The Gentle Giants of Ganymede -- James P. Hogan

(Version 2002.02.12 -- Done)


      To my wife, Lyn, who showed me that greener grass can always be made to
grow on whatever side of the field one happens to be.


Prologue

      Leyel Torres, commander of the scientific observation base near the
equator on Iscaris III, closed the final page of the report that he had been
reading and stretched back in his chair with a grateful sigh. He sat for a
while, enjoying the feeling of relaxation as the seat adjusted itself to
accommodate his new posture, and then rose to pour himself a drink from one of
the flasks on a tray on the small table behind his desk. The drink was cool
and refreshing, and quickly dispelled the fatigue that had begun to build up
inside him after more than two hours of unbroken concentration. Not much
longer now, he thought. Two months more and they should be saying good-bye to
this barren ball of parched rock forever and returning to the clean, fresh,
infinite star-speckled blackness that lay between here and home.
      He cast his eye around the inside of the study of his private quarters
in the conglomeration of domes, observatory buildings and communications
antennas that had been home for the last two years. He was tired of the same,
endless month-in, month-out routine. The project was exciting and stimulating
it was true, but enough was enough; going home, as far as he was concerned,
couldn't come a day too soon.
      He walked slowly over to the side of the room and stared for a second or
two at the blank wall in front of him. Without turning his head he said aloud:
"View panel. See-through mode."
      The wall immediately became one-way transparent, presenting him with a
clear view out over the surface of Iscaris III. From the edge of the jumble of
constructions and machinery that made up the base, the dry, uniform reddish-
brown crags and boulders stretched all the way to the distinctly curved
skyline where they abruptly came to an end beneath a curtain of black velvet
embroidered with stars. High above, the fiery orb of Iscaris blazed
mercilessly, its reflected rays filling the room with a warm glow of orange
and red. As he looked out across the wilderness, a sudden longing welled up
inside him for the simple pleasure of walking under a blue sky and breathing
in the forgotten exhilaration of a wind blowing free. Yes, indeed -- departure
couldn't come a day too soon.
      A voice that seemed to issue from nowhere in particular in the room
interrupted his musings.
      "Marvyl Chariso is requesting to be put through, Commander. He says it's
extremely urgent."
      "Accept," Torres replied. He turned about to face the large view screen
that occupied much of the opposite wall. The screen came alive at once to
reveal the features of Chariso, a senior physicist, speaking from an
instrumentation laboratory in the observatory. His face registered alarm.
      "Leyel," Chariso began without preamble. "Can you get down here right
away. We've got trouble -- real trouble." His tone of voice said the rest.
Anything that could arouse Chariso to such a state had to be bad.
      "I'm on my way," he said, already moving toward the door.
      Five minutes later Torres arrived in the lab and was greeted by the
physicist, who by this time was looking more worried than ever. Chariso led
him to a monitor before a bank of electronic equipment where Galdern Brenzor,
another of the scientists, was staring grim-faced at the curves and data
analyses on the computer output screens. Brenzor looked up as they approached
and nodded gravely.
      "Strong emission lines in the photosphere," he said. "Absorption lines
are shifting rapidly toward the violet. There's no doubt about it; a major
instability is breaking out in the core and it's running away."
      Torres looked over at Chariso.
      "Iscaris is going nova," Chariso explained. "Something's gone wrong with
the project and the whole star's started to blow up. The photosphere is
exploding out into space and preliminary calculations indicate we'll be
engulfed here in less than twenty hours. We have to evacuate."
      Tones stared at him in stunned disbelief. "That's impossible."
      The scientist spread his arms wide. "Maybe so, but it's fact. Later we
can take as long as you like to figure out where we went wrong, but right now
we've got to get out of here...fast!"
      Tones stared at the two grim faces while his mind instinctively tried to
reject what it was being told. He gazed past them at another large wall screen
that was presenting a view being transmitted from ten million miles away in
space. He was looking at one of the three enormous G-beam projectors,
cylinders two miles long and a third of a mile across, that had been built in
stellar orbit thirty million miles from Iscaris with their axes precisely
aligned on the center of the star. Behind the silhouette of the projector
Iscaris's blazing globe was still normal in appearance, but even as he looked
he imagined that he could see its disk swelling almost imperceptibly but
menacingly outward.
      For a moment his mind was swamped by emotions -- the enormity of the
task that suddenly confronted them, the hopelessness of having to think
rationally under impossible time pressures, the futility of two years of
wasted efforts. And then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling evaporated
and the commander in him reasserted itself.
      "ZORAC," he called in a slightly raised voice.
      "Commander?" The same voice that had spoken in his study answered.
      "Contact Garuth on the Shapieron at once. Inform him that a matter of
the gravest urgency has arisen and that it is imperative for all commanding
officers of the expedition to confer immediately. I request that he put out an
emergency call to summon them to link in fifteen minutes from now. Also, sound
a general alert throughout the base and have all personnel stand by to await
further instructions. I'll link in to the conference from the multiconsole in
Room 14 of the Main Observatory Dome. That's all."

      Just over a quarter of an hour later Tones and the two scientists were
facing an array of wall screens that showed the other participants in the
conference. Garuth, commander-in-chief of the expedition, sat flanked by two
aides in the heart of the mother-ship Shapieron two thousand miles above
Iscaris III. He listened without interruption to the account of the situation.
The chief scientist, speaking from elsewhere in the ship, confirmed that in
the past few minutes sensors aboard the Shapieron had yielded data similar to
that reported by instruments from the surface of Iscaris III, and that the
computers had produced the same interpretation. The G-beam projectors had
caused some unforeseen and catastrophic change in the internal equilibrium of
Iscaris, and the star was in the process of turning into a nova. There was no
time to think of anything but escape.
      "We have to get everybody off the surface," Garuth said. "Leyel, the
first thing I need is a statement of what ships you've got down there at the
moment, and how many personnel they can bring up. We'll send down extra
shuttles to ferry out the rest as soon as we know what your shortage in
carrying capacity is. Monchar..." He addressed his deputy on another of the
screens. "Do we have any ships more than fifteen hours out from us at maximum
speed?"
      "No, sir. The farthest away is out near Projector Two. It could make it
back in just over ten."
      "Good. Recall them all immediately, emergency priority. If the figures
we've just heard are right, the only way we'll stand a chance of getting clear
is on the Shapieron's main drives. Prepare a schedule of expected arrival
times and make sure that preparations for reception have been made."
      "Yes, sir."
      "Leyel..." Garuth switched his gaze back to look straight out of the
screen in Room 14 of the Observatory Dome. "Bring all your available ships up
to flight-readiness and begin planning your evacuation at once. Report back on
status one hour from now. One bag of personal belongings only per person."
      "May I remind you of a problem, sir." The chief engineer of the
Shapieron, Rogdar Jassilane, added from the drive section of the ship.
      "What is it, Rog?" Garuth's face turned away to look at another screen.
      "We still have a fault on the primary retardation system for the main-
drive toroids. If we start up those drives, the only way they'll ever slow
down again is at their own natural rate. The whole braking system's been
stripped down. We could never put it together again in under twenty hours, let
alone trace the fault and fix it."
      Garuth thought for a moment. "But we can start them up okay?"
      "We can," Jassilane confirmed. "But once those black holes start
whirling round inside the toroids, the angular momentum they'll build up will
be phenomenal. Without the retardation system to slow them down, they'll take
years to coast down to a speed at which the drives can be deactivated. We'd be
under main drive all the time, with no way of shutting down." He made a
helpless gesture. "We could end up anywhere."
      "But we've no choice," Garuth pointed out. "It's fly or fry. We'll have
to set course for home and orbit the Solar System under drive until we've
dropped to a low enough return velocity. What other way is there?"
      "I can see what Rog's getting at," the chief scientist interjected.
"It's not quite as simple as that. You see, at the velocities that we would
acquire under years of sustained main drive, we'd experience an enormous
relativistic time-dilation compared to reference frames moving with the speed
of Iscaris or Sol. Since the Shapieron would be an accelerated system, much
more time would pass back home than would pass on board the ship; we know
where we'd end up all right...but we won't be too sure of when."
      "And, in fact, it would be worse than just that," Jassilane added. "The
main drives work by generating a localized space-time distortion that the ship
continuously 'falls' into. This also produces its own time-dilation effect.
Hence you'd have the compound effect of both dilations added together. What
that would mean with an unretarded main drive running for years, I couldn't
tell you -- I don't think anything like it has ever happened."
      "I haven't done any precise calculations yet, naturally," the chief
scientist said. "But if my mental estimates are anything to go by, we could be
talking about a compound dilation of the order of millions."
      "Millions?" Garuth looked stunned.
      "Yes." The chief scientist looked out at them soberly. "For every year
that we spend slowing down from the velocity that we'll need to escape the
nova, we could find that a million years have passed by the time we get home."
      Silence persisted for a long time. At last Garuth spoke in a voice that
was heavy and solemn. "Be that as it may, to survive we have no choice. My
orders stand. Chief Engineer Jassilane, prepare for deep-space and bring the
main drives up to standby readiness."
      Twenty hours later the Shapieron was under full power and hurtling
toward interstellar space as the first outrushing front of the nova seared its
hull and vaporized behind it the cinder that had once been Iscaris III.


Chapter One

      In a space of time less than a single heartbeat in the life of the
universe, the incredible animal called Man had fallen from the trees,
discovered fire, invented the wheel, learned to fly and gone out to explore
the planets.
      The history that followed Man's emergence was a turmoil of activity,
adventure and ceaseless discovery. Nothing like it had been seen through eons
of sedate evolution and slowly unfolding events that had gone before.
      Or so, for a long time, it had been thought.
      But when at last Man came to Ganymede, largest of the moons of Jupiter,
he stumbled upon a discovery that totally demolished one of the few beliefs
that had survived centuries of his insatiable inquisitiveness: He was not,
after all, unique. Twenty-five million years before him, another race had
surpassed all that he had thus far achieved.
      The fourth manned mission to Jupiter, early in the third decade of the
twenty-first century, marked the beginning of intensive exploration of the
outer planets and the establishment of the first permanent bases on the Jovian
satellites. Instruments in orbit above Ganymede had detected a large
concentration of metal some distance below the surface of the moon's ice
crust. From a base specially sited for the purpose, shafts were sunk to
investigate this anomaly.
      The spacecraft that they found there, frozen in its changeless tomb of
ice, was huge. From skeletal remains found inside the ship, the scientists of
Earth reconstructed a picture of the race of eight-foot-tall giants that had
built it and whose level of technology was estimated as having been a century
or more ahead of Earth's. They christened the giants the "Ganymeans," to
commemorate the place of the discovery.
      The Ganymeans had originated on Minerva, a planet that once occupied the
position between Mars and Jupiter but which had since been destroyed. The bulk
of Minerva's mass had gone into a violently eccentric orbit at the edge of the
Solar System to become Pluto, while the remainder of the debris was dispersed
by Jupiter's tidal effects and formed the Asteroid Belt. Various scientific
investigations, including cosmic-ray exposure-tests on material samples
recovered from the Asteroid Belt, pinpointed the breakup of Minerva as having
occurred some fifty thousand years in the past -- long, long after the
Ganymeans were known to have roamed the Solar System.
      The discovery of a race of technically advanced beings from twenty-five
million years back was exciting enough. Even more exciting, but not really
surprising, was the revelation that the Ganymeans had visited Earth. The cargo
of the spacecraft found on Ganymede included a collection of plant and animal
specimens the likes of which no human eye had ever beheld -- a representative
cross section of terrestrial life during the late Oligocene and early Miocene
periods. Some of the samples were well preserved in canisters while others had
evidently been alive in pens and cages at the time of the ship's mishap.
      The seven ships that were to make up the Jupiter Five Mission were being
constructed in Lunar orbit at the time these discoveries were made. When the
mission departed, a team of scientists traveled with it, eager to delve more
deeply into the irresistibly challenging story of the Ganymeans.

