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 civilization 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 any
more except as a million chunks of geology strewn around the Solar
System. But the Lunarians didn't have that prob
lem. 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 dviiization 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 in-venting
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 going 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."
"That's precisely one of the things I wanted to ask you," Hunt
said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
"Suppose you were a Lunarian biologist and knew only the facts he
would have known. What sort of picture would it have added up to?"
Danchekker stopped chewing and thought for a long time, his eyes
staring far beyond where Hunt was sitting. At length he shook his
head slowly.
"That is a very diflicult question to ans
wer. In that situation one
might, I suppose, speculate that the Ganymeans had introduced alien
species. But on the other hand, that is what a biologist from Earth
would think; he would be conditioned to expect a continuous fossil
record stretching back over hundreds of millions of years. A
Lunarian, without any such conditioning, might not regard the
absence of a complete record as in any way abnormal. If that was
part of the accepted way of things in the world in which he had
grown up. . ."
Danchekker's voice faded away for a few seconds. "If I were a
Lunarian," he said suddenly, his voice decisive, "I would explain
what I saw thus: Life began in the distant past on Minerva, evolved
through the accepted process of mutation and selection, and
branched into many diverse forms. About twenty-five million years
ago, a particularly violent series of mutations occurred in a short
time, out of which emerged a new family of forms, radically
different in structure from anything before. This family branched
to produce its own divergency of species, living alongside the
older models, and culminating in the emergence of the Lunarians
themselves. Yes, I would explain the new appearances in that way.
It's similar to the appearance of insects on Earth-a whole family
in itself, structurally dissimilar to anything else." He thought it
over again for a second and then nodded firmly. "Certainly,
compared to an explanation of that nature, suggestions of forced
interplanetary migrations would appear very farfetched indeed."
"I was hoping you'd say something like that." Hunt nodded,
satisfied. "In fact, that's very much what they appear to have
believed. It's not specifically stated in anything I've read, but
odds and ends from different places add up to that. But there's
something odd about it as well."
"Oh?"
"There's a funny word that crops up in a number of places that
doesn't have a direct English equivalent; it means something
between 'manlike' and 'man-related.' They used it to describe many
animal types."
"Probably the animals descended from the imported types and related
to themselves," Danchekker suggested.
"Yes, exactly. But they also used the saute word in a totally
different context-to mean 'ashore,' 'on land'. . . anything to do
with dry land. Now, why should a word become synonymous with two
such different meanings?"
Danchekker stopped eating again and furrowed his brow.
"I really can't imagine. Is it important?"
"Neither could I, and I think it is. I've done a lot of
cross-checking with Linguistics on this, and it all adds up to a
very peculiar thing: 'Manlike' and 'dry-land' became synonymous on
Minerva because they did in fact mean the same thing. All the land
animals on Minerva were new models. We coined the word terrestoid
to describe them in English."
"A ii of them? You mean that by Charlie's time there were none of
the original Minervan species left at all?" Danchekker sounded
amazed.
"That's what we think-not on land, anyway. There was a full fossil
record of plenty of types all the way up to, and including the
Ganymeans, but nothing after that-just terrestoids."
"And in the sea?"
"That was different. The old Minervan types continued right
through-hence your fish."
Danchekker gazed at Hunt with an expression that almost betrayed
open disbelief.
"How extraordinary!" he exclaimed.
The professor's arm had suddenly become paralyzed and was holding a
fork in midair with half a roast potato impaled on the end. "You
mean that all the native Minervan land life disappeared
-just like that?"
"Well, during a fairly short time, anyway. We've been asking for a
long time what happened to the Ganymeans. Now it looks more as if
the question should be phrased in even broader terms:
What happened to the Ganymeans and all their land-dwelling
relatives?"
chapter twenty-one
For weeks the two scientists debated the mystery of the abrupt
disappearance of the native Minervan land dwellers. They ruled out
physical catastrophe on the assumption that anything of that kind
would have destroyed the terrestoid types as well. The same
conclusion applied to climatic cataclysm.
