
conclusion another way. Since Charlie evolved on Earth, the
civilization he was from evolved on Earth. The indications are that
his culture was about as advanced as ours, maybe in one or two
areas slightly more advanced. So, we ought to find no end of traces
of his people. We don't. Why not?"
All heads turned toward Danchekker.
The professor sighed. "The only conclusion left open to us is
that whatever traces were left have been erased by the natural
processes of weathering and erosion," he said wearily. "There are
several possibilities: A catastrophe of some sort could have wiped
them out to the extent that there were no traces; or possibly their
civilization existed in regions which today are submerged beneath
the oceans. Further searching will no doubt produce solutions to
this question."
"If any catastrophe as violent as that occurred so recently, we
would already know about it," Hunt pointed out. "Most of what was
land then is still land today, so I can't see them sinking into the
ocean somewhere, either; besides, you've only to look at our
civilization to see it's not confined to localized areas-it's
spread all over the globe. And how is it that in spite of all the
junk that keeps turning up with no trouble at all from primitive
races from around the same time-bones, spears, clubs, and so
on-nobody has ever found a single example of anything related to
this supposed technologically advanced culture? Not a screw, or a
piece of wire, or a plastic washer. To me, that doesn't make
sense."
More murmuring broke out to mark the end of Hunt's critique.
"Professor?" Caldwell invited comment with a neutral voice.
Danchekker compressed his mouth into a grimace. "Oh, I agree, I
agree. It is surprising-very surprising. But what alternative are
you proposing?" His voice took on a note of sarcasm. "Do you
suggest that man and all the animals came to Earth in some enormous
celestial Noah's Ark?" He laughed. "If so, the fossil record of a
hundred million years disproves you."
"Impasse." The comment came from Professor Schorn, an authority on
comparative anatomy, who had arrived from Stuttgart a few days
before.
"Looks like it," Caldwell agreed.
Danchekker, however, was not through. "Would Dr. Hunt care to
answer my question?" he challenged. "Precisely what other place of
origin is he suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anywhere in particular," Hunt replied evenly.
"What I am suggesting is that perhaps a more openminded approach
might be appropriate at this stage. After all, we've only just
found Charlie. This business will go on for years yet; there's
bound to be a lot more information surfacing that we don't have
right now. I think it's too early to be jumping ahead and
predicting what the answers might be. Better just to keep on
plodding along and using every scrap of data we've got to put
together a picture of the place Charlie came from. It might turn
out to be Earth. Then again, it might not."
Caldwell led him on further. "How would you suggest we go about
that?"
Hunt wondered if this was a direct cue. He decided to risk it. "You
could try taking a closer look at this." He drew a sheet of paper
out from the folder in front of him and slid it across to the
center of the table. The paper showed a complicated tabular
arrangement of Lunarian numerals.
"What's that?" asked a voice.
"It's from one of the pocket books," Hunt replied. "I think the
book is something not unlike a diary. I also believe that that"-he
pointed at the sheet-"could well be a calendar." He caught a sly
wink from Lyn Garland and returned it.
"Calendar?"
"How d'you figure that one?"
"It's all gobbledygook."
Danchekker stared hard at the paper for a few seconds. "Can you
prove it's a calendar?" he demanded.
"No, I can't. But I have analyzed the number pattern and can state
that it's made up of ascending groups that repeat in sets and
subsets. Also, the alphabetic groups that seem to label the major
sets correspond to the headings of groups of pages further on-
remarkably like the layout of a diary."
"Hmmph! More likely some form of tabular page index."
"Could be," Hunt granted. "But why not wait and see? Once the
language has unraveled a bit more, it should be possible to
cross-check a lot of what's here with items from other sources.
This is the kind of thing that maybe we ought to be a little more
open-minded about. You say Charlie comes from Earth; I say he
might. You say this is not a calendar; I say it might be. In my
estimation, an attitude like yours is too inflexible to permit an
unbiased appraisal of the problem. You've already made up your mind
what you want the answers to be."
"Hear, hear!" a voice at the end of the table called.
Danchekker colored visibly, but Caldwell spoke before he could
reply.
"You've analyzed the numbers-right?"
"Right."
~uicay, supposing for now its a calendar-wnat more can you tell
us?"
Hunt leaned forward across the table and pointed at the sheet with
his pen.
"First, two assumptions. One: the natural unit of time on any world
is the day-that is, the time it takes the planet to rotate on its
axis. . ."
"Assuming it rotates," somebody tossed in.
"That was my second assumption. But the only cases we know of where
there's no rotation-or where the orbital period equals the axial
period, which amounts to the same thing-occur when a small body
orbits close to a far more massive one and is swamped by
gravitational tidal effects, like our Moon. For that to happen to a
body the size of a planet, the planet would have to orbit very
close to its parent
star-too close for it to support any life
comparable to our own."
"Seems reasonable," Caldwell said, looking around the table.
Various heads were nodding assent. "Where do we go from there?"
"Okay," Hunt resumed. "Assuming it rotates and the day is its
natural unit of time-if this complete table represents one full
orbit around its sun, there are seventeen hundred days in its year,
one entry for each."
"Pretty long," someone hazarded.
"To us, yes: at least, the year-to-day ratio is big. It could mean
the orbit is large, the rotational period short, or perhaps a bit
of both. Now look at the major number groups-the ones tagged with
the heavy alphabetic labels. There are forty-seven of them. Most
contain thirty-six numbers, but nine of them have thirty-seven-the
first, sixth, twelfth, eighteenth, twenty-fourth, thirtieth,
thirtysixth, forty-second, and forty-seventh. That seems a bit odd
at first sight, but so would our system to someone unfamiliar with
it. It suggests that maybe somebody had to do a bit of fiddling
with it to make it work."
"Mmm. . . like with our months."
"Exactly. This is just the sort of juggling you have to do to get a
sensible fit of our months into our year. It happens because
there's no simple relationship between the orbital periods of
planet and satellite; there's no reason why there should be. I'm
guessing that if this is a calendar that relates to some other
planet,
then the reason for this odd mix of thirty-sixes and thirty-sevens
is the same as the one that causes problems with our calendar: That
planet had a moon."
"So these groups are months," Caldwell stated.
"If it's a calendar-yes. Each group is divided into three
subgroups-weeks, if you like. Normally there are twelve days in
each, but there are nine long months, in which the middle week has
thirteen days."
Danchekker looked for a long time at the sheet of paper, an
expression of pained disbelief spreading slowly across his face.
"Are you proposing this as a serious scientific theory?" he queried
in a strained voice.
"Of course not," Hunt replied. "This is all pure speculation. But
it does indicate some of the avenues that could be explored. These
alphabetic groups, for example, might correspond to references that
the language people might dig from other sources-such as dates on
Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars Page 8