      A data manipulation program running in the computer complex of the mile-
and-a-quarter-long Jupiter Five Mission command ship, orbiting two thousand
miles above Ganymede, routed its results to the message-scheduling processor.
The information was beamed down by laser to a transceiver on the surface at
Ganymede Main Base, and relayed northward via a chain of repeater stations. A
few millionths of a second and seven hundred miles later, the computers at
Pithead Base decoded the message destination and routed the signal to a
display screen on the wall of a small conference room in the Biological
Laboratories section. An elaborate pattern of the symbols used by geneticists
to denote the internal structures of chromosomes appeared on the screen. The
five people seated around the table in the narrow confines of the room studied
the display intently.
      "There. If you want to go right down to it in detail, that's what it
looks like." The speaker was a tall, lean, balding man clad in a white lab
coat and wearing a pair of anachronistic gold-rimmed spectacles. He was
standing in front and to one side of the screen, pointing toward it with one
hand and clasping his lapel lightly with the other. Professor Christian
Danchekker of the Westwood Biological Institute in Houston, part of the UN
Space Arm's Life Sciences Division, headed the team of biologists who had come
to Ganymede aboard Jupiter Five to study the early terrestrial animals
discovered in the Ganymean spacecraft. The scientists sitting before him
contemplated the image on the screen. After a while Danchekker summarized once
more the problem they had been debating for the past hour.
      "I hope it is obvious to most of you that the expression we are looking
at represents a molecular arrangement characteristic of the structure of an
enzyme. This same strain of enzyme has been identified in tissue samples taken
from many of the species so far examined in the labs up in J4. I repeat --
many of the species -- many different species..." Danchekker clasped both
hands to his lapels and gazed at his mini-audience expectantly. His voice fell
almost to a whisper. "And yet nothing resembling it or suggestive of being in
any way related to it has ever been identified in any of today's terrestrial
animal species. The problem we are faced with, gentlemen, is simply to explain
these curious facts."
      Paul Carpenter, fresh-faced, fair-haired and the youngest present,
pushed himself back from the table and looked inquiringly from side to side,
at the same time turning up his hands. "I guess I don't really see the
problem," he confessed candidly. "This enzyme existed in animal species from
twenty-five million years back -- right?"
      "You've got it," Sandy Holmes confirmed from across the table with a
slight nod of her head.
      "So in twenty-five million years they mutated out of all recognition.
Everything changes over a period of time and it's no different with enzymes.
Descendant strains from this one are probably still around but they don't look
the same..." He caught the expression on Danchekker's face. "No?...What's the
problem?"
      The professor sighed a sigh of infinite patience. "We've been through
all that, Paul," he said. "At least, I was under the impression that we had.
Let me recapitulate: Enzymology has made tremendous advances over the last few
decades. Just about every type has been classified and catalogued, but never
anything like this one, which is completely different from anything we've ever
seen."
      "I don't want to sound argumentative, but is that really true?"
Carpenter protested. "I mean...we've seen new additions to the catalogues even
in the last year or two, haven't we? There was Schneider and Grossmann at Sao
Paulo with the P273B series and its derivatives...Braddock in England with --
"
      "Ah, but you're missing the whole point," Danchekker interrupted. "Those
were new strains, true, but they fell neatly into the known standard families.
They exhibited characteristics that place them firmly and definitely within
known related groups." He gestured again toward the screen. "That one doesn't.
It's completely new. To me it suggests a whole new class of its own -- a class
that contains just one member. Nothing yet identified in the metabolism of any
form of life as we know it has ever done that before." Danchekker swept his
eyes around the small circle of faces.
      "Every species of animal life that we know belongs to a known family
group and has related species and ancestors that we can identify. At the
microscopic level the same thing applies. All our previous experiences tell us
that even if this enzyme does date from twenty-five million years back, we
ought to be able to recognize its family characteristics and relate it to
known enzyme strains that exist today. However, we cannot. To me this
indicates something very unusual."
      Wolfgang Fichter, one of Danchekker's senior biologists, rubbed his chin
and stared dubiously at the screen. "I agree that it is highly improbable,
Chris," he said. "But can you really be so sure that it is impossible? After
all, over twenty-five million years?...Environmental factors may have changed
and caused the enzyme to mutate into something unrecognizable. I don't know,
some change in diet maybe...something like that."
      Danchekker shook his head decisively. "No. I say it's impossible." He
raised his hands and proceeded to count points off on his fingers. "One --
even if it did mutate, we'd still be able to identify its basic family
architecture in the same way we can identify the fundamental properties of,
say, any vertebrate. We can't.
      "Two -- if it occurred only in one species of Oligocene animal, then I
would be prepared to concede that perhaps the enzyme we see here had mutated
and given rise to many strains that we find in the world today -- in other
words this strain represents an ancestral form common to a whole modern
family. If such were the case, then perhaps I'd agree that a mutation could
have occurred that was so severe that the relationship between the ancestral
strain and its descendants has been obscured. But that is not the case. This
same enzyme is found in many different and nonrelated Oilgocene species. For
your suggestion to apply, the same improbable process would have had to occur
many times over, independently, and all at the same time. I say that's
impossible."
      "But..." Carpenter began, but Danchekker pressed on.
      "Three -- none of today's animals possesses such an enzyme in its
microchemistry yet they all manage perfectly well without it. Many of them are
direct descendants of Oligocene types from the Ganymean ship. Now some of
those chains of descent have involved rapid mutation and adaptation to meet
changing diets and environments while others have not. In several cases the
evolution from Oligocene ancestors to today's forms has been very slow and has
produced only a small degree of change. We have made detailed comparisons
between the microchemical processes of such ancestral Oligocene ancestors
recovered from the ship and known data relating to animals that exist today
and are descended from those same ancestors. The results have been very much
as we expected -- no great changes and clearly identifiable relationships
between one group and the other. Every function that appeared in the
microchemistry of the ancestor could be easily recognized, sometimes with
slight modifications, in the descendants." Danchekker shot a quick glance at
Fichter. "Twenty-five million years isn't really so long on an evolutionary
time scale."
      When no one seemed ready to object, Danchekker forged ahead. "But in
every case there was one exception -- this enzyme. Everything tells us that if
this enzyme were present in the ancestor, then it, or something very like it,
should be readily observable in the descendants. Yet in every case the results
have been negative. I say that cannot happen, and yet it has happened."
      A brief silence descended while the group digested Danchekker's words.
At length Sandy Holmes ventured a thought. "Couldn't it still be a radical
mutation, but the other way around?"
      Danchekker frowned at her.
      "How do you mean, the other way around?" asked Henri Rousson, another
senior biologist, seated next to Carpenter.
      "Well," she replied, "all the animals on the ship had been to Minerva,
hadn't they? Most likely they were born there from ancestors the Ganymeans had
transported from Earth. Couldn't something in the Minervan environment have
caused a mutation that resulted in this enzyme? At least that would explain
why none of today's terrestrial animals have it. They've never been to Minerva
and neither have any of the ancestors they've descended from."
      "Same problem," Fichter muttered, shaking his head.
      "What problem?" she asked.
      "The fact that the same enzyme was found in many different and
nonrelated Oligocene species," Danchekker said. "Yes, I'll grant that
differences in the Minervan environment could mutate some strain of enzyme
brought in from Earth into something like that." He pointed at the screen
again. "But many different species were brought in from Earth -- different
species each with its own characteristic metabolism and particular groups of
enzyme strains. Now suppose that something in the Minervan environment caused
those enzymes -- different enzymes -- to mutate. Are you seriously suggesting
that they would all mutate independently into the same end-product?" He waited
for a second. "Because that is exactly the situation that confronts us. The
Ganymean ship contained many preserved specimens of different species, but
every one of those species possessed precisely the same enzyme. Now do you
want to reconsider your suggestion?"
      The woman looked helplessly at the table for a second, then made a
gesture of resignation. "Okay...If you put it like that, I guess it doesn't
make sense."
      "Thank you," Danchekker acknowledged stonily.
      Henri Rousson leaned forward and poured himself a glass of water from
the pitcher standing in the center of the table. He took a long drink while
the others continued to stare thoughtfully through the walls or at the
ceiling.
      "Let's go back to basics for a second and see if that gets us anywhere,"
he said. 'We know that the Ganymeans evolved on Minerva -- right?" The heads
around him nodded in assent. "We also know that the Ganymeans must have
visited Earth because there's no other way they could have ended up with
terrestrial animals on board their ship -- unless we're going to invent
another hypothetical alien race and I'm sure not going to do that because
there's no reason to. Also, we know that the ship found here on Ganymede had
come to Ganymede from Minerva, not directly from Earth. If the ship came from
Minerva, the terrestrial animals must have come from Minerva too. That
supports the idea we've already got that the Ganymeans were shipping all kinds
of life forms from Earth to Minerva for some reason."
      Paul Carpenter held up a hand. "Hang on a second. How do we know that
the ship downstairs came here from Minerva?"
      "The plants," Fichter reminded him.
      "Oh yeah, the plants. I forgot..." Carpenter subsided into silence.
      The pens and animal cages in the Ganymean ship had contained vegetable
feed and floor-covering materials that had remained perfectly preserved under
the ice coating formed when the ship's atmosphere froze and the moisture
condensed out. Using seeds recovered from this material, Danchekker had
succeeded in cultivating live plants completely different from anything that
had ever grown on Earth, presumed to be examples of native Minervan botany.
The leaves were very dark -- almost black -- and absorbed every available
scrap of sunlight, right across the visible spectrum. This seemed to tie in
nicely with independently obtained evidence of Minerva's great distance from
the Sun.
      "How far," Rousson asked, "have we got in figuring out why the Ganymeans
were shipping all the animals in?" He spread his arms wide. "There had to be a
reason. How far are we getting on that one? I don't know, but the enzyme might
have something to do with it."
      "Very well, let's recapitulate briefly what we think we already know
about the subject," Danchekker suggested. He moved away from the screen and
perched on the edge of the table. "Paul. Would you like to tell us your answer
to Henri's question." Carpenter scratched the back of his head for a second
and screwed up his face.
      "Well..." he began, "first there's the fish. They're established as
being native Minervan and give us our link between Minerva and the Ganymeans."
      "Good," Danchekker nodded, mellowing somewhat from his earlier crotchety
mood. "Go on."
      Carpenter was referring to a type of well-preserved canned fish that had
been positively traced back to its origin in the oceans of
      Minerva. Danchekker had shown that the skeletons of the fish correlated
in general arrangement to the skeletal remains of the Ganymean occupants of
the ship that lay under the ice deep below Pithead Base; the relationship was
comparable to that existing between the architectures of, say, a man and a
mammoth, and demonstrated that the fish and the Ganymeans belonged to the same
evolutionary family. Thus if the fish were native to Minerva, the Ganymeans
were, too.
      "Your computer analysis of the fundamental cell chemistry of the fish,"
Carpenter continued, "suggests an inherent low tolerance to a group of toxins
that includes carbon dioxide. I think you also postulated that this basic
chemistry could have been inherited from way back in the ancestral line of the
fish -- right from very early on in Minervan history."
      "Quite so," Danchekker approved. "What else?"
      Carpenter hesitated. "So Minervan land-dwelling species would have had a
low CO2 tolerance as well," he offered.
      "Not quite," Danchekker answered. "You've left out the connecting link
to that conclusion. Anybody...?" He looked at the German. "Wolfgang?"
      "You need to make the assumption that the characteristics of low CO2
tolerance came about in a very remote ancestor -- one that existed before any
land-dwelling types appeared on Minerva." Fichter paused, then continued.
"Then you can postulate that this remote life form was a common ancestor to
all later land dwellers and marine descendants -- for example, the fish. On
the basis of that assumption you can say that the characteristic could have
been inherited by all the land-dwelling species that emerged later."
      "Never forget your assumptions," Danchekker urged. "Many of the problems
in the history of science have stemmed from that simple error. Note one other
thing too: If the low-CO2-tolerance characteristic did indeed come about very
early in the process of Minervan evolution and survived right down to the time
that the fish was alive, then suggestions are that it was a very stable
characteristic, if our knowledge of terrestrial evolution is anything to go by
anyway. This adds plausibility to the suggestion that it could have become a
common characteristic that spread throughout all the land dwellers as they
evolved and diverged, and has remained essentially unaltered down through the
ages -- much as the basic design of terrestrial vertebrates has remained
unchanged for hundreds of millions of years despite superficial differences in
shape, size and form." Danchekker removed his spectacles and began polishing
the lenses with his handkerchief.
      "Very well," he said. "Let us pursue the assumption and conclude that by
the time the Ganymeans had evolved -- twenty-five million years ago -- the
land surface of Minerva was populated by a multitude of its own native life
forms, each of which possessed a low tolerance to carbon dioxide, among other
things. What other clues do we have available to us that might help determine
what was happening on Minerva at that time?"
      "We know that the Ganymeans were quitting the planet and trying to
migrate someplace else," Sandy Holmes threw in. "Probably to some other star
system."
      "Oh, really?" Danchekker smiled, showing his teeth briefly before
breathing on his spectacle lenses once more. "How do we know that?"
      "Well, there's the ship down under the ice here for a start," she
replied. "The kind of freight it was carrying and the amount of it sure
suggested a colony ship intending a one-way trip. And then, why should it show
up on Ganymede of all places? It couldn't have been traveling between any of
the inner planets, could it?"
      "But there's nothing outside Minerva's orbit to colonize," Carpenter
chipped in. "Not until you get to the stars, that is."
      "Exactly so," Danchekker said soberly, directing his words at the woman.
"You said 'suggested a colony ship.' Don't forget that that is precisely what
the evidence we have at present amounts to -- a suggestion and nothing more.
It doesn't prove anything. Lots of people around the base are saying we now
know that the Ganymeans abandoned the Solar System to find a new home
elsewhere because the carbon-dioxide concentration in the Minervan atmosphere
was increasing for some reason which we have yet to determine. It is true that
if what we have just said was fact, then the Ganymeans would have shared the
low tolerance possessed by all land dwellers there, and any increase in the
atmospheric concentration could have caused them serious problems. But as we
have just seen, we know nothing of the kind; we merely observe one or two
suggestions that might add up to such an explanation." The professor paused,
seeing that Carpenter was about to say something.
      "There was more to it than that though, wasn't there?" Carpenter
queried. "We're pretty certain that all species of Minervan land dwellers died
out pretty rapidly somewhere around twenty-five million years ago...all except
the Ganymeans themselves maybe. That sounds like just the effect you'd expect
if the concentration did rise and all the species there couldn't handle it. It
seems to support the hypothesis pretty well."
      "I think Paul's got a point," Sandy Holmes chimed in. "Everything adds
up. Also, it fits in with the ideas we've been having about why the Ganymeans
were shipping all the animals into Minerva." She turned toward Carpenter, as
if inviting him to complete the story from there.
      As usual, Carpenter didn't need much encouragement. "What the Ganymeans
were really trying to do was redress the CO2 imbalance by covering the planet
with carbon-dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-producing terrestrial green plants. The
animals were brought along to provide a balanced ecology that the plants could
survive in. Like Sandy says, it all fits."
      "You're trying to fit the evidence to suit the answers that you already
want to prove," Danchekker cautioned. "Let's separate once more the evidence
that is fact from the evidence which is supposition or mere suggestion." The
discussion continued with Danchekker leading an examination of the principles
of scientific deduction and the techniques of logical analysis. Throughout,
the figure who had been following the proceedings silently from his seat at
the end of the table farthest from the screen continued to draw leisurely on
his cigarette, taking in every detail.
      Dr. Victor Hunt had also accompanied the team of scientists who had come
with Jupiter Five more than three months before to study the Ganymean ship.
Although nothing truly spectacular had emerged during this time, huge volumes
of data on the structure, design and contents of the alien ship had been
amassed. Every day, newly removed devices and machinery were examined in the
laboratories of the surface bases and in the orbiting J4 and J5 mission
command ships. Findings from these tests were as yet fragmentary, but clues
were beginning to emerge from which a meaningful picture of the Ganymean
civilization and the mysterious events of twenty-five million years before
might eventually emerge.
      That was Hunt's job. Originally a theoretical physicist specializing in
mathematical nucleonics, he had been brought into the
      UN Space Arm from England to head a small group of UNSA scientists; the
group's task was to correlate the findings of the specialists working on the
project both on and around Ganymede and back on Earth. The specialists painted
the pieces of the puzzle; Hunt's group fitted them together. This arrangement
was devised by Hunt's immediate boss, Gregg Caldwell, executive director of
the Navigation and Communications Division of UNSA, headquartered in Houston.
The scheme had already worked well in enabling them to unravel successfully
the existence and fate of Minerva, and first signs were that it promised to
work well again.
      He listened while the debate between the biologists went full circle to
end up focusing on the unfamiliar enzyme that had started the whole thing off.
      "No, I'm afraid not," Danchekker said in reply to a question from
Rousson. "We have no idea at present what its purpose was. Certain functions
in its reaction equations suggest that it could have contributed to the
modification or breaking down of some kind of protein molecule, but precisely
what molecule or for what purpose we don't know." Danchekker gazed around the
room to invite further comment but nobody appeared to have anything to say.
The room became quiet. A mild hum from a nearby generator became noticeable
for the first time. At length Hunt stubbed his cigarette and sat back to rest
his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Sounds as if there's a problem there,
all right," he commented. "Enzymes aren't my line. I'm going to have to leave
this one completely to you people."
      "An, nice to see you're still with us, Vic," Danchekker said, raising
his eyes to take in the far end of the table. "You haven't said a word since
we sat down."
      "Listening and learning." Hunt grinned. "Didn't have a lot to
contribute."
      "That sounds like a philosophical approach to life," Fichter said,
shuffling the papers in front of him. "Do you have many philosophies of
life...maybe a little red book full of them like that Chinese gentleman back
in nineteen whatever it was?"
      "'Fraid not. Doesn't do to have too many philosophies about anything.
You always end up contradicting yourself. Blows your credibility."
      Fichter smiled. "You've nothing to say to throw any light on our problem
with this wretched enzyme then," he said.
      Hunt did not reply immediately but pursed his lips and inclined his head
to one side in the manner of somebody with doubts about the advisability of
revealing something that he knew. "Well," he finally said, "you've got enough
to worry about with that enzyme as things are." The tone was mildly playful,
but irresistibly provocative. All heads in the room swung around abruptly to
face in his direction.
      "Vic, you're holding out on us," Sandy declared. "Give."
      Danchekker fixed Hunt with a silent, challenging stare. Hunt nodded and
reached down with one hand to operate the keyboard recessed into the edge of
the table opposite his chair. Above the far side of Ganymede, computers on
board Jupiter Five responded to his request. The display on the conference
room wall changed to reveal a densely packed columnar arrangement of numbers.
      Hunt allowed some time for the others to study them. "These are the
results of a series of quantitative analytical tests that were performed
recently in the J5 labs. The tests involved the routine determination of the
chemical constituents of cells from selected organs in the animals you've just
been talking about -- the ones from the ship." He paused for a second, then
continued matter-of-factly. "These numbers show that certain combinations of
elements turned up over and over again, always in the same fixed ratios. The
ratios strongly suggest the decay products of familiar radioactive processes.
It's exactly as if radioisotopes were selected in the manufacture of the
enzymes."
      After a few seconds, one or two puzzled frowns formed in response to his
words. Danchekker was the first to reply. "Are you telling us that the enzyme
incorporated radioisotopes into its structure...selectively?" he asked.
      "Exactly."
      "That's ridiculous," the professor declared firmly. His tone left no
room for dissent. Hunt shrugged.
      "It appears to be fact. Look at the numbers."
      "But there is no way in which such a process could come about,"
Danchekker insisted.
      "I know, but it did."
      "Purely chemical processes cannot distinguish a radioisotope from a
normal isotope," Danchekker pointed out impatiently. "Enzymes are manufactured
by chemical processes. Such processes are incapable of selecting radioisotopes
to use for the manufacture of enzymes." Hunt had half expected that
Danchekker's immediate reaction would be one of uncompromising and total
rejection of the suggestion he had just made. After working closely with
Danchekker for over two years, Hunt had grown used to the professor's tendency
to sandbag himself instinctively behind orthodox pronouncements the moment
anything alien to his beliefs reared its head. Once he'd been given time to
reflect, Hunt knew, Danchekker could be as innovative as any of the younger
generation of scientists seated around the room. For the moment, then, Hunt
remained silent, whistling tunelessly and nonchalantly to himself as he
drummed his fingers absently on the table.
      Danchekker waited, growing visibly more irritable as the seconds dragged
by. "Chemical processes cannot distinguish a radioisotope," he finally
repeated. "Therefore no enzyme could be produced in the way you say it was.
And even if it could, there would be no purpose to be served. Chemically the
enzyme will behave the same whether it has radioisotopes in it or not. What
you're saying is preposterous!"
      Hunt sighed and pointed a weary finger toward the screen.
      "I'm not saying it, Chris," he reminded the professor. "The numbers are.
There are the facts -- check 'em." Hunt leaned forward and cocked his head to
one side, at the same time contorting his features into a frown as if he had
just been struck with a sudden thought. "What were you saying a minute ago
about people wanting to fit the evidence to suit the answers they'd already
made their minds up about?" he asked.