For a while they considered the possibility of an epidemic caused
by microorganisms imported with the immigrant animals, one against
which the native species enjoyed no inherited, in-built immunity.
In the end they dismissed this idea as unlikely on two counts;
first, an epidemic sufficiently virulent in its effects to wipe out
each and every species of what must have numbered millions, was
hard to imagine; second, all information received so far from
Ganymede suggested that the Ganymeans had been considerably farther
ahead in technical knowledge than either the Lunarians or
mankind-surely they could never have made such a blunder.
A variation on this theme supposed that germ warfare had broken
out, escalated, and got out of control. Both the previous
objections carried less weight when viewed in this context; in the
end, this explanation was accepted as possible. That left only one
other possibility: some kind of chemical change in the Minervan
atmosphere to which the native species hadn't been capable of
adapting but the terrestoids had. But what?
While the pros and cons of these alternatives were still being
evaluated on Jupiter Five, the laser link to Earth brought details
of a new row that had broken out in Navcomms. A faction of Pure
Earthists had produced calculations showing that the Lunarians
could never have survived on Minerva at all, let alone flourished
there; at that distance from the Sun it would simply have been too
cold. They also insisted that water could never have existed on the
surface in a liquid state and held this fact as proof that wherever
the world shown on Charlie's maps had been, it couldn't have been
anywhere near the Asteroids.
Against this attack the various camps of Minerva-ists concluded
a hasty alliance and opened counterfire with calculations of their
own, which invoked the greenhouse effect of atmospheric carbon
dioxide to show that a substantially higher temperature could have
been sustained. They demonstrated further that the percentage of
carbon dioxide required to produce the mean temperature that they
had already estimated by other means, was precisely the figure
arrived at by Professor Schorn in his deduction of the composition
of the Minervan atmosphere from an analysis of Charlie's cell
metabolism and respiratory system. The land mine that finally
demolished the Pure Earthist position was Schom's later
pronouncement that Charlie exhibited several physiological signs
implying adaptation to an abnormally high level of carbon dioxide.
Their curiosity stimulated by all this sudden interest in the
amount of carbon dioxide in the Minervan atmosphere, Hunt and
> Danchekker devised a separate experiment of their own. Combining
Hunt's mathematical skill with Danchekker's knowledge of
quantitative molecular biology, they developed a computer model of
generalized Minervan microchemical behavior potentials, based on
data derived from the native fish. It took them over three months
to perfect. Then they applied to the model a series of mathematical
operators that simulated the effects of different chemical agents
in the environment. When he viewed the results on the screen in one
of the console rooms Danchekker's conclusion was quite definite:
"Any air-breathing life form that evolved from the same primitive
ancestors as this fish and inherited the same fundamental system of
microchemistry, would be extremely susceptible to a family of
toxins that includes carbon dioxide-far more so than the majority
of terrestrial species."
For once, everything added up. About twenty-five million years ago,
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Minerva
apparently increased suddenly, possibly through some natural cause
that had liberated the gas from chemical combination in rocks, or
possibly as a result of something the Ganymeans had done. This
could also explain why the Ganymeans had brought in all the
animals. Perhaps their prime objective had been to redress the
balance by covering the planet with carbon-dioxideabsorbing,
oxygen-producing terrestrial green plants; the animals had been
included simply to preserve a balanced ecology in which the plants
could survive. The attempt failed. The native life succumbed, and
the more highly resistant immigrants flourished and
spread out over a whole new world denuded of alien competition.
Nobody knew for sure that it had been so on Minerva. Possibly
nobody ever would.
And nobody knew what had become of the Ganymeans. Perhaps they had
perished along with their cousins. Perhaps, when their efforts
proved futile, they had abandoned Minerva to its new inhabitants
and left the Solar System completely to find a new home elsewhere.
Hunt hoped so. For some strange reason he had developed an
inexplicable affection for this mysterious race. In one of the
Lunarian texts he had come across a verse that began: "Far away
among the stars, where the Giants of old now live. . ." He hoped it
Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars Page 21