Chapter Two

      At the age of eleven, Victor Hunt had moved from the bedlam of his
family home in the East End of London and gone to live with an uncle and aunt
in Worcester. His uncle -- the odd man out in the Hunt family -- was a design
engineer at the nearby laboratories of a leading computer manufacturer and it
was his patient guidance that first opened the boy's eyes to the excitement
and mystery of the world of electronics.
      Some time later young Victor put his newfound fascination with the laws
of formal logic and the techniques of logic-circuit design to its first
practical test. He designed and built a hard-wired special-purpose processor
which, when given any date after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in
1582, would output a number from 1 to 7 denoting the day of the week on which
it had fallen. When, breathless with expectation, he switched it on for the
first time, the system remained dead. It turned out that he had connected an
electrolytic capacitor the wrong way around and shorted out the power supply.
      This exercise taught him two things: Most problems have simple solutions
once somebody looks at things the right way, and the exhilaration of winning
in the end makes all the effort worthwhile. It also served to reinforce his
intuitive understanding that the only sure way to prove or disprove what
looked like a good idea was to find some way to test it. As his subsequent
career led him from electronics to mathematical physics and thence to
nucleonics, these fundamentals became the foundations of his permanent mental
makeup. In nearly thirty years he had never lost his addiction to the final
minutes of mounting suspense that came when the crucial experiment had been
prepared and the moment of truth was approaching.
      He experienced that same feeling now, as he watched Vincent Carizan make
a few last-minute adjustments to the power-amplifier settings. The attraction
in the main electronics lab at Pithead Base that morning was an item of
equipment recovered from the Ganymean ship. It was roughly cylindrical, about
the size of an oil drum, and appeared to be rather simple in function in that
it possessed few input and output connections; apparently it was a self-
contained device of some sort, rather than a component in some larger and more
complex system.
      However, its function was far from obvious. The engineers at Pithead had
concluded that the connections were intended as power inlet points. From an
analysis of the insulating materials used, the voltage clamping and protection
circuits, the smoothing circuits, and the filtering arrangements, they had
deduced the kind of electrical supply it was designed to work from. This had
enabled them to set up a suitable arrangement of transformers and frequency
converters. Today was the day they intended to switch it on to see what
happened.
      Besides Hunt and Carizan, two other engineers were present in the
laboratory to supervise the measuring instruments that had been assembled for
the experiment. Frank Towers observed Canzan's nod of satisfaction as he
stepped back from the amplifier panel and asked:
      "All set for overload check?"
      "Yep," Carizan answered. "Give it a zap." Towers threw a switch on
another panel. A sharp clunk sounded instantly as a circuit breaker dropped
out somewhere in the equipment cabinet behind the panel.
      Sam Mullen, standing by an instrumentation console to one side of the
room, briefly consulted one of his readout screens. "Current trip's
functioning okay," he announced.
      "Unshort it and throw in some volts," Carizan said to Towers, who
changed a couple of control settings, threw the switch again and looked over
at Mullen.
      "Limiting at fifty," Mullen said. "Check?"
      "Check," Towers returned.
      Carizan looked at Hunt. "All set to go, Vic. We'll try an initial run
with current limiters in circuit, but whatever happens our stuff's protected.
Last chance to change your bet; the book's closing."
      "I still say it makes music." Hunt grinned. "It's an electric barrel
organ. Give it some juice."
      "Computers?" Carizan cocked an eye at Mullen.
      "Running. All data channels checking normal."
      "Okay then." Carizan rubbed the palms of his hands together. "Now for
the star turn. Live this time, Frank -- phase one of the schedule."
      A tense silence descended as Towers reset his controls and threw the
main switch again. The readings on the numeric displays built into his panel
changed immediately.
      "Live," he confirmed. "It's taking power. Current is up to the maximum
set on the limiters. Looks like it wants more." All eyes turned toward Mullen,
who was scanning the computer output screens intently. He shook his head
without looking around.
      "Nix. Makes a dodo look a real ball of fire."
      The accelerometers, fixed to the outside of the Ganymean device standing
bolted in its steel restraining frame on rubber vibration absorbers, were not
sensing any internal mechanical motion. The sensitive microphones attached to
its casing were picking up nothing in the audible or ultrasonic ranges. The
heat sensors, radiation detectors, electromagnetic probes, gaussmeters,
scintillation counters, and variable antennas -- all had nothing to report.
Towers varied the supply frequency over a trial range but it soon became
apparent that nothing was going to change. Hunt walked over to stand beside
Mullen and inspect the computer outputs, but said nothing.
      "Looks like we need to wind the wick up a little," Carizan commented.
"Phase two, Frank." Towers stepped up the input voltage. A row of numbers
appeared on one of Mullen's screens.
      "Something on channel seven," he informed them. "Acoustic." He keyed a
short sequence of commands into the console keyboard and peered at the wave
form that appeared on an auxiliary display. "Periodic wave with severe even-
harmonic distortion. low amplitude...fundamental frequency is about seventy-
two hertz."
      "That's the supply frequency," Hunt murmured. 'Probably just a resonance
somewhere. Shouldn't think it means much. Anything else?"
      "Nope."
      "Wind it up again, Frank," Carizan said.
      As the test progressed they became more cautious and increased the
number of variations tried at each step. Eventually the characteristics of the
input supply told them that the device was saturating and seemed to be running
at its design levels. By this time it was taking a considerable amount of
power but apart from reporting continued mild acoustic resonances and a slight
heating of some parts of the casing, the measuring instruments remained
obstinately quiet. As the first hour passed, Hunt and the three UNSA engineers
resigned themselves to a longer and much more detailed examination of the
object, one that would no doubt involve dismantling it. But, like Napoleon,
they took the view that lucky people tend to be people who give luck a chance
to happen; it had been worth a try.
      The disturbance generated by the Ganymean device was, however, not of a
nature that any of their instruments had been designed to detect. A series of
spherical wave fronts of intense but highly localized space-time distortion
expanded outward from Pithead Base at the speed of light, propagating across
the Solar System.
      Seven hundred miles to the south, seismic monitors at Ganymede Main Base
went wild and the data validation programs running in the logging computer
aborted to signal a system malfunction.
      Two thousand miles above the surface, sensors aboard the Jupiter Five
command ship pinpointed Pithead Base as the origin of abnormal readings and
flashed an alert to the duty supervisor.
      Over half an hour had passed since full power had been applied to the
device in the laboratory at Pithead. Hunt stubbed out a cigarette as Towers
finally shut down the supply and sat back in his seat with a sigh.
      "That's about it," Towers said. "We're not gonna get anyplace this way.
Looks like we'll have to open it up further."
      "Ten bucks," Carizan declared. "See, Vic -- no tunes."
      "Nothing else, either," Hunt retorted. "The bet's void."
      At the instrumentation console Mullen completed the storage routine for
the file of meager data that had been collected, shut down the computers and
joined the others.
      "I don't understand where all that power was going," he said, frowning.
"There wasn't nearly enough heat to account for it, and no signs of anything
else. It's crazy."
      "There must be a black hole in there," Carizan offered. "That's what the
thing is -- a garbage can. It's the ultimate garbage can."
      "I'll take ten on that," Hunt informed him readily.
      Three hundred and fifty million miles from Ganymede, in the Asteroid
Belt, a UNSA robot probe detected a rapid succession of transient
gravitational anomalies, causing its master computer to suspend all system
programs and initiate a full run of diagnostic and fault-test routines.

      "No kidding -- straight out of Walt Disney," Hunt told the others across
the table in one corner of the communal canteen at Pit-head. "I've never seen
anything like the animal murals decorating the walls of that room in the
Ganymean spacecraft."
      "Sounds crazy," Sam Mullen declared from opposite Hunt.
      "What d'you think they are -- Minervans or something else?"
      "They're not terrestrial, that's for sure," Hunt replied. "But maybe
they're not anything...anything real that is. Chris Danchekker's convinced
they can't be real."
      "How d'you mean, real?" Carizan asked.
      "Well, they don't look real," Hunt answered. He frowned and waved his
hands in small circles in the air. "They're all kinds of bright colors...and
clumsy...ungainly. You can't imagine them evolving from any real-life
evolutionary system -- "
      "Not selected for survival, you mean?" Carizan suggested. Hunt nodded
rapidly.
      "Yes, that's it. No adaptation for survival...no camouflage or ability
to escape or anything like that."
      "Mmm..." Carizan looked intrigued, but nonplussed. "Any ideas?"
      "Well, actually yes," Hunt said. "We're pretty sure the room was a
Ganymean children's nursery or something similar. That probably explains it.
They weren't supposed to be real, just Ganymean cartoon characters." Hunt
paused for a second, then laughed to himself. "Danchekker wondered if they'd
named any of them Neptune." The other two looked at him quizzically. "He
reasoned that they couldn't have had a Pluto because there wasn't a Pluto
then," Hunt explained. "So maybe they had a Neptune instead."
      "Neptune!" Carizan guffawed and brought his hand down sharply on the
table. "I like it...Wouldn't have thought Danchekker could crack a joke like
that."
      "You'd be surprised," Hunt told him. "He can be quite a character once
you get to know him. He's just a bit stuffy at first, that's all...But you
should see them. I'll bring some prints over. One was bright blue with pink
stripes down the sides -- body like an overgrown pig. And it had a trunk!"
      Mullen grimaced and covered his eyes.
      "Man...The thought's enough to put me off drink for keeps." He turned
his head and looked toward the serving counter. "Where the hell's Frank?" As
if in answer to the question, Towers appeared behind him carrying a tray with
four cups of coffee. He set the tray down, squeezed into a seat and proceeded
to pass the drinks round.
      "Two white with, a white without, and a black with. Okay?" He settled
himself back and accepted a cigarette from Hunt. "Cheers. The man over by the
counter there says you're leaving for a spell. That right?"
      Hunt nodded. "Only five days. I'm due for a bit of leave on J5. Flying
up from Main the day after tomorrow."
      "On your own?" Mullen asked.
      "No -- there'll be five or six of us. Danchekker's coming too. Can't say
I'll be sorry for a break, either."
      "I hope the weather holds out," Towers said with playful sarcasm. "It'd
be too bad if you missed the holiday season. This place makes me wonder what
the big attraction ever was at Miami Beach."
      "The ice comes with scotch there," Carizan suggested.
      A shadow fell across the table. They looked up to greet a burly figure
sporting a heavy black beard and clad in a tartan shirt and blue jeans. It was
Pete Cummings, a structures engineer who had come to Ganymede with the team
that had included Hunt and Danchekker. He reversed a chair and perched himself
astride it, directing his gaze at Carizan.
      "How'd it go?" he inquired. Carizan pulled a face and shook his head.
      "No dice. Bit of heat, bit of humming...otherwise nothing to shout
about. Couldn't get anything out of it."
      "Too bad." Cummings made an appropriate display of sympathy. "It
couldn't have been you guys that caused all the commotion then."
      "What commotion?"
      "Didn't you hear?" He looked surprised. "There was a message beamed down
from J5 a little while back. Apparently they picked up some funny waves coming
up from the surface...seems that the center was somewhere around here. The
commander's been calling all around the base trying to find out who's up to
what, and what caused it. They're all flappin' around in the tower up there
like there's a fox in the henhouse."
      "I bet that's the call that came in just when we were leaving the lab,"
Mullen said. "Told you it could have been important."
      "Hell, there are times when a man needs coffee," Carizan answered.
"Anyhow, it wasn't us." He turned to face Cummings. "Sorry, Pete. Ask again
some other time. We've just been drawing blanks today."
      "Well, the whole thing's mighty queer," Cummings declared, rubbing his
beard. "They've checked out just about everything else."
      Hunt was frowning to himself and drawing on his cigarette pensively. He
blew out a cloud of smoke and looked up at Cummings.
      "Any idea what time this was, Pete?" he asked. Cummings screwed up his
face.
      "Lemme see -- aw, under an hour." He turned and called across to a group
of three men who were sitting at another table: "Hey, Jed. What time did J5
pick up the spooky waves? Any idea?"
      "Ten forty-seven local," Jed called back.
      "Ten forty-seven local," Cummings repeated to the table.
      An ominous silence descended abruptly on the group seated around Hunt.
      "How about that, fellas?" Towers asked at last. The matter-of-fact tone
did not conceal his amazement.
      "It could be a coincidence," Mullen murmured, not sounding convinced.
      Hunt cast his eyes around the circle of faces and read the same thoughts
on every one. They had all reached the same conclusion; after a few seconds,
he voiced it for them.
      "I don't believe in coincidences," he said.

      Five hundred million miles away, in the radio and optical observatory
complex on Lunar Farside, Professor Otto Schneider made his way to one of the
computer graphics rooms in answer to a call from his assistant. She pointed
out the unprecedented readings that had been reported by an instrument
designed to measure cosmic gravitational radiation, especially that believed
to emanate from the galactic center. These signals were quite positively
identified, but had not come from anywhere near that direction. They
originated from somewhere near Jupiter.

      Another hour passed on Ganymede. Hunt and the engineers returned to the
lab to reappraise the experiment in light of what Cummings had told them. They
called the base commander, reported the situation, and agreed to prepare a
more intensive test for the Ganymean device. Then, while Towers and Mullen
reexamined the data collected earlier, Hunt and Carizan toured the base to
beg, borrow or steal some seismic monitoring equipment to add to their
instruments. Suitable detectors were finally located in one of the warehouses,
where they were kept as spares for a seismic outstation about three miles from
the base, and the team began planning the afternoon's activities. By this time
their excitement was mounting rapidly, but even more their curiosity; if,
after all, the machine was an emitter of gravity pulses, what purpose did it
serve?

      One thousand five hundred million miles from Ganymede, not far from the
mean orbit of Uranus, a communications subprocessor interrupted the operation
of its supervisory computer. The computer activated a code-conversion routine
and passed a top-priority message on to the master-system monitor.
      A transmission had been received from a standard Model 17 Mark 3B
Distress Beacon.


Chapter Three

      The surface transporter climbed smoothly above the eternal veil of
methane-ammonia haze that cloaked Pithead Base and leveled out onto a
southerly course. For nearly two hours it skimmed over an unchanging
wilderness of a stormy sea sculptured in ice and half immersed in a sullen
ocean of mist. Occasional outcrops of rock added texture to the scene,
standing black against the ghostly radiance induced by the serene glow of
Jupiter's enormous rainbow disk. And then the cabin view screen showed a tight
group of perhaps half a dozen silver spires jutting skywards from just over
the horizon ahead -- the huge thermonuclear Vega shuttles that stood guard
over Ganymede Main Base.
      After taking refreshments at Main, Hunt's party joined other groups
bound for J5 and boarded one of the Vegas. Soon afterward they were streaking
into space and Ganymede rapidly became just a smooth, featureless snowball
behind them. Ahead, a pinpoint of light steadily elongated and enlarged, and
then resolved itself into the awe-inspiring, majestic, mile-and-a-quarter-long
Jupiter Five Mission command ship, hanging alone in the void; Jupiter Four had
departed the week before, bound for Callisto where it would take up permanent
orbit. The computers and docking radars guided the Vega gently to rest inside
the cavernous forward docking bay, and within minutes the arrivals were
walking into the immense city of metal.
      Danchekker promptly disappeared to discuss with the 15's scientists the
latest details of their studies of the terrestrial animal samples from
Pithead. Without shame or conscience Hunt spent a glorious twenty-four hours
totally relaxing, doing nothing. He enjoyed many rounds of drinks and endless
yarns with Jupiter Five crew members he had become friendly with on the long
voyage out from Earth, and found unbounded pleasure in the almost forgotten
sense of freedom that came with simply sauntering unencumbered along the
seemingly interminable expanses of the ship's corridors and vast decks. He
felt intoxicated with well-being -- exuberant. Just being back on Jupiter Five
again seemed to bring him nearer to Earth and to things that were familiar. In
a sense he was home. This tiny, manmade world, an island of light and life and
warmth drifting through an infinite ocean of emptiness, was no longer the cold
and alien shell that he had boarded high above Luna more than a year ago. It
now seemed to him a part of Earth itself.
      Hunt spent the second day paying social calls on some of J5's scientific
personnel, exercising in one of the ship's lavishly equipped gymnasiums and
cooling off afterward with a swim. A little while later, enjoying a well-
earned beer in one of the bars and debating with himself what to do about
dinner, he found himself talking to a medical officer who was snatching a
quick refresher after coming off duty. Her name was Shirley. To their mutual
surprise it turned out that Shirley had studied at Cambridge, England, and had
rented a flat not two minutes' walk from Hunt's own student-day lodgings.
Before very long one of those instant friendships that springs up out of
nowhere was bursting into full bloom. They dined together and spent the rest
of the evening talking and laughing and drinking, and drinking and laughing
and talking. By midnight it had become evident that there would be no sudden
parting of the ways. Next morning he felt better than he had for what he was
sure was an unhealthily long time. That, he told himself, was surely what
medical officers were supposed to make people feel like.
      On the following day he rejoined Danchekker. The results of the two
years of work that Hunt and Danchekker had spearheaded were by now a subject
of worldwide acclaim, and the names of the two scientists had been in the
limelight as a consequence. The Jupiter Five Mission director, Joseph B.
Shannon, an Air Force colonel prior to world demilitarization fifteen years
earlier, had been informed of their presence on the ship and had invited them
to join him for lunch. Accordingly, halfway through the official day, they
found themselves sitting at a table in the director's dining room, savoring
the mellow euphoria that comes with cigars and brandy after the final course
and obliging Shannon with their personal accounts of the other sensational
discovery that had rocked the scientific world during those two years -- the
discovery of Charlie and the Lunarians. It ranked in sensationalism with that
of the Ganymeans.
      The Ganymeans had turned up later, when the shafts driven down into the
ice below Pithead had penetrated to the Ganymean spacecraft. Some time before
that discovery, exploration of the Lunar surface had yielded traces of yet
another technologically advanced civilization that had flourished in the Solar
System long before that of Man. This race was given the name "Lunarians,"
again to commemorate the place where the first finds had been made, and was
known to have reached its peak some fifty thousand years before -- during the
final cold period of the Pleistocene Ice Age. Charlie, a spacesuited corpse
found well-preserved beneath debris and rubble not far from Copernicus, had
constituted the first find of all and had provided the clues that marked the
starting point from which the story of the Lunarians was eventually
reconstructed.
      The Lunarians had proved to be fully human in every detail. Once this
fact was established, the problem that presented itself was that of explaining
where the Lunarians had come from. Either they had originated on Earth itself
as a till-then unsuspected civilization that had emerged prior to the
existence of modern Man, or they had originated somewhere else. There were no
other possibilities open to consideration.
      But for a long time both possibilities seemed to be ruled out. If an
advanced society had once flourished on Earth, surely centuries of
archaeological excavation should have produced abundant evidence of it. On the
other hand, to suppose that they had originated elsewhere would require a
process of parallel evolution -- a violation of the accepted principles of
random mutation and natural selection. The Lunarians therefore, being neither
from Earth nor from anywhere else, couldn't exist. But they did. The
unraveling of this seemingly insoluble mystery had brought Hunt and Danchekker
together and had occupied them, along with hundreds of experts from just about
all the world's major scientific institutions, for over two years.
      "Chris insisted right from the beginning that Charlie, and presumably
all the rest of the Lunarians too, could only have descended from the same
ancestors as we did." Hunt spoke through a swirling tobacco haze while Shannon
listened intently. "I didn't want to argue with him on that, but I couldn't go
along with the conclusion that seemed to go with it -- that they must,
therefore, have originated on Earth. There would have to be traces of them
around, and there weren't."
      Danchekker smiled ruefully to himself as he sipped his drink. "Yes,
indeed," he said. "As I recall, our meetings in those early days were
characterized by what might be described as, ah, somewhat direct and
acrimonious exchanges."
      Shannon's eyes twinkled briefly as he pictured the months of heated
argument and dissent that were implied by Danchekker's careful choice of
euphemisms.
      "I remember reading about it at the time," he said, nodding. "But there
were so many different reports flying around and so many journalists getting
their stories confused, that we never could get a really clear idea of exactly
what was going on behind it all. When did you first figure out for sure that
the Lunarians came from Minerva?"
      "That's a long story," Hunt answered. "The whole thing was an
unbelievable mess for a long time. The more we found out, the more everything
seemed to contradict itself. Let me see now..." He paused and rubbed his chin
for a second. "People all over were getting snippets of information from all
kinds of tests on the Lunarian remains and relics that started to turn up
after Charlie. Then too, there was Charlie himself, his spacesuit, backpack
and so on, and all the things with them...then the other bits and pieces from
around Tycho and places. The clues eventually started fitting together and out
of it all we gradually built up a surprisingly complete picture of Minerva and
managed to work out fairly accurately where Minerva must have been."
      "I was with UNSA at Galveston when you joined Navcomms," Shannon
informed Hunt. "That part of the story received a lot of coverage. Time did a
feature on you called 'The Sherlock Holmes of Houston.' But tell me something
-- what you've just said doesn't seem to sort out the problem; if you managed
to track them down to Minerva, how did that answer the question of parallel
evolution? I'm afraid I still don't see that."
      "Quite right," Hunt confirmed. "All it proved was that a planet existed.
It didn't prove that the Lunarians evolved on it. As you say, there was still
the problem of parallel evolution." He flicked his cigar at the ashtray and
shook his head with a sigh. "All kinds of theories were in circulation. Some
talked about a civilization from the distant past that had colonized Minerva
and had some how gotten cut off from home; others said they had evolved there
from scratch by some kind of convergent process that wasn't properly
understood...Life was becoming crazy."
      "But at that point we encountered an extraordinary piece of luck,"
Danchekker came in. "Your colleagues from Jupiter Four discovered the Ganymean
spaceship -- here, on Ganymede. Once the cargo was identified as terrestrial
animals from about twenty-five million years ago, an explanation suggested
itself that could account adequately for the whole situation. The conclusion
was incredible, but it fitted."
      Shannon nodded vigorously, indicating that this answer had confirmed
what he had already suspected.
      "Yes, it had to be the animals," he said. "That's what I thought. Until
you established that the ancestors of the Lunarians had been shipped from
Earth to Minerva by the Ganymeans, you had no way of connecting the Lunarians
with Minerva. Right?"
      "Almost, but not quite," Hunt replied. "We'd already managed to connect
the Lunarians with Minerva -- in other words we knew they'd been involved with
the planet somehow -- but we couldn't account for how they could have evolved
there. You're right, though, in saying that the animals that the Ganymeans
shipped there long before solved that one in the end. But first we had to
connect the Ganymeans with Minerva. At first, you see, all we knew was that
one of their ships conked out on Ganymede. No way of knowing where it came
from."
      "Of course. That's right. There wouldn't have been anything to indicate
that the Ganymeans had anything to do with Minerva, would there? So what
finally pointed you in the right direction?"
      "Another stroke of luck, I must confess," Danchekker said. "Some
perfectly preserved fish were found among the food stocks in the remains of a
devastated Lunarian base on Luna. We succeeded in proving that the fish were
native to Minerva and had been brought to Luna by the Lunarians. Furthermore,
the fish were shown to be anatomically related to Ganymean skeletons. This, of
course, implied that the Ganymeans too must have evolved from the same
evolutionary line as the fish. Since the fish were from Minerva, the Ganymeans
also had to be from Minerva."
      "So that was where the ship must have come from," Hunt pointed out.
      "And where the animals must have come from," Danchekker added.
      "And the only way they could have got there is if the Ganymeans took
them there," Hunt finished.
      Shannon reflected on these propositions for a while. "Yes. I see," he
said finally. "It all makes sense. And the rest everybody knows. Two isolated
populations of terrestrial animals resulted -- the one that had always existed
on Earth, and the one established on Minerva by the Ganymeans, which included
advanced primates. During the twenty-five million years that followed, the
Lunarians evolved from them, on Minerva, and that's how they came to be human
in form." Shannon stubbed his cigar, then placed his hands flat on the table
and looked up at the two scientists. "And the Ganymeans," he said. "What
happened to them? They vanished completely twenty-five million years back. Are
you people anywhere near answering that one yet? How about leaking a little
bit of information in advance? I'm interested."
      Danchekker made an empty-handed gesture.
      "Believe me, I would like nothing better than to be able to comply. But
honestly, we haven't made any great strides in that direction yet. What you
say is correct; not only the Ganymeans, but also all the land-dwelling forms
of life native to Minerva died out or disappeared in a very short space of
time, relatively speaking, at about that time. The imported terrestrial
species flourished in their place and eventually the Lunarians emerged." The
professor showed his palms again. "What happened to the Ganymeans and why?
That remains a mystery. Oh...we have theories, or should I say we can offer
possible explanations. The most popular seems to be that an increase in
atmospheric toxins, particularly carbon dioxide, proved lethal to the natives
but not to the immigrant types. But to be truthful, the evidence is far from
conclusive. I was talking to your molecular biologists here on J5 only
yesterday; some of their more recent work makes me less confident in that
theory than I was two or three months ago."
      Shannon looked mildly disappointed but accepted the situation
philosophically. Before he could comment further, a white-jacketed steward
approached the table and began collecting the empty coffee cups and dusting
away the specks of ash and bread crumbs. As they sat back in their chairs to
make room, Shannon looked up at the steward.
      "Good morning, Henry," he said casually. "Is the world treating you well
today?"
      "Oh, mustn't grumble, sir. I've worked for worse firms than UNSA in my
time," Henry replied cheerfully. Hunt was intrigued to note his East London
accent. "A change always does you good; that's what I always say."
      "What did you do before, Henry?" Hunt inquired.
      "Cabin steward for an airline."
      Henry moved away to begin clearing the adjacent table. Shannon caught
the eyes of the two scientists and inclined his head in the direction of the
steward.
      "Amazing man, Henry," he commented, his tone lowered slightly. "Did you
get to meet him at all on the way out from Earth?" The other two shook their
heads. "Jupiter Five's reigning chess champion."
      "Good Lord," Hunt said, following his gaze with a new interest.
"Really?"
      "Learned to play when he was six," Shannon told them. "He's got a gift
for it. He could probably make a lot of money out of it if he chose to take
the game seriously, but he says he prefers keeping it as a hobby. The first
navigation officer studies up day and night just to take the title away from
Henry. Between us though, I think he's going to need an awful lot of luck to
do it, and that's supposed to be the one game that luck doesn't come in to.
Right?"
      "Precisely," Danchekker affirmed. "Extraordinary."
      The mission director glanced at the clock on the dining-room wall, then
spread his arms along the edge of the table in a gesture of finality.
      "Well, gentlemen," he said. "It's been a pleasure meeting you both at
last. Thank you for a most interesting conversation. We must make a point of
keeping in touch regularly from now on. I have to attend an appointment
shortly, but I haven't forgotten that I promised to show you the ship's
command center. So, if you're ready, we'll go there now. I'll introduce you to
Captain Hayter who's to show you around. Then, I'm afraid, you'll have to
excuse me."
      Fifteen minutes later, after riding a capsule through one of the ship's
communications tubes to reach another section of the vessel, they were
standing surrounded on three sides by a bewildering array of consoles, control
stations and monitor panels on the bridge; below them stretched the
brilliantly lit panorama of Jupiter Five's command center. The clusters of
operator stations, banks of gleaming equipment cubicles and tiers of
instrument panels were the nerve center from which ultimately all the
activities of the mission and all the functions of the ship were controlled.
The permanent laser link that handled the communications traffic to Earth; the
data channels to the various surface installations and the dispersed fleet of
UNSA ships nosing around the Jovian system; the navigation, propulsion and
flight-control systems; the heating, cooling, lighting, life-support systems
and ancillary computers and machinery, and a thousand and one other processes
-- all were supervised and coordinated from this stupendous concentration of
skills and technology.
      Captain Ronald Hayter stood behind the two scientists and waited as they
took in the scene below the bridge. The mission was organized and its command
hierarchy structured in such a way that operations were performed under the
ultimate direction of the Civilian Branch of the Space Arm; supreme authority
lay with Shannon. Many functions essential to UNSA operations, such as crewing
spaceships and conducting activities safely and effectively in unfamiliar
alien environments, called for standards of training and discipline that could
only be met by a military-style command structure and organization. The
Uniformed Branch of the Space Arm had been formed in response to these needs;
also, not entirely fortuitously, it went a long way toward satisfying
peacefully the longing for adventure of a significant proportion of the
younger generation, to whom the idea of large-scale, regular armed forces
belonged to a past that was best forgotten. Hayter was in command of all
uniformed ranks present aboard J5 and reported directly to Shannon.
      "It's quiet at the moment compared to what it can be like," Hayter
commented at last, stepping forward to stand between them. "As you can see, a
number of sections down there aren't manned; that's because lots of things are
shut down or just under automatic supervision while we're parked in orbit.
This is just a skeleton crew up here too."
      "Seems to be some activity over there," Hunt said. He pointed down at a
group of consoles where the operators were busily scanning viewscreens,
tapping intermittently into keyboards and speaking into microphones and among
themselves. "What's going on?"
      Hayter followed his finger, then nodded. "We're hooked into a cruiser
that's been in orbit over Io for a while now. They've been putting a series of
probes in low-altitude orbits over Jupiter itself and the next phase calls for
surface landings. The probes are being prepared over lo right now and the
operation will be controlled from the ship there. The guys you're looking at
are simply monitoring the preparation." The captain indicated another section
further over to the right. "That's traffic control...keeping tabs on all the
ship movements around the various moons and in between. They're always busy."
      Danchekker had been peering out over the command center in silence. At
last he turned toward Hayter with an expression of undisguised wonder on his
face.
      "I must say that I am very impressed," he said. "Very impressed indeed.
On several occasions during our outward voyage, I'm afraid that I referred to
your ship as an infernal contraption; it appears that I am now obliged to eat
my words."
      "Call it what you like, Professor," Hayter replied with a grin. "But
it's probably the safest contraption ever built. All the vital functions that
are controlled from here are fully duplicated in an emergency command center
located in a completely different part of the ship. If anything wiped Out this
place we could still get you home okay. If something happened on a large
enough scale to knock out both of them -- well..." he shrugged, "I guess there
wouldn't be much of the ship left to get home anyhow."
      "Fascinating," Danchekker mused. "But tell me -- "
      "Excuse me, sir." The watch officer interrupted from his station a few
feet behind them. Hayter turned toward him.
      "What is it, Lieutenant?"
      "I have the radar officer on the screen. Unidentified object detected by
long-range surveillance. Approaching fast."
      "Activate the second officer's station and switch it through. I'll take
it there."
      "Aye aye, sir."
      "Excuse me," Hayter muttered. He moved over to the empty seat in front
of one of the consoles, sat down and flipped its main screen into life. Hunt
and Danchekker took a few paces to bring them a short distance behind him.
Over his shoulder they could see the features of the ship's radar officer
materialize.
      "Something unusual going on, Captain," he said. "Unidentified object
closing on Ganymede. Range eighty-two thousand miles; speed fifty miles per
second but reducing; bearing two-seven-eight by oh-one-six solar. On a direct-
approach course. ETA computed at just over thirty minutes. Strong echoes at
quality seven. Reading checked and confirmed."
      Hayter stared back at him for a second. "Do we have any ships scheduled
in that sector?"
      "Negative, sir."
      "Any deviations from scheduled flight plans?"
      "Negative. All ships checked and accounted for."
      "Trajectory profile?"
      "Inadequate data. Being monitored."
      Hayter thought for a moment. "Stay live and continue reporting." Then he
turned to the watch officer: "Call the duty bridge crew to stations. Locate
the mission director and alert him to stand by for a call to the bridge."
      "Yes, sir."
      "Radar." Hayter directed his gaze back at the screen on the panel in
front of him. "Slave optical scanners to LRS. Track on UFO bearing and copy
onto screen three, B5." Hayter paused for a second, then addressed the watch
officer again. "Alert traffic control. All launches deferred until further
notice. Arrivals scheduled at J5 within the next sixty minutes are to stand
off and await instructions."
      "Do you want us to leave?" Hunt asked quietly. Hayter glanced around at
him.
      "No, that's okay," he said. "Stick around. Maybe you'll see some
action."
      "What is it?" Danchekker asked.
      "I don't know." Hayter's face was serious. "We've never had anything
like this before."

      Tension rose as the minutes ticked by. The duty crew appeared quickly in
ones and twos and took up their positions at the consoles and panels on the
bridge. The atmosphere was quiet but charged with suspense as the well-oiled
machine readied itself...and waited.
      The telescopic image resolved by the optical scanners was distinct, but
impossible to interpret: circular overall, it appeared to possess four thin
protuberances in cruciform, with one pair somewhat long and slightly thicker
than the other. It could have been a disk, or a spheroid, or perhaps it was
something else seen end-on. There was no way of telling.
      Then the first view came in via the laser link to Jupiter Four, orbiting
Callisto. Because of the relative positions of Ganymede and Callisto, and of
the rapidly diminishing range of the intruder, the telescopes on the Jupiter
Four obtained an oblique view from a position some distance from its projected
course, to Ganymede.
      The observers aboard J5 gasped as the picture being transmitted from J4
appeared on the screen. Vegas, the only ships intended for flight through
planetary atmospheres, were the only UNSA vessels in the vicinity that were
constructed to a streamlined design; this ship was clearly not a Vega. Those
sweeping lines and delicately curved, gracefully balanced fins had not been
conceived by any designer of Earth.
      Some of the color drained from Hayter's face as he stared incredulously
at the screen and the full implications of the sight dawned on him. He
swallowed hard, then surveyed the astounded faces surrounding him.
      "Man all stations on the command floor," he ordered in a voice
approaching a whisper. "Summon the mission director to the bridge
immediately."


Chapter Four

      Framed in the large wall display screen on the bridge of Jupiter Five,
the alien craft hung in a void against a background of stars turning almost
imperceptibly. It was almost an hour since the new arrival had slowed down to
rest relative to the command ship and had gone into a parallel orbit over
Ganymede. The two ships were standing just over five miles apart and every
detail of the craft was now easily discernible. There was little to interrupt
the sleek contours of its hull and fin surfaces and no identification markings
or insignia of any kind. There were, however, several patches of discoloration
that might have been the remnants of markings which had been abraded, or
perhaps, scorched. In fact the whole appearance of the craft somehow gave the
impression of wear and deterioration suffered in the course of a long, hard
voyage. Its outer skin was rough and pitted and was from end to end disfigured
by indistinct streaks and blotches, as if the whole ship had at some time been
exposed to severe heat.
      Jupiter Five had been the scene of frenzied activity ever since the
first meaningful pictures came in. There had been no indication so far of
whether or not the craft carried a crew or, if it did, what the intentions of
that crew might be. Jupiter Five carried no weapons or defensive equipment of
any kind; this was one eventuality the mission planners had not considered
seriously.
      Every position on the command floor was now manned and throughout the
ship every crew member was at his assigned emergency station. All bulkheads
had been closed and the main drives brought to a state of standby readiness.
Communications with the bases on the surface of Ganymede and from other UNSA
ships in the vicinity had ceased, in order to avoid revealing their existence
and their locations. Those daughter ships of J5 capable of being made flight-
ready within the time available had dispersed into the surrounding volume of
space; a few were under remote control from J5, to be used as ramships if
necessary. Signals beamed at the alien craft evoked a response, but J5's
computers were unable to decode it into anything intelligible. Now there was
nothing else to do but wait.
      Throughout all the excitement, Hunt and Danchekker had stood virtually
dumbstruck. They were the only people present on the bridge who were
privileged to enjoy a grandstand view of everything that happened, without the
distraction of defined duties to perform. They were, perhaps, the only ones
able to reflect deeply on the significance of the events that were unfolding.
      After the discoveries of first the Lunarians and then the Ganymeans, the
notion that other races besides Man had evolved to an advanced technological
level was firmly accepted. But this was something different. Just five miles
away from them was not some leftover relic from another age or the hulk of an
ancient mishap. There was a functional, working machine that had come from
another world. Right at that moment, it was under the control and guidance of
some form of intelligence; it had been maneuvered surely and unhesitatingly to
its present orbit and it had responded promptly to 15's signals. Whether it
contained occupants or not, these events added up to the first-ever
interaction between modern Man and an intelligence that was not of his planet.
The moment was unique; however long history might continue to unfold, it could
never be repeated.
      Shannon stood in the center of the bridge gazing up at the main screen.
Hayter was standing beside him, running his eye over the data reports and
other images being presented on the row of auxiliary screens below it. One of
them showed a view of Gordon Storrel, the deputy mission director, standing by
in the emergency command center with his own staff of officers. The outgoing
signal to Earth was still operating, carrying complete details of everything
that happened.
      "Analyzers have just detected a new component," the communications
officer called out from his station on one side of the bridge. Then he
announced a change in the pattern of signals being picked up from the alien
craft. "Tight-beam transmission resembling K-Band radar. PRF twenty-two point
three four gigahertz. Unmodulated."
      Another minute or so dragged endlessly by. Then, another voice: "New
radar contact. Small object has separated from alien ship. Closing on J5. Ship
maintaining position."
      A wave of alarm, felt rather than sensed directly, swept over the
observers on the bridge. If the object was a missile there was little that
they could do; the nearest ramship was fifty miles away and would require half
a minute, even under maximum acceleration, to intercept. Captain Hayter did
not have time to juggle with arithmetic.
      "Fire Ram One and engage," he snapped.
      A second later the reply came to confirm. "Ram One fired. Locked on
target."
      Beads of perspiration showed on some of the faces staring at the
screens. The main display had not yet resolved the object, but one of the
auxiliary screens displayed a plot of the two large vessels and a small but
unmistakable blip beginning to close the gap between them.
      "Radar reports steady approach speed of ninety feet per second."
      "Ram One closing. Impact at twenty-five seconds."
      Shannon licked his dry lips as he scanned the data on the screens and
digested the flow of reports. Hayter had done the right thing and placed the
safety of his ship above all other considerations. What to do now was a
problem that lay solely with the mission director.
      "Thirty miles. Fifteen seconds to impact."
      "Object holding course and speed steady."
      "That's no missile," Shannon said in a tone that was decisive and final.
"Captain, call off the interception."
      "Abort Ram One," Hayter ordered.
      "Ram One disengaged and turning away."
      Long exhalations of breath and sudden relaxing of postures signaled the
release of the tensions that had been building up. The Vega streaking in from
deep-space made a shallow turn that took it into a pass at twenty miles'
distance and vanished once more into the infinite cosmic backdrop.
      Hunt turned to Danchekker, talking in a low voice, "You know, Chris,
it's a funny thing...I've got an uncle who lives in Africa. He says there are
some places where it's customary to greet strangers by intimidating them with
screams and shouts and brandishings of spears. It's the accepted way of
establishing your status."
      "Perhaps they regard that as no more than a sensible precaution,"
Danchekker said dryly.
      At last the optical cameras distinguished a bright speck in the middle-
distance between J5 and the alien ship. A zoom-in revealed it to be a smooth,
silver disk devoid of any appendages; as before, the view gave no clue of its
true shape. It continued its unhurried pace until it was a half-mile from the
command ship; there it came to rest and turned itself broadside-on to present
a simple, unadorned egg-shaped profile. It was just over thirty feet long and
appeared to be of entirely metallic construction. After a few seconds it began
showing a bright and slowly flashing white light.
      The consensus arrived at in the debate that followed was that the egg
was requesting permission to enter the ship. The communication time lag to
Earth did not allow immediate consultation with higher authority. After
sending a full report Earthward via the laser link, Shannon announced his
decision to grant the request.

      A reception party was hurriedly organized and dispatched to one of
Jupiter Five's docking bays. The docking bay, designed for maintenance work on
J5's assorted daughter vessels, carried a pair of enormous outer doors which
were normally left open, but which could be closed when circumstances dictated
that the bay be filled with air. Access from the main body of the ship was
gained through a number of smaller ancillary airlocks positioned at intervals
along the inner side of the bay. Clad in spacesuits, the reception party
emerged onto one of the vast working platforms in the docking bay and set up a
beacon adjusted to flash at the same frequency as that still pulsing on the
egg.
      On the bridge of Jupiter Five, an expectant semicircle formed around the
screen showing the docking bay. The silver ovoid drifted into the center of
the starry carpet separating the gaping shadows of the outer doors. The egg
descended slowly, its light now extinguished, then hovered some distance above
the platform as if cautiously surveying the situation. A close-up showed that
in several places on its surface, circular sections of its skin had risen
above the overall outline, forming a series of squat, retractable turrets
which rotated slowly, presumably to scan the inside of the bay with cameras
and other instruments. The egg then resumed its descent and came gently to
rest about ten yards from where the reception party was standing in a tight,
apprehensive huddle. Overhead an arc-light came on to bathe it in a pool of
white.
      "Well, it's down." The voice of Deputy Mission Director Gordon Storrel,
who had volunteered to lead the reception party, announced on an audio
channel. "Three landing pads have come out from underneath. There's no other
sign of life."
      "Give it two minutes," Shannon said into his microphone. "Then move
forward to the halfway point, slowly. Stop there."
      "Roger."
      After sixty seconds another light was turned on to illuminate the group
of Earthmen; somebody had suggested that to have the party seen as shadowy
forms lurking in the gloom could give an undesirably sinister impression. The
action produced no response from the egg.
      At last Storrel turned to his men. "Okay, time's up. We're moving in."
      The screen showed the knot of ungainly, helmeted figures walking slowly
forward; at their head was the one bearing Storrel's golden shoulder-flashes,
and on either side of him a senior UNSA officer. They halted. Then, a panel in
the side of the egg slid aside smoothly to reveal a hatch about eight feet
high and at least half that wide. The figures in the spacesuits stiffened
visibly and the watchers on the bridge braced themselves, but nothing further
happened.
      "Maybe they're hung up about protocol or something," Storrel said.
"They've come into our den. Could be they're telling us it's our turn."
      "Could be," Shannon agreed. In a quieter voice he asked Hayter:
"Anything to report from up top?" The captain activated another channel to
speak to two UNSA sergeants positioned on a maintenance catwalk high above the
platform in the docking bay.
      "Come in, Catwalk. What can you see?"
      "We've got a fair angle down inside it. The inside's in shadow but we've
got an image on the intensifier. Just pieces of equipment and fittings...seems
crammed pretty full. No movement or signs of life."
      "No signs of life visible, Gordon," Shannon relayed to the bay. "It
looks as if you can stay there forever or have a look. Good luck. Don't think
twice about backing off if anything's even slightly suspicious."
      "No chance of that," Storrel told him. "Okay, fellas, you heard. Never
say UNSA doesn't live up to its job ads. Miraiski and Oberman, come with me;
the rest of you, stay put."
      Three figures moved, forward from the group and paused near a small ramp
that had telescoped from the bottom of the hatch. Another screen came to life
on the bridge to show the view picked up by a hand-held camera operated by one
of the UNSA officers. For a second it held a shot of the yawning hatch and the
top of the ramp, and then a back view of Storrel filled the screen.
      Storrel's commentary came through on audio. "I'm at the top of the ramp
now. There's a drop of about a foot down to the deck inside. There's an inner
door on the other side of the entrance compartment and it's open. Looks like
an airlock." The TV picture closed in as the camera operator moved up beside
Storrel; it confirmed his description and the general impression of cramped
and cluttered surroundings that had been gained from the catwalk. A glow of
warm, yellowy light penetrated the lock from beyond the inner door.
      "I'm going through into the inner compartment..." A pause. "This looks
like the control cabin. It has seats for two occupants sitting side by side,
facing forward. Could be pilot and copilot stations -- all kinds of controls
and instruments...No sign of anybody, though...just one other door, leading
aft, closed. The seats are very large, in scale with everything else about the
general design. Must be big guys...Oberman, come on through and get a shot of
it for the folks back home."
      The view showed the scene as Storrel had described, then began sweeping
slowly around the cabin to record close-ups of the alien equipment. Suddenly
Hunt pointed toward the screen.
      "Chris!" he exclaimed, catching Danchekker's sleeve. "That long gray
panel with the switches on...did you notice it? I've seen those same markings
before! They were on -- "
      He abruptly stopped speaking as the camera swung sharply upward and
focused on a large display screen that was set directly in front of the egg's
two empty seats. Something was happening on it. A second later they were
staring speechlessly at the image of three alien beings. Every pair of eyes on
the bridge of Jupiter Five opened wide in stunned disbelief.
      There was not a man present who had not seen that form before -- the
long, protruding lower face broadening into the elongated skull...the massive
torsos and the incredible six-fingered hand with two thumbs. Danchekker
himself had constructed the first eight-feet-tall, full-scale model of that
same form, not long after Jupiter Four had sent back details of its finds.
Everybody had seen the artist's impressions of what the shapes that had
contained those skeletons must have looked like.
      The artists had done a fine job...as everybody could now see.
      The aliens were Ganymeans!


Chapter Five

      The evidence amassed to that time indicated that the Ganymean presence
in the Solar System had ceased some twenty-five million years in the past.
Their home planet no longer existed, except as an ice ball beyond Neptune and
the debris that constituted the Asteroid Belt, and had not for fifty thousand
years. So how could Ganymeans appear on the screen in the egg? The first
possibility to flash through Hunt's mind was that they were looking at an
ancient recording that had been triggered when the egg was entered. This idea
was quickly dispelled. Behind the three Ganymeans, they could see a large
display screen not unlike the main display on 15's bridge; it held a view of
Jupiter Five, seen from the angle at which the large alien ship was lying. The
Ganymeans were out there, now, inside that ship...just five miles away. Then
things began happening inside the egg that left no time for more philosophic
speculation as to the meaning of it all.
      Nobody could be sure what the changes of expression on the alien faces
meant, but the general impression was that they were every bit as astonished
as the Earthmen. The Ganymeans began gesticulating, and at the same time
meaningless speech issued from the audio grille. There was no air inside the
egg to carry sound. Evidently the Ganymeans had been monitoring the
transmissions from the reception party and were now using the same frequencies
and modulation.
      The picture of the aliens focused on the middle one of the trio. Then an
alien voice spoke again, pronouncing just two syllables. It said something
that sounded like "Gar-ruth." The figure on the screen inclined its head
slightly, in a way that unmistakably conveyed a combination of politeness and
dignity rarely seen on Earth. "Gar-ruth," the alien voice repeated. Then
again, "Garuth." A similar process took place to introduce the other two, at
which point the view widened out to embrace all three. They remained unmoving,
staring from the screen, as if waiting for something.
      Catching on quickly, Storrel moved to stand directly in front of the
screen. "Stor-rel. Storrel." Then, on impulse, he added:
      "Good afternoon." He admitted later that it sounded stupid, but claimed
that his brain hadn't been thinking too coherently at the time. The view on
the egg's screen changed momentarily to show Storrel looking back at himself.
      "Storrel," the alien voice stated. The pronunciation was perfect. A
number of those watching had believed at the time that it was Storrel himself
who had spoken.
      Miralski and Oberman were introduced in turn, an exercise in shuffling
and clambering that was not helped by the restricted confines of the cabin.
Then a series of pictures was flashed on the screen, to each of which Storrel
replied with an English noun:
      Ganymean, Earthman, spaceship, star, arm, leg, hand, foot. That went on
for a few minutes. Evidently the Ganymeans were accepting the onus of doing
all the learning; it soon became apparent why -- whoever was doing the talking
showed an ability to absorb and remember information with astonishing speed.
He never asked for a repeat of a definition and he never forgot a detail. His
mistakes were frequent to begin with but once corrected they never recurred.
The voice did not synchronize with the mouths of the three visible Ganymeans;
presumably the speaker was one of the others aboard the alien ship who must
have been monitoring the proceedings.
      A small screen alongside the egg's main display suddenly presented a
diagram: a small circle adorned with a wreath of radial spikes, and around it
a set of nine concentric circles.
      "What the hell's this?" Storrel's voice murmured.
      Shannon's brow creased into a frown. He looked inquiringly at the faces
around him.
      "Solar System," Hunt suggested. Shannon passed the information on to
Storrel, who advised the Ganymean. The picture switched to that of just an
empty circle.
      "Who is this?" the Ganymean voice asked.
      "Correction," Storrel said, employing the convention that had already
been adopted. "What is this?"
      "Where 'who'? Where 'what'?"
      "'Who' for Ganymeans and Earthmen."
      "Ganymeans and Earthmen -- collective?"
      "People."
      "Ganymeans and Earthmen people?"
      "Ganymeans and Earthmen are people."
      "Ganymeans and Earthmen are people."
      "Correct."
      "'What' for not-people?"
      "Correct."
      "Not-people -- general?"
      "Things."
      "'Who' for people; 'what' for things?"
      "Correct."
      "What is this?"
      "A circle."
      A dot then appeared in the middle of the circle.
      "What is this?" the voice inquired.
      "The center."
      "'The' for one; 'a' for many?"
      "'The' when one; 'a' when many."
      The diagram of the Solar System reappeared as before, but with the
symbol at the center flashing on and off.
      "What is this?"
      "The Sun."
      "A star?"
      "Correct."
      Storrel proceeded to name the planets as their respective symbols were
flashed in turn. The dialogue was still slow and clumsy but it was improving.
During the exchange that followed, the Ganymeans managed to convey their
bewilderment at the absence of any planet between Mars and Jupiter, a task
that proved to be not too difficult since the Earthmen had been expecting it.
It took a long time to get the message across that Minerva had been destroyed,
and that all that remained of it was some rubble and Pluto, the latter already
named and the source, understandably, of further mystery to the aliens.
      When, after repeated questioning and double-checking, the Ganymeans at
last accepted that they had not misunderstood, their mood became very quiet
and subdued. Despite the fact that none of the gestures and facial expressions
were familiar to them, the Earthmen watching were overcome by the sense of
utter despair and infinite sadness apparent on the alien ship. They could feel
the anguish that was written into every movement of those long, now somehow
sorrowful, Ganymean faces, as if their very bones were being touched by a wail
that came from the beginning of time.
      It took a while for the aliens to become communicative again. The
Earthmen, noting that the Ganymean expectations had been based on a knowledge
of the Solar System that belonged to the distant past, concluded that they
must after all, as had been suspected for some time, have migrated to another
star. Very probably then, their sudden reappearance represented a sentimental
journey to the place where their kind had originated millions of years before
and which none of them had ever seen except, perhaps, as carefully preserved
records that had been handed down for longer than could be remembered. Small
wonder they were dismayed at what they had come so far to find.
      But when the Earthmen introduced the notion that the Ganymeans had
journeyed from another star, and sought an indication of its position, they
were greeted with what appeared to be a firm denial. The aliens seemed to be
trying to tell them that their journey had begun long ago from Minerva itself,
which of course was ridiculous. By this time, however, Storrel had got himself
into a hopeless grammatical tangle and the whole subject was dismissed as the
result of a short-term communications problem. No doubt it would be resolved
later, when the linguistic skills of the interpreter had improved.
      The Ganymean interpreter had spotted the implied connection between
"Earth" and "Earthmen," and returned to the subject to obtain confirmation
that the beings he was talking to had indeed come from the third planet from
the Sun. The Ganymeans visible on the screen appeared very agitated when
informed that this was correct, and they went off into a lengthy exchange of
remarks among themselves which were not audible on radio. Why that revelation
should cause such a reaction was not explained. The question was not asked.
      The aliens concluded by indicating that they had been voyaging for a
great length of time and had endured much illness and many deaths among their
numbers. They were short of supplies, their equipment was in poor condition
with much of it unserviceable, and they were all suffering from total
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual exhaustion. They gave the impression
that only the thought of returning to their home had given them the will to
carry on against impossible difficulties; now that hope had been shattered,
they were at their end.
      Leaving Storrel to continue talking to the aliens, Shannon moved away
from the screen and beckoned some of the others, including the two scientists,
to gather round for a short, impromptu conference.
      "I'm going to send a party across to their ship," he informed them in a
lowered voice. "They need help over there and I guess we're the only ones
around here that can give it. I'll recall Storrel from the bay and have him
lead it; he seems to be getting along fine with them." Then he glanced at
Hayter. "Captain, make ready a bus for immediate flight. Detail ten men to go
with Storrel, including at least three officers. I'd like everybody in the
party to be assembled for a briefing in the lock antechamber to whichever bus
can leave soonest, let's say...thirty minutes from now. Everyone to be fully
supplied, of course."
      "Right away," Hayter acknowledged.
      "Any other points from anybody?" Shannon asked the assembly.
      "Do you want sidearms issued," one of the officers inquired.
      "No. Anything else?"
      "Just one thing." The speaker was Hunt. "A request. I'd like to go too."
Shannon looked at him and hesitated, as if the question, had taken him by
surprise. "I was sent here specifically to investigate the Ganymeans. That's
my official assignment. What better way could there be of helping me do it?"
      "Well, I really don't know." Shannon screwed up his face and scratched
the back of his head as he sought for possible objections. "There's no reason
why not, I suppose. Yeah -- I guess that'd be okay." He turned to Danchekker.
"How about you, Professor?"
      Danchekker held up his hands in protest. "You are most kind to offer,
but thank you, no. I'm afraid I've already had quite enough excitement for one
day. And besides that, it has taken me more than a year to feel safe inside
this contraption. What an alien one must be like, I dread to think."
      Hayter grinned and shook his head, but said nothing.
      "Fine then." Shannon cast his gaze around one more time to invite
further comments. "That's it. Let's get back to our man out front." He walked
back to the screen and drew toward him the microphone that connected him with
Storrel. "How's it going down there, Gordon?"
      "Okay. I'm teaching them to count."
      "Good. But get one of the others to take over, would you? We're sending
you out on a little trip. Captain Hayter will provide the details in a second.
You're going to be an ambassador for Earth."
      "What do they pay one of those?"
      "Give us time, Gordon. We're still working on the matter." Shannon
smiled. It was the first time he had felt relaxed for what seemed like a very
long while.


Chapter Six

      The bus -- a small personnel carrier normally used for ferrying
passengers between satellites or orbiting spacecraft -- was drawing near to
the Ganymean ship. From where he was sitting, squeezed between the bulky
shapes of two other spacesuited figures on one of the benches that ran along
the sides of the cabin, Hunt could see the ship closing in toward them on the
small viewscreen set into the end wall.
      From close range, the impression of age and wear was even more vivid
than it had been previously. The patterns of discoloration covering the ship
from nose to tail, not fully resolved from J5 even under quite high
magnification, were now distinct and in places suggested camouflage patterns
reminiscent of movies. The outer skin was peppered irregularly with round
holes of various sizes, none of them very large, each of which was surrounded
by a raised rim of rounded grayish metal and looked like a miniature Lunar
crater; it was as if the ship had been bombarded by thousands of tiny
particles moving at enormous speed -- sufficient to puncture the skin and
dissipate enough energy to melt the surrounding material. Either the ship had
traveled an enormous distance, Hunt told himself, or there were conditions
outside the Solar System that UNSA had yet to encounter.
      A rectangular aperture, easily large enough to admit the bus, had opened
in the side of the Shapieron, as they now knew the Ganymean ship to be called.
A soft orange glow illuminated the inside and a white beacon flashed near the
center of one of the longer sides.
      As the bus turned gently to home in on it, the pilot's voice came over
the intercom. "Hold on to your seats back there. We're going in without any
docking radar so it's gonna have to be a purely visual approach. Leave all
helmets in their racks until after touchdown."
      With its maneuvering jets nudging delicately, the bus inched its way
through the opening. Inside the bay a bulbous craft with a blue-black sheen
was secured against the inner bulkhead, taking up most of the available space.
Two large and sturdy-looking platforms, constructed perpendicular to the main
axis of the ship, projected into the volume that remained; a pair of silver
eggs lay side by side on one of them but the other was clear except for a
beacon that had been positioned well over to one side to allow ample
unobstructed landing space. The bus lined itself up, moved in to hover ten
feet or so above the platform, eased itself gingerly downward and came to
rest.
      Hunt knew immediately that there was something strange about the
situation but it took him a few seconds to realize just what it was. There
were puzzled expressions on a couple of the faces around him too.
      The seat was pressing up against him. He was experiencing an
approximately normal weight, but he had seen no evidence of any mechanism
whereby such an effect could have been achieved. Jupiter Five had sections
that simulated normal gravity by means of continual rotation, although some
parts of the ship were designated zero-G areas for special purposes.
Instruments that needed to be trained on fixed objects, for example the camera
that had been holding the Shapieron for the previous few hours, were mounted
on projecting booms which could be counter-rotated to compensate -- similar in
principle to ground-based astronomic telescopes. But the view of the Ganymean
ship presented on the screens back at J5 had given no suggestion that the
vessel, or any part of it, was rotating. Furthermore, as the bus had
positioned itself for its final approach into the landing bay, thus
maintaining a fixed position relative to the door, the background stars had
been stationary; this meant that the pilot had not been obliged to synchronize
his approach run with any rotational motion of his target. Thus, the sensation
of weight could only mean that the Ganymeans were employing some revolutionary
technology to produce an artificial gravity effect. Intriguing.
      The pilot spoke again to confirm this conclusion.
      "Well, I guess I'm having one of my lucky days. We made it." The slow
Southern drawl was a godsend. "Some of you people have probably noticed the
gravity. Don't ask me how they do it but it sure ain't centrifugal. The outer
hatch has closed and we're reading a pressure buildup outside, so it looks
like they're turning on the air or whatever they use. I'll tell you if you
need helmets or not when we've done some tests. Won't take more'n a minute. We
still have contact with J5 here. Guess our friends are picking up our
transmissions and relaying them on. J5 says the emergency status has been
relaxed 'and communications have been resumed with other locations. Message
from 14 reads: Tell 'em we waved as they went past."
      The air was breathable -- almost normal. Hunt had expected as much; the
ship's atmosphere would probably resemble that of Minerva, and terrestrial
life had flourished there. The figures in the cabin stayed outwardly calm, but
here and there fidgeting and last-minute fiddling with pieces of equipment
betrayed the rising air of impatience and expectancy.
      The honor of placing the first human foot on an alien spacecraft was to
be Storrel's. He rose from his seat near the rear of the cabin and waited for
the inner door of the lock to swing aside; then he moved through into the
chamber and peered through the transparent port of the outer door.
      After a short wait he reported his findings to the rest of the party. "A
door is opening in the wall at the edge of the platform we're on. There are
guys standing inside it -- the big guys. They're coming out...one, two,
three...five of them. Now they're coming across..." Heads in the cabin turned
instinctively toward the wall screen, but it was showing another part of the
structure.
      "Can't get a scanner on them," the pilot said, as if reading their
thoughts. "It's a blind spot. You're in command now, sir." Storrel continued
looking out of the port but said nothing further for a while. Then he turned
back to face the cabin and took a deep breath.
      "Okay, this is it. No change from plan; play it as briefed. Open her up,
pilot."
      The outer door of the bus slid into its recess and a short metal
stairway unfolded onto the platform. Storrel moved forward to stand framed in
the entrance for a second, then disappeared slowly outside. The UNSA officer
who was to be second, already waiting at the inner door, followed him while,
farther back in the cabin, Hunt took his place in the slowly shuffling line.
      Hunt's impression as he emerged was one of a vastness of space that had
not been apparent from inside the bus; it was like walking suddenly out of a
side chapel and into the nave of a cathedral.
      Not that he found himself surrounded by a large unused area -- this was,
after all, a spacecraft -- but beyond the tail assembly of the Shapieron's
daughter ship, now seen as a sweeping, metallic, geometrical sculpture above
their heads, the perspective lines of the docking bay's interior converged in
the distance to add true proportion to the astronautic wonder in which they
were now standing.
      But these were just sensations that flitted across the background of
Hunt's perceptions. Before him, history was being made: the first face-to-face
meeting between Man and an intelligent, alien species was taking place.
Storrel and the two officers were standing slightly in front of the rest of
the party, who had formed into a single rank; just a few feet away, facing
Storrel, stood what appeared to be the leader of the Ganymean reception
committee and, behind him, his four companions.
      Their skins were light gray and appeared somewhat coarse compared to
that of humans. All five displayed dense hair covering their heads and hanging
to their shoulders though there was no hint of any facial growth. On three of
them, including the leader, the hair was jet black; one of the others had
gray, almost white, hair while the fifth's was a very dark coppery hue,
enhancing the subtle reddish tint of his complexion.
      Their clothes were a mixture of colors and shared nothing in common
except a basic style, which was that of a simple, loosefitting, shirtlike
garment worn with plain trousers gathered into some kind of band at the ankle;
there was certainly no suggestion of any sort of uniform. All were wearing
glossy, thick-soled boots -- again in various colors, and some had ornate
belts around their waists. In addition, each sported a thin, gold headband
supporting what looked like a disk-shaped jewel in the center of his forehead
and wore a flat, silver box, at a distance not unlike a cigarette case, on a
metallic wrist bracelet. There was nothing to distinguish the leader visually.
      For a few momentous seconds the two groups faced each other in silence.
In the doorway behind the Earthmen, the copilot of the bus was recording the
scene for posterity, using a hand camera. Then the Ganymean leader moved
forward a pace and made the same head-inclining gesture they had seen earlier
on the screen in Jupiter Five. Wary of anything that might unwittingly give
offense, Storrel replied with a crisp, regulation UNSA salute. To the delight
of the Earthmen, all five Ganymeans promptly copied him, though with a trace
of uncertainty and an appalling lack of timing that would have brought tears
to the eyes of a UNSA drill sergeant.
      Slowly and haltingly, the Ganymean leader spoke. "I am Mel-thur. Good
af-ter-noon."
      That simple statement would go down among history's immortal moments.
Later it became a standard joke, shared equally by Earthmen and Ganymeans
alike. The voice was deep and gravelly, nothing like that of the interpreter
who had spoken previously via the egg; in the latter case, the diction, and
even the accent, had been flawless. Evidently this was not the interpreter; it
made the fact that he had taken the trouble to offer an opening greeting in
the native tongue of his guests an even nicer gesture.
      Melthur went on to deliver a brief recitation in his own language while
the visitors listened respectfully. Then it was Storrel's turn. All the way
over from J5 he had been anticipating and dreading this moment, wishing that
there was something in the UNSA training manuals to cover a situation like
this. After all, weren't mission planners paid to exhibit a modicum of
foresight? He straightened up and delivered the short speech that he had
mentally prepared, hoping that the historians of years to come would be
lenient in their judgment and appreciative of the circumstances.
      "Fellow travelers and neighbors, greetings from the people of Planet
Earth. We come in peace and in a spirit of friendship to all beings. May this
meeting prove to be the beginning of a long and lasting coexistence between
our races, and from it may there grow a mutual understanding and an accord
that will benefit both our kinds. Henceforth let Ganymeans and Earthmen
together continue to expand that common frontier of knowledge that has brought
them both away from their worlds and into this universal realm that belongs to
all worlds."
      The Ganymeans in their turn showed respect by remaining motionless and
silent for a few seconds after Storrel had finished. Then, the formalities
over, the leader beckoned to them to follow and turned back toward the door
through which he and his companions had appeared. Two of the other Ganymeans
followed him to lead the party of Earthmen, and the remaining pair fell in
behind.
      They proceeded along a broad, white-walled corridor onto which many
doors opened from both sides. Every place was brilliantly lit by a uniform
diffuse glow that seemed to emanate from every part of the ceiling and from
many of the panels that made up the walls. The floor was soft and yielding
beneath their feet and made no sound. The air was cold.
      Along the way, groups and small lines of Ganymeans had gathered to watch
the procession. Most of them were as tall as those who had met the bus, but
several were much smaller and looked more delicate in build and complexion;
they appeared to be children at various stages of growth. The variations in
clothing on the bystanders was even more pronounced than before, but everyone
was wearing the same type of jeweled headband and wrist unit. Hunt began to
suspect that these served more than purely decorative purposes. Many of the
clothes showed signs of wear and general deterioration, contributing to the
overall atmosphere of weariness and demoralization that he sensed on every
side. The walls and doors bore scars that had been left by countless scrapings
of passing objects; away from the walls the floors had been worn thin by feet
that had passed to and fro for longer than he could imagine; and the sagging
postures of some of the figures, several of them being supported by
companions, told their own story.
      The corridor was quite short and brought them to a second, slightly
wider one that ran transversely; this second corridor curved away from them to
left and right and seemed to be part of a continuous circular thoroughfare
that encompassed the core of the vessel. Immediately in front of them, in the
curving wall that formed the outer shell of the core, was a large open door.
The Ganymeans ushered them through into the bare circular room beyond -- it
was about twenty feet in diameter -- and the door slid silently shut. A vague
whine of unseen machinery issued from an unidentifiable source and meaningless
symbols flashed on and off on a panel set into the wall near the door. Hunt
guessed after a few seconds that they were inside a large elevator that moved
along a shaft contained within the ship's core. There had been no sensation of
acceleration whatsoever -- another example, perhaps, of the Ganymean mastery
of gravitic engineering.
      They emerged from the elevator and crossed another circular corridor to
pass through what seemed to be a control or instrumentation room; on both
sides of the central throughway the walls were lined with console stations,
indicator panels and displays, and Ganymeans were seated at a number of the
positions. The general lines of the room were cleaner and less cluttered than
those aboard UNSA vessels. The instruments and equipment seemed to be
integrated into the decor rather than added afterward. At least as much
thought had been devoted to aesthetics as to function. The color scheme, a
subtle balance of yellows, oranges and greens, formed a single, organic,
curviform design that flowed from end to end of the room, making it as much an
object for appreciative contemplation as an operational part of the Shapieron.
By comparison the command center of Jupiter Five seemed stark and utilitarian.
      The door at the far end brought them to their destination. It was a
large trapezoidal room, presumably as a consequence of its position between
the core of the ship and the outer hull, predominantly white and gray. The
wall at the wide end was dominated by an enormous display screen, below which
stood a row of crew stations and instrument facia, all encumbered by
noticeably fewer switches and buttons than would be normal for equivalent
equipment on J5. Some desk-like working surfaces and a number of
unidentifiable devices occupied the central area of the room and the narrow
end was raised to form a dais that carried three large, unoccupied chairs,
standing behind a long console and facing the main display screen. This was
almost certainly the place from which the captain and his lieutenants
supervised operation of the ship.
      Four Ganymeans were waiting in the large open area before the dais. The
Earthmen drew up facing them and the ritual exchange of short speeches was
repeated. As soon as the formalities had been concluded the Ganymean
spokesman, Garuth as he had just identified himself, directed their attention
to a collection of items arrayed along the top of one of the tables. For each
of the Earthmen present there was a headband and wrist unit identical to those
worn by all the Ganymeans, plus some smaller articles. One of the UNSA
officers reached hesitantly toward them and then, reassured by gestures from
the aliens that were obviously meant to convey encouragement, picked a
headband to examine it more closely. One by one the others followed suit.
      Hunt selected one and picked it up, only to find that it was practically
weightless. What had seemed from a distance to be a jewel in the middle of the
piece turned out in fact to be a flat, shiny disk of silvery metal about the
size of a quarter, with a tiny dome of what appeared to be black glass mounted
in the center. The band itself was far too short to encircle a Ganymean head
and the metal showed signs of having been broken and crudely repaired --
clearly the result of the device having been hastily modified to human
proportions.
      A huge, gray six-fingered hand with broad nails as well as flexible horn
pads on the knuckles moved into Hunt's field of vision and gently took hold of
the headband. He looked up and found himself staring into the eyes of one of
the alien giants, who was now standing right beside him. The eyes were dark
blue and contained enormous, circular pupils; Hunt could have sworn that they
were twinkling with good-natured laughter. Before he had time to collect his
reeling thoughts, the headband had been secured snugly in place. The Ganymean
then picked up one of the smaller items, a rubbery disk attached to a padded
clip, and attached it with a simple movement to the lobe of Hunt's right ear;
it fitted quite comfortably in such a way that the disk rested lightly against
the bony protrusion above the side of his neck. A similar device was fastened
to the neck of his shirt collar, just visible inside the rim of the helmet-
seating of his spacesuit. The gadget's disk was in contact with his throat.
Hunt realized that the aliens were mingling freely and that all his colleagues
were being assisted in a similar manner. Before he could observe any more, his
own giant held up the last item, the wrist unit, and demonstrated the
ingenious adjustment method of the bracelet a few times before securing it on
Hunt's suit forearm. The face of the unit was taken up almost entirely by what
had to be a miniature display screen, although nothing was visible on it at
that moment. The giant pointed to one of the tiny buttons set in a row beneath
the screen and made a series of head movements and facial expressions that
didn't mean very much. Then he turned away to an unattended Earthman who was
having trouble fitting his earpiece into place.
      Hunt looked around him. The unoccupied Ganymeans gathered round the room
to witness these proceedings seemed to be waiting patiently for something to
happen. Above them, framed in panorama on the main viewing screen, was the
image of Jupiter Five, still riding five miles off. The sudden sight of
something familiar and reassuring among all these strange surroundings at once
swept away the dreamlike paralysis that had slowly been creeping over him. He
looked down at the wrist unit again, shrugged, and touched the button that the
giant had indicated.
      "I am ZORAC. Good afternoon."
      Hunt looked up again and turned to see who had spoken, but nobody was
even looking at him. A puzzled frown formed on his face.
      "You are who?" He heard the same voice again. Hunt looked from side to
side and behind him again, completely bewildered. He noticed that one or two
of the other Earthmen were acting in the same strange manner, and that a
couple of them had started to mumble, apparently to themselves. And then he
realized that the voice was coming from the earpiece he was wearing. It was
the voice of the Ganymean interpreter that he had first heard on J5. In the
same split second it dawned on him that the throat-piece was a microphone.
Feeling, for a moment, slightly self-conscious at the thought of appearing as
ridiculous as his colleagues, he replied, "Hunt."
      "Earthmen talk to me. I talk to Ganymeans. I translate."
      Hunt was taken completely by surprise. He had not expected to have to
play so active a role in whatever developed, having seen himself more as an
observer; now he was being invited to participate directly in the dialogue.
For a moment he was nonplused because no intelligent continuation suggested
itself.
      Then, not wishing to give an impression of rudeness, he asked:
      "Where are you?"
      "Different parts in different places in the Shapieron. I am not a
Ganymean. I am a machine. I believe the Earth word is computer..." A short
pause followed, then: "Yes. I was correct. I am a computer."
      "How did you manage to check that out so fast?" Hunt queried.
      "I am sorry. I do not understand that question yet. Can you say it more
simply please?"
      Hunt thought for a second.
      "You did not understand the word computer the first time. You did
understand it the second time. How did you know?"
      "I asked the Earthman who is talking to me in the egg inside Jupiter
Five."
      Hunt marveled as he realized that ZORAC was no mere computer, but a
supercomputer. It was capable of conducting and learning from independent and
simultaneous conversations. That went a long way toward explaining the
phenomenal progress it was making in its comprehension of English and
accounted for its ability to memorize every detail of information without need
for repetition. Hunt had seen some of Earth's most advanced language-
translation machines in action on several occasions; compared to them ZORAC
was staggering.
      For the next few minutes the Ganymeans remained silent spectators while
the Earthmen familiarized themselves with ZORAC and with the facilities that
they now enjoyed for communicating both with it and through it. The headbands
were miniature TV cameras through which the scene perceived by a wearer could
be transmitted directly into the machine. The view from any headband could be
presented on any wrist screen, as could any other item of information capable
of graphic representation and available from the ship's computer complex.
ZORAC -- a collective name for this complex -- provided not only a versatile
mechanism enabling individuals to access and interact with the ship's many
facilities, but also an extremely sophisticated means for individuals to
communicate among themselves. And all this was merely a sideline; ZORAC's
prime function was that of supervising and controlling just about everything
in the Shapieron. That was why the instrument panels and consoles were so
simple and straightforward in general appearance; most operations were carried
out by means of vocal commands to ZORAC.
      Once ZORAC had introduced itself to all the newcomers, the serious
business of the day resumed once more with Storrel conducting a more
productive dialogue with Garuth, the Ganymean mission commander. From the
discussion it appeared that the Shapieron had indeed come from another star
system to which it had gone long before for the purpose of conducting a
scientific mission of some complexity. A catastrophe had befallen the
expedition and forced them to depart in haste, without time to prepare for a
long voyage; the situation was exacerbated by technical problems relating to
the ship itself, though their precise nature remained obscure. The voyage had
been long and was beset with difficulties, resulting in the predicament that
the giants now found themselves facing, and which had already been described
to the Earthmen. Garuth concluded by stressing again the poor physical and
mental condition of his people, and their need to find somewhere to land their
ship in order to recuperate and appraise their situation.
      Throughout the proceedings, a running commentary on both sides of the
conversation was radioed back to the crew remaining on the bus, whose Ganymean
relay gave Shannon and the others on the bridge of the J5 a minute-by-minute
report of what was happening.
      Even before Garuth had finished speaking, Shannon had contacted Ganymede
Main Base and instructed the commander there to begin preparations to receive
a shipload of unexpected and very weary guests.


Chapter Seven

      "One of the other Earthmen has just instructed me to get lost and
switched his unit off," ZORAC said. "I could only do that by taking the
Shapieron away into space and I'm certain that he didn't intend that. What did
he mean?"
      Hunt grinned to himself as he allowed his head to sink back into the
pillow while he contemplated the ceiling. He had been back on board Jupiter
Five for several hours and was relaxing in his cabin after a strenuous day
while experimenting further with his Ganymean communications kit.
      "It's an Earth saying," he replied. "It doesn't mean what the words mean
literally. It's what people sometimes say when they're not interested in
listening to somebody. Probably he was tired and needed to sleep. But don't
you say it when you talk to Earthmen. It conveys irritation and is a little
insulting."
      "I see. Okay. Is there a word or phrase for a saying that doesn't mean
what it says literally?"
      Hunt sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. Suddenly he had
nothing but admiration for the patience of school teachers.
      "I suppose we'd call it a figure of speech," he said.
      "But surely speech is formed from words, not figures, or have I made a
mistake somewhere?"
      "No, you're right. That's just another saying."
      "A figure of speech is a figure of speech then. Right?"
      "Yes. ZORAC, I'm getting tired too. Could you save any more questions
about English until I'm ready for it again? There are some questions I'd still
like to ask you."
      "Otherwise you'll instruct me to get lost and switch off?"
      "Correct."
      "Okay. What are your questions?"
      Hunt hoisted his shoulders up against the end of his bunk and clasped
his hands behind his head. After a moment's reflection, he was ready. "I'm
interested in the star that your ship came from. You said that it had a system
of several planets."
      "Yes."
      "Your ship came from one of those planets?"
      "Yes."
      "Did all the Ganymean people move from Minerva and go live on that
planet a long time ago?"
      "No. Only three large ships went and their carried-ships. Also there
were three very large machines that propelled themselves like spaceships. The
Ganymeans went there to test a scientific idea. They did not go there to live.
All came back in the Shapieron but many have died."
      "When you went to the star, where did you travel from?"
      "From Minerva."
      "Where were the rest of the Ganymean people -- the ones who didn't go
with you to the star?"
      "They remained on Minerva, naturally. The work to be done at the star
needed only a small number of scientific people."
      Hunt's incredulity could no longer be contained. The thing that he had
been beginning to suspect for some time was really true.
      "How long ago was it when you left the star?" he asked, his voice
catching slightly as he formed the words.
      "Approximately twenty-five million Earth years ago," ZORAC informed him.
      For a long time Hunt said nothing. He just lay there, his mind
struggling to comprehend the enormity of what he had learned. Just a few hours
before he had been standing face to face with beings who had been alive long
before the species called Homo sapiens had ever begun to emerge. And they were
still alive now, and had been through the unimaginable epochs between. The
very thought of it was stupefying.
      He did not imagine for one moment that this could represent anything
like a normal Ganymean life span and he guessed it to be the result of
relativistic time-dilation. But to produce an effect of such magnitude they
must have sustained a phenomenal velocity for an incredible length of time.
What could possibly have induced the Ganymeans to journey the vast distance
that this implied? And, equally strange, why should they willingly inflict
upon themselves what they must have known would be a permanent forfeiture of
their world, their way of life and all the things that were familiar to them?
What significance could their expedition have had, since nothing they could
have achieved at their destination could possibly have affected their
civilization in any way whatsoever -- not with that discrepancy in time
scales? But hadn't Garuth said something about everything not having gone
according to plan?
      Having sorted his thoughts into something resembling order once more,
Hunt had another question. "How far from the Sun was this star?"
      "The distance that light would travel in nine point three Earth years,"
ZORAC answered.
      The situation was getting crazy. Allowing for the speed that would have
been necessary to produce the time-dilation, such a journey should have taken
hardly any time at all...astronomically speaking.
      "Did the Ganymeans know that they would return after twenty-five million
years?" Hunt asked, determined to get to the bottom of it.
      "When they left the star, they knew. But when they left Minerva to go to
the star, they did not know. They did not have a reason to believe that the
journey from the star would be longer than the journey to the star."
      "How long did it take them to get there?"
      "Measured from the Sun, twelve point one years."
      "And the journey back again took twenty-five million?"
      "Yes. They could not avoid traveling very fast. I believe that the
results of this are familiar to you. They orbited the Sun far away many
times."
      Hunt replied with the obvious question. "Why didn't they just slow
down?"
      "They could not."
      "Why?"
      ZORAC seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second.
      "The electrical machines could not be operated. The points-that-destroy-
all-things and move in circles could not be stopped. The space-and-time-
joining blendings could not be unbent."
      "I don't understand that," Hunt said, frowning.
      "I can't be more clear without asking more questions about English,"
ZORAC warned him.
      "Leave it for now." Hunt remembered the stir caused by speculations
about the propulsion system of the Ganymean ship beneath Pithead, which dated
from about the same period as the Shapieron. Although the UNSA scientists and
engineers could not be certain, many of them suspected that motion had been
produced not by reactive thrust, but by an artificially induced zone of
localized space-time distortion into which the vessel "fell" continuously.
Hunt felt that such a principle could allow the kind of sustained acceleration
needed for the Shapieron to attain the speeds implied by ZORAC's account. No
doubt other scientists were putting similar questions to ZORAC; he would
discuss the matter with them tomorrow, he decided, and not press the matter
further for the time being.
      "Do you remember that time," he asked casually. "Twenty-five million
years ago, when your ship left Minerva?"
      "Twenty-five million years by Earth time," ZORAC pointed out. "It has
been less than twenty years by Shapieron time. Yes. I remember all things."
      "What kind of world did you leave?"
      "I don't fully understand. What kind of kind do you mean?"
      "Well, for example, what was the place on Minerva like that you departed
from? Was the land flat? Was there water? Were there structures that the
Ganymean people had built? Can you describe a picture of it?"
      "I can show a picture," ZORAC offered. "Please observe the screen."
      Intrigued, Hunt reached out to pick up the wrist unit from where he had
placed it on the top of the bedside locker. As he turned it over in his hand
the screen came to life with a scene that immediately drew an involuntary
whistle of amazement from his lips. He was looking down on the Shapieron, or
at least on a vessel that was indistinguishable from it, but this was not the
scarred and pitted hulk that he had seen from the bus a few hours before; it
was a clean, gleaming, majestic tower of flawless mirror -- silver, standing
proudly on its tail in a vast open space that was occupied by strange
constructions -- buildings, cylinders, tubular structures, domes, masts and
curves, all interconnected and fused into a single, continuous synthetic
landscape. Two other ships were standing there on either side of the first,
both just as grand, but somewhat smaller.
      The air above the spaceport -- for that was what the picture suggested -
- was alive with all manner of flying vehicles ranging from the very large to
the very small, the majority of which moved in well-defined lanes like
processions of disciplined skywalking ants.
      Behind it all, soaring up for what must have been miles to dominate the
skyline, was the city. It was nothing like any city that Hunt had ever seen,
but there was nothing else that it could have been. Tier upon tier, level
after level, the skyscrapers, terraces, sweeping ramps, and flying bridges
clung together in a fantastic composite pattern that seemed to leap into the
sky in a series of joyous bounds that defied gravity. The whole construction
might have been sculpted by some infinitely skillful cosmic artist from a
single monolith of gleaming marble, and yet there were parts of it that seemed
to float detached like ivory islands in the sky. Only a knowledge that
transcended Man's could have conceived such a feat; it had to be yet another
instance of a Ganymean science that remained to be stumbled upon by the
scientists of Earth.
      "That is the Shapieron as it was before it left Minerva," ZORAC informed
him. "The other two ships that traveled with it are there too. The place
behind was called Gromos. I don't know what the word is for a place
constructed for many Ganymeans to live in."
      "A city," Hunt supplied, at the same time feeling an acute inadequacy in
the description. "Were the Ganymeans fond of their city?"
      "Sorry?"
      "Did they like their city? Did they wish very much to be home again?"
      "Very much. The Ganymeans were fond of all things on Minerva. They were
fond of their home." ZORAC seemed to possess a well-developed ability to sense
when further information was needed. "When they left the star, they knew then
that their journey home would take a long time. They did not expect all things
to be not changed. But they did not expect to find that their home did no
longer exist. They are very sad." Hunt had already seen enough to know this.
Before he could ask another question, ZORAC spoke up. "Is it okay if I ask
questions that are not about English?"
      "Yes, all right," Hunt answered. "What do you want to know?"
      "The Ganymeans are very unhappy. They believe that the
      Earthmen destroyed Minerva. Is this true, and if it is, why did they
destroy it?"
      "No!" Hunt reacted instinctively, with a start. "No. That's not true.
Minerva was destroyed fifty thousand years ago. There were no men on Earth
then. We came later."
      "Did the Lunarians destroy Minerva then?" ZORAC asked. Evidently it had
broached this same subject with others on Jupiter Five already.
      "Yes. How much do you know about them?"
      "Twenty-five million years ago, the Ganymeans took kinds of Earth life
from Earth to Minerva. In a short time afterward, the Ganymeans and all kinds
of life that were of Minerva and lived on land died. The life kinds from Earth
did not die. The Lunarians grew from them and looked like Earthmen now. Other
scientific people on Jupiter Five have told me this. This is all I know."
      This told Hunt something that he hadn't realized before and hadn't
really thought about. Prior to the last few hours, it seemed, ZORAC had been
completely ignorant of the Ganymeans having imported large numbers of
terrestrial animal species to their own planet. Just to be sure, he had one
other question. "The Ganymeans had not brought any Earth life to Minerva
before you left to go to the star?"

      "Do you know if they intended to?"
      "If they did, I was never told."
      "Do you know of any reason why they should wish to?"

      "So whatever the problem was, it must have cropped up later."
      "Sorry?"
      "The reason must have happened after you left Minerva."
      "I think the phrase is 'I suppose so.' I can compute no alternative."
      Hunt realized with growing excitement that the mystery of what had
happened to the Ganymean civilization was one that posed a challenge to both
races. Surely, he told himself, their combined knowledge would prove capable
of producing the answers. He decided it was time to complete the story of the
Lunarians for ZORAC's benefit -- the story that had uncovered the most
astounding revelations of recent years, even, perhaps, of all time. This story
involved a change in our understanding of the structure of the Solar System
and required a complete rewriting of the very origins of Mankind.
      "Yes, you are right," Hunt said, after a while. "The Lunarians grew --
we would say 'evolved' -- from the forms of Earth life that were left on
Minerva after the Ganymeans and other Minervan kinds died out. It took twenty-
five million years for them to evolve. By fifty thousand years ago, they had
become an advanced race; they built spaceships, machines and cities. Has
anybody told you what happened after that?"
      "No. But I was intending to ask."
      "Is it true that Minerva possessed a moon?"
      "A satellite that orbited the planet?"
      "Correct."
      "Yes."
      Hunt nodded to himself in satisfaction. It was as he and the other
scientists of Earth had deduced from their investigations of the Lunarian
finds.
      "And tell me," he asked as a check. "Did Earth possess a moon twenty-
five million years ago?"
      "No. Earth had no satellite then." Hunt could have been mistaken, but he
was sure that ZORAC was learning to convey emotional colorations by the
inflection of its voice. He could have sworn that there was surprise in that
response.
      "Today, Earth has a moon," he said. "It has had a moon for approximately
fifty thousand years."
      "Since the time when the Lunarians became an advanced race."
      "Exactly."
      "I see. A connection is clearly implied. Please explain."
      "When the Lunarians destroyed Minerva, the planet exploded broke into
pieces. The largest piece now orbits the Sun as its most distant planet,
Pluto. The other pieces, or most of them, still orbit the Sun between Mars and
Jupiter. I assume you know this, since the Ganymeans were surprised when they
found that the Solar System had changed."
      "Yes, I know about Pluto and the asteroids," ZORAC confirmed. "I knew
that the Solar System had changed and that Minerva was not present. But I did
not know about the process by which it had changed."
      "Minerva's moon fell toward the Sun. Lunarians were still alive on the
moon. It came near to Earth and was captured. It became Earth's moon, and
still is now."
      "The Lunarians who were alive must have traveled to Earth," ZORAC
interrupted. "During the time that followed, they increased their numbers.
Earthmen have evolved from Lunarians. That is why they look the same. I can
compute no alternative. Am I right?"
      "Yes, you're right, ZORAC." Hunt shook his head in admiration. With
hardly any data at all to go by, the machine had unerringly arrived at the
same conclusion that had taken the scientists of Earth more than two years to
piece together, after some of the most vigorous argument and dissent for many
decades. "At least, we believe that that is right. We cannot prove it
conclusively."
      "Sorry. Conclusively?"
      "Finally...for certain."
      "I see. I reason that the Lunarians must have traveled to Earth in
spaceships. They must have taken machines and other things. I suggest that
Earthmen should look for these things on the surface of the Earth. This would
prove what you believe is true. My conclusion is that you haven't tried, or
alternatively you have tried but have not succeeded."
      Hunt was flabbergasted. Had ZORAC been around two years earlier the
whole puzzle would have been solved in a week.
      "Have you been talking to an Earthman called Danchekker?" he asked.
      "No. I have not met the name. Why?"
      "He is a scientist and reasons the same things as you. We have not yet
found any traces of things that the Lunarians might have brought with them.
Danchekker predicts that such things will be found one day."
      "Did the Earthmen not know where they had come from?"
      ZORAC inquired.
      "Not until very recently. Before that it was believed that they evolved
only on Earth."
      "The life kinds that they evolved from on Minerva had been taken from
Earth by the Ganymeans. The same life kinds were left to live on Earth also.
      "The Lunarians who did not die and went to Earth were an advanced race.
The Earthmen of now did not know of them until recently. Therefore they had
forgotten where they came from. I reason that there must have been very few
Lunarians who did not die. They became unadvanced and forgot their knowledge.
After fifty thousand years they became advanced again, but they had forgotten
the Lunarians. As they found new knowledge, they would see remains of life
kinds from many years ago everywhere on Earth. They would see the sameness as
their own life kind. They would reason that they evolved on Earth. Recently
Earthmen have discovered Lunarians and Ganymeans. Now they have deduced the
true events. Otherwise they would not be able to explain why Lunarians looked
the same as them."
      ZORAC had the whole thing figured out. Admittedly the machine had been
able to start out with a number of key items of information that had taken
Hunt and his colleagues a long time to uncover, but nevertheless it was a
staggering piece of logical analysis.
      Hunt was still marveling at the achievement when ZORAC spoke again. "I
still do not know why the Lunarians destroyed Minerva."
      "They didn't intend to," Hunt explained. "There was a war on Minerva. We
believe the planet's crust was thin and unstable. The weapons used were very
powerful. The planet exploded in the process."
      "Sorry. War? Crust? Weapon? Don't follow."
      "Oh God..." Hunt groaned. He paused to select and light a cigarette from
a pack lying on the locker. "The outside of a planet is cold and hard -- near
the surface. That's its crust."
      "Like a skin?"
      "Yes, but brittle...it breaks into pieces easily."
      "Okay."
      "When many people fight in large groups, that's war."
      "Fight?"
      "Oh hell...violent action between one group of people and another group.
When they organize themselves to kill."
      "Kill what?"
      "The other group of people."
      ZORAC gave one distinct impression of confusion. For a second the
machine seemed to be having difficulty in believing its microphone.
      "Lunarians organized themselves to kill other Lunarians," it said,
slowly and carefully as if anxious not to be misunderstood.
      "They did this deliberately?" The turn of conversation had caught Hunt
somewhat unprepared. He began to feel uneasy and even a little embarrassed,
like a child being insistently cross-examined over some transgression that it
would sooner forget.
      "Yes," was all he could manage.
      "Why did they wish to do such a thing?" The emotional inflection was
there again, now registering undisguised incredulity.
      "They fought because...because..." Hunt wrestled for something to say.
The machine, it seemed, had no comprehension whatsoever of such matters. What
way was there to summarize the passions and complexities of millennia of
history in a few sentences? "To protect themselves...to defend their own group
from other groups..."
      "From other groups who were organized to kill them?"
      "Well, the matter is very complicated...but yes, you could say that."
      "Then logically the same question still applies -- why did the other
groups wish to do such things?"
      "When one group made another group angry about something or when two
groups both wanted the same thing, or when one group wanted another group's
land, maybe...sometimes they would fight to decide." What he was saying didn't
seem an adequate explanation, Hunt admitted to himself, but it was the best he
could do. A short silence ensued; even ZORAC, it seemed, had to think hard
about this one.
      "Did all the Lunarians have brain problems?" it asked at last, having
evidently deduced what it considered the most probable common factor.
      "They were naturally a very violent race, we believe," Hunt replied.
"But at the time they lived, they faced the prospect of extinction -- all
dying out. Minerva was freezing all over fifty thousand years ago. They wanted
to go to a warmer planet to live. We think they wanted to go to Earth. But
there were many Lunarians, few resources, and little time. The situation made
them afraid and angry...and they fought."
      "They killed each other to prevent them from dying? They destroyed
Minerva to protect it from freezing?"
      "They didn't intend to do such a thing," Hunt said again.
      "What did they intend?"
      "I suppose they intended that the group that was left after the war
would go to Earth."
      "Why couldn't all groups go? The war must have needed resources that
would have been used better for other things. All Lunarians could have used
their knowledge. They wanted to live but did everything to make certain that
they would not. They had brain problems." The tone of ZORAC's final
pronouncement was definite.
      "All this was not something they had planned deliberately. They were
driven by emotions. When men feel strong emotions, they do not always do the
most logical things."
      "Men...Earthmen...? Earthmen feel strong emotions too, that make them
fight like the Lunarians did?"
      "Sometimes."
      "And Earthmen make wars too?"
      "There have been many wars on Earth, but there have been none for a long
time."
      "Do the Earthmen wish to kill the Ganymeans?"
      "No! No...of course not. There is no reason..." Hunt protested
violently.
      "There can never be a reason," ZORAC stated. "The Lunarians had no
reason. The things that you said are not reasons since they do the opposite to
what is wanted -- so they are not reasonable. The Earthmen must have evolved
brain problems from the Lunarians. Very sick."
      Danchekker had theorized that the extraordinary aggressiveness and
powers of determination exhibited by Man, compared to other terrestrial
species, had originated as a mutation among the anthropoids left on Minerva
after the decline of the Ganymeans. It had accounted for the startling
rapidity of the emergence and development of the Lunarian civilization, which
had attained spaceflight while the most advanced species on Earth were
represented only by primitive stone-working cultures. As ZORAC had surmised,
this formidable Lunarian trait had indeed been passed on to their terrestrial
descendants (although becoming somewhat diluted in the process), and had in
turn constituted the most potent factor in the subsequent emergence and rise
of the human race. Could that trait after all turn out to be the unique
aberration that Danchekker had sometimes speculated?
      "Were there never wars on Minerva?" Hunt asked. "Even in the early
history of the Ganymean people, did groups never fight?"
      "No. There can be no reason. Such ideas would never occur."
      "Individuals -- did they never fight? Were they never violent?"
      "Sometimes a Ganymean would try to harm another Ganymean, but only if he
was very sick. Brain problems did occur. Very sad. On most occasions the
doctors could fix the problems. Sometimes one with problems would have to be
kept away from other Ganymeans and helped. But very few were like that."
      Mercifully, ZORAC did not seem disposed to pass moral judgments, but all
the same Hunt was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable, like a Papuan
headhunter facing a missionary.
      ZORAC quickly made the situation worse. "If all Lunarians were sick and
the doctors were sick too, anything could happen. It then becomes computable
that they blew the planet up. If Earthmen are all sick and can make machines
and come to Ganymede, they can make a war and blow up planets too. I must warn
Garuth of the possibility. He might not want to stick around. Other places
would be safer than a Solar System full of sick Earthmen."
      "There will be no war," Hunt told ZORAC firmly. "Those things happened a
long time ago. Earthmen are different now. We do not fight today. The
Ganymeans are safe here -- they are our friends."
      "I see." The machine sounded unconvinced. "To compute the probability of
the truth of that, I must know more about the Earthmen and how they have
evolved. Can I ask more questions?"
      "Ask them some other time," Hunt said, suddenly feeling weary of it all.
He had much to think about and discuss with others before taking the
conversation any further. "I think we've talked enough for now. I need some
sleep."
      "I must get lost then?"
      "Yes, I'm afraid so, ZORAC old pal. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
      "Very well. In that case, good afternoon."
      "You got that wrong. I'm going to bed. It's night now."
      "I know. It was a joke."
      "Good afternoon." Hunt smiled as he pressed a button on the wrist unit
to break the connection. A computer with a sense of humor; now he had seen
everything. He carefully arranged the various items that made up the
communications kit on top of his locker and settled back to finish his
cigarette while he reflected on the astonishing conversation. How ludicrous
and tragically comical all their fears and precautions seemed now. The
Ganymeans not only had no word for war, they had not the faintest concept of
it. He was beginning to feel like something that had lived its whole grubby
life beneath a stone that had just been turned over.
      He was just about to switch off the light when the chime on the bedside
wall panel sounded. Absently he reached out and flipped a switch to accept the
call. It was an announcement via the audio channel.
      "This is Director Shannon speaking. I just thought you'd all like to
know that a message was received from Earth at 2340 hours local. After an all-
night emergency meeting at UN Headquarters, the decision to allow the
Shapieron to land at Ganymede Main Base has been endorsed. The Ganymeans have
been informed and preparations are going ahead. That's all. Thank you."


Chapter Eight

      And so, the incredible voyage of twenty-five million years came at last
to an end.
      Hunt was among the observers in the spacious transparent dome of the
Operations Control Tower at Ganymede Main who watched in silence as the huge
shape of the Shapieron slid slowly down toward the space prepared for it just
beyond the edge of the base. It came to rest standing upright on the tips of
the four sharply swept fins that formed its tail assembly, with the stern end
of the main body of the ship still one hundred feet or more above the ice,
dwarfing the platoon of Vegas that stood on one side like a welcoming guard of
honor.
      The small fleet of vehicles that had been waiting just outside the area
at once began crawling forward; the leading three stopped just in front of the
nearest supporting fin and disgorged figures clad in standard-issue UNSA
spacesuits, while the rest formed up into waiting lines on either side. The
figures assembled into straight ranks facing the ship; three stood a short
distance ahead of the rest -- Commander Lawrence Foster, in charge of Main,
his deputy, and one of the several senior officers from Jupiter Five who had
come down to observe. The diminutive Sun was very low in the sky, accentuating
the bleakness of the Ganymedean landscape and painting sinister streaks of
bottomless shadow across the frozen crags and the shattered cliffs of ice that
had survived unchanging from meteorite impacts as old as time itself.
      Then, as they watched, the stern section of the Shapieron detached
itself from the main hull of the vessel and began to move vertically downward.
After a few seconds they could see that it was still connected by three
steadily lengthening bright silver tubes, the tubes clustered tightly around
the central axis of the ship. The stern section touched the ice, and stopped;
a number of doors slid open all around it and short access ramps extended
downward to connect them to the surface. Watching from the dome, Hunt
remembered the elevator shaft through which he and his companions had been
conveyed after leaving the bus when 'they had visited the Shapieron. If his
estimations were accurate, the shaft had been about as far in from the outer
hull of the ship as were the three tubes that were visible now. Presumably
then, the shaft extended on inside one of the tubes and each of the tubes was
an extension of an identical shaft. That meant that traffic up and down the
length of the ship traveled via a three-elevator system that could be extended
to ground level when required; the whole tail end of the structure moved down
as well to afford a "lobby." Very neat. But his further study of the vessel
was interrupted as a stir spread through the dome. The Ganymeans were coming
out.
      Looking more gigantic than ever in their suits, a party of aliens
descended one of the ramps slowly and approached the waiting Earthmen, who
immediately snapped into saluting posture. In the next few minutes an exchange
of formalities similar to that which Hunt had already witnessed was reenacted.
The loudspeaker inside the dome broadcast Foster's welcome to the Ganymeans on
behalf of all the governments of Earth and reiterated a desire for friendship
between all races for all time. He made reference to the plight of the
voyagers and indicated that, though sparse, whatever resources and assistance
the Earthmen could offer was theirs.
      Garuth, who had elected to lead his people personally from the ship,
replied through ZORAC, a channel from which had been linked into the dome's
communications circuits. He echoed Foster's sentiments dutifully, though in a
way that sounded somehow mechanical and artificial, as if he could not fully
comprehend why such sentiments need be voiced. Garuth gave the impression of
doing his best to comply with an unfamiliar ritual that served no obvious
purpose. Nevertheless his audience appreciated the gesture. He went on to
express the gratitude of his people that fate, while taking their brothers
from them, had left them new brothers to take their place when they came home.
The two races, he concluded, had much to learn from each other.
      Then the waiting vehicles moved toward the ramps to transport the
Ganymeans to the quarters that had been made ready for them. The vehicles
could not manage more than a few Ganymeans at one time, even stripped of seats
and removable fittings, so they concentrated primarily on moving the sick and
enfeebled, of whom there were many. The rest, guided by the spacesuited pygmy
figures now dotting the scene, began a slow trek on foot toward the buildings
waiting for them. Before long a broken procession of huddled groups and
stragglers stretched across the ice from the ship to the base proper. Above it
all, in the harshness of seminight, the stars stared down in stony-eyed
indifference.
      The dome had become very quiet. Grim faces looked out over the scene,
each one an impenetrable mask preserving the privacy of thoughts that were not
for sharing. No video record would ever recapture the feelings of this moment,
whatever it might show, however many times it might be seen.
      After a while, a sergeant who was standing next to Hunt turned his head
a fraction. "Man, I don't know," he muttered quietly. "What a hell of a way to
come home."
      "What a hell of a home to come home to," Hunt replied.

      The accommodations available at Main were not sufficient to hold all the
Ganymeans, who numbered more than four hundred, so the majority were obliged
to remain in the Shapieron. Nevertheless, just being on a firm surface again,
even if it was only the frozen ball of rubble called Ganymede, and among other
beings, seemed to provide the aliens with a badly needed psychological tonic.
Earthmen showed them the facilities and amenities that were available in their
new quarters, pointed out the stocks of supplies and food-stuffs provided for
experimentation, and the various other items which, it was hoped, would help
to make life reasonably comfortable. Meanwhile other UNSA crews delivered
similar loads, hurriedly ferried from one of the orbiting freighters, to the
Ganymeans still inside their ship. Then the new arrivals were left in peace
and to their own devices.
      After a much-needed rest, they announced that they were ready to resume
their dialogue with their hosts. Accordingly, an evening conference was
arranged between the leaders and certain other individuals of the two races,
to be held in the officers' mess and to be followed by a formal welcoming
dinner. Hunt was among those invited to attend; so was Danchekker.


Chapter Nine
      The temperature had originally been lowered to make the Ganymeans feel
more at home, but by the time everybody had been crammed into the officers'
mess for an hour or more and pails of tobacco smoke were hanging sullenly
beneath the lights, it turned out to be just as well for all. Danchekker
finished what he had been saying into the microphone of the headset that he
was wearing over his sweater, then resumed his seat. Garuth replied from the
far end of the room, where the Ganymean contingent was concentrated.
      "I think I'd better let a scientist answer a scientist on that one,
Professor." He looked down and behind him at one of the other Ganymeans.
"Shilohin, will you respond?" All the Earthmen present who did not possess
Ganymean kits had been equipped with headsets similar to Danchekker's and
could thus follow ZORAC's translation of the proceedings. The machine's
ability in this respect was now quite passable although, mainly as a result of
having conversed with many and varied individuals, it had not yet fully
established a way to disentangle formal English constructions from American
colloquialisms, a defect that sometimes yielded hilarious results.
      Shilohin, the chief scientist of the Ganymean expedition, had already
been introduced to the company. As Garuth sat down to make room, she rose to
her feet and spoke. "First, I must congratulate the scientists of Earth for
their superb piece of figuring out. Yes, as Professor Danchekker has just
suggested, we Ganymeans do not enjoy a high tolerance to carbon dioxide. He
and his colleagues were also absolutely correct in the picture that they had
deduced of conditions on Minerva at the time of our departure -- a planet that
they had not even seen."
      Shilohin paused a moment, waiting for that much to sink in. Then she
continued. "The average concentration of radioactive, heat-producing
substances in Minervan rocks was somewhat higher than is found on Earth. The
interior of Minerva was thus hotter and molten to a greater degree, and the
crust was thinner. The planet was therefore more active volcanically than
Earth, a tendency that was further complicated by the strong tidal forces
induced in the crust by Luna, which orbited closer to Minerva than it does to
Earth today. This high level of volcanic activity released large quantities of
carbon dioxide and water vapor into the atmosphere, resulting in a greenhouse
effect that sustained a high enough surface temperature for the oceans to
remain liquid and life to emerge. By terrestrial standards it was still sure-
as-hell cold, but not nearly as cold as it would have been otherwise.
      "This situation had always existed throughout the history of Minerva. By
the time that our civilization was at its peak, however, a new epoch of
tectonic activity was just beginning. The level of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere began showing a measurable increase. It soon became clear that it
would only be a matter of time before the level grew beyond the point we could
tolerate. After that our world would become, for us, uninhabitable. What could
we do?" Shilohin let the question hang and cast her eyes around the room,
apparently inviting the Earthmen to start a discussion.
      After a few seconds a UNSA engineer at the back responded. "Well, we've
seen some pretty remarkable examples of the kind of technology that you people
had. I wouldn't have thought you'd have found it much of a problem to figure
out some way of simply winding the level back down again...some kinda
planetwide climatic control, I guess...sump'n like that."
      "Commendably on the ball," she said, with something that they took to be
the equivalent of an approving nod. "We did in fact employ planetary climatic
control to some degree, primarily to limit the extent of the Minervan ice
caps. But when it came to tinkering with the chemical composition of the
atmosphere, we were less certain of our ability to keep everything
sufficiently under control; the balance was very delicate." She looked
directly at the questioner. "A scheme along the lines you suggest was in fact
proposed, but mathematical models indicated that there was too high a risk of
destroying the greenhouse effect completely, and so of guaranteeing the end of
life on Minerva even more quickly. We are a cautious people and do not take
risks readily. Our government threw the idea out."
      She remained silent and allowed them time to think of other
possibilities. Danchekker didn't bother to raise the notion that they might
have tried importing terrestrial plant life as an attempt at introducing a
compensatory mechanism. He already knew full well that the Ganymeans knew
nothing of such a venture. Presumably that solution had been tried after
Garuth's expedition had departed. Further analyses by his scientists and
discussions with ZORAC had indicated if that had been the objective of the
exercise, it would not have succeeded anyway -- a point that would surely not
have escaped the Ganymean scientists at the time. For the moment this event
was still as much a mystery as ever.
      Eventually Shilohin spread her arm wide as if appealing to a class of
children who were being a little slow that day. "Logically it's very simple,"
she said. "If we left the carbon-dioxide level to rise, we would die.
Therefore we could not allow it to rise. If we prevented the rise, as we could
have done, there would have been too much of a risk of freezing the whole
planet solid because the carbon dioxide kept Minerva warm through the
greenhouse effect. We needed the results of the greenhouse effect to keep us
warm because we were a long way from the Sun. Hence, we wouldn't need it at
all if we were nearer the Sun, or if the Sun were warmer."
      Some of the faces in front of her remained blank; some suddenly looked
incredulous. "It's easy then," a voice called from near Hunt. "All you had to
do was move Minerva in a bit or heat up the Sun." He meant that as a joke but
the Ganymean began nodding her head in imitation of the human mannerism.
      "Exactly," she said. "And those were the two conclusions we arrived at
too." A few gasps of amazement came from various parts of the room. "Both
possibilities were studied extensively. Eventually a team of astrophysicists
convinced the government that warming up the Sun was the more practicable.
Nobody could find a flaw in the calculations, but, as always, our government
was cautious and elected not to blow a wad on fooling around with the Sun.
They wanted to see some proof first that the plan would work...Yes, Dr. Hunt?"
She had noticed his hand hail raised to attract attention.
      "Could you give us a few details on how they proposed to do such a
thing?" he asked. "I think even the idea of contemplating something like that
has astonished a few of us here." Mutters of agreement from all around echoed
his sentiments.
      "Certainly," she replied. "The Ganymeans, as most of you know by now,
had developed a branch of technology that is not yet understood in your own
world -- a technology based on the principles of artificially generating and
controlling the effect termed 'gravity.' The proposal of the Ganymean
astrophysicists involved placing three very large and very powerful projectors
in orbit around the Sun, which would concentrate beams of space-time
distortion -- 'gravity intensification' if you like, although that describes
the effect of the process rather than its nature -- at the Sun's center.
Theory predicted that this would induce an increase, effectively, in the Sun's
self-gravitation and produce a slight collapse of the star, which would cease
when the radiation pressure again balanced the gravitational pressure. At the
new equilibrium the Sun would radiate more strongly and, provided that all the
right quantities were chosen, would just compensate for the loss of Minerva's
greenhouse effect. In other words we could now risk tampering with the carbon-
dioxide level since, if we blew it and we started to freeze, we could put
things right again by adjusting the solar constant. Does that answer the
question sufficiently, Dr. Hunt?"
      "Yes...very much so. Thank you." There were a thousand other questions
that he could have asked at that moment, but he decided to leave them all for
ZORAC later; for the time being he was having enough trouble even trying to
visualize engineering on such a scale, yet Shilohin made the whole thing sound
as routine as putting up an apartment block.
      "As I said a moment ago," Shilohin resumed, "our government insisted on
testing the theory first. Our expedition was formed for that purpose -- to
carry out a full-scale trial experiment on a Sun-like star elsewhere." She
paused and made a gesture that was not familiar. "As it turned out, I guess
they did the right thing. The star became unstable and went nova. We barely
escaped with our lives. Garuth has just told you of the problem with the
Shapieron's propulsive system that resulted in the situation we have now --
although we have aged less than twenty years since leaving Iscaris, on your
time scale this all happened twenty-five million years ago. So here we are."
      A chorus of mutterings broke Out around the room. Shilohin waited for a
few moments before continuing. "It's a bit cramped in here and difficult to
change places. Does anybody else have any questions for me before I sit down
again and hand this back to Garuth?"
      "Just one." The speaker was Lawrence Foster, commander of Main. "A few
of us have been wondering...You developed a technology that was way ahead of
ours -- interstellar travel for instance. So you must have explored the Solar
System pretty thoroughly in the course of all that. Somebody here's taking
bets that at least some Ganymeans got to Earth at some time. Care to comment
on that?"
      Shilohin seemed to flinch slightly for some reason...although it was
difficult to be sure. She did not answer at once, but turned to exchange a few
briefly muttered words with Garuth. Then she looked up again.
      "Yes...you are correct..." The words coming through the headphones and
earpieces of the listeners sounded hesitant, as if faithfully reproducing an
uncertainty from the original utterances. "The Ganymeans came...to Earth."
      A stir of excitement broke out across the room. This was something that
nobody wanted to miss.
      "Before your expedition went to Iscaris, I guess," Foster said.
      "Yes, naturally...in the hundred Earth years or so before that time."
She paused. "In fact a few of the crew of the Shapieron went to Earth before
being recruited for the Iscaris expedition. None of them is here at the moment
though."
      The Earthmen were keen to hear more about their own world from beings
who had actually been there long before they themselves had even existed.
Questions began pouring spontaneously from all around the room.
      "Hey, when can we talk to them?"
      "Do you have any pictures stored away someplace?"
      "How about maps or something?"
      "I bet they built that city high up in that place in South America."
      "You're crazy. It's not near old enough."
      "Were these the expeditions to Earth to bring back the animals?"
      The sudden increase in the enthusiasm of her audience seemed only to add
to Shilohin's confusion. She picked up the last question, the answer to which
they already knew, as if hoping for some reason that it would divert attention
from the rest.
      "No, there were no shipments of animals to Minerva then, neither was
there any talk of such a plan. That must have happened later on. Like you, we
do not know why that was done."
      "Okay, but about the -- " Foster stopped speaking as ZORAC sounded in
his ear.
      "This is ZORAC speaking only to the Earthmen; I am not interpreting for
Shilohin. I do not believe that the Ganymeans really wish to elaborate further
for the time being. It might be a good idea to change the subject. Excuse me."
      The puzzled frowns that immediately appeared all over the room confirmed
that all the Earthmen had heard the same thing: apparently the message had
not, however, been transmitted to the Ganymeans, who showed none of the
reactions that it would, without a doubt, have elicited. An awkward silence
reigned for just a second before Foster took firm control and steered them all
into calmer waters.
      "These things can wait until another time," he said. "Time's getting on
and we must be near dinner. Before we finish here, we ought to agree on our
more immediate plans. The biggest problem seems to me to be the trouble you've
got with your ship. How do you plan tackling that, and is there anything we
can do to help?"
      Shilohin conferred briefly with her companions and then sat down, giving
a 'distinct impression of relief at getting out of the firing line. Her place
was taken by Rogdar Jassilane, chief engineer of the Shapieron.
      "We've had twenty years to figure out what the problem is, and we know
how to fix it," he told them. "Garuth has described the effect of the trouble,
which involved being unable to slow down the system of circulating black holes
upon which the physics of the drive is based. All the time that drive was
running, there was nothing we could do about it. We're able to fix it now, but
some key components were wrecked and to attempt replacing them from scratch
would be difficult, if not impossible. What we really need to do is to have a
look at the Ganymean ship that's under the ice at Pithead. From the pictures
you've shown us, it seems to be a somewhat more advanced design than the
Shapieron. But I'm hopeful we will be able to find what we need there. The
basic concepts of the drive appear to be the same. That's the first thing we
have to do -- go to Pithead."
      "No problem there," Foster said. "I'll arrange...oh, excuse me a
second..." He turned to throw an inquiring look at a steward, who had appeared
in the doorway. "I see...thanks. We'll be right along." He looked back toward
Jassilane. "Sorry about that, but dinner's ready now. Yes, in answer to your
question, we can arrange that expedition for as early as you like tomorrow. We
can talk about the details later tonight, but in the meantime, shall we all go
through?"
      "That will be fine," Jassilane said. "I will select some of our own
engineers for the visit. In the meantime as you say, let's all go through." He
remained standing while the rest of the Ganymeans hoisted themselves to their
feet behind him, forming a hopeless crush at the end of the room.
      As the Earthmen also stood up and began moving back to make more space
for the giants, Garuth made one final comment. "The other reason we wish to
see the ship at Pithead is also very important to us. There is a chance that
we might find some clues there which support your theory that the Ganymeans
eventually migrated to another star system. If that is true, we might perhaps
find something to identify which star it was."
      "I think the stars can wait until tomorrow too," Jassilane said as he
moved past. "Right now I'm more interested in that Earth food. Have you tried
that stuff they call pineapple yet? It's delicious -- never anything like that
on Minerva."
      Hunt found himself standing beside Garuth in the crowd forming around
the door. He looked up at the massive features. "Would you really do it,
Garuth...go all the way to still another star, after all this time?"
      The giant stared down and seemed to be weighing the question in his
mind.
      "Perhaps," he replied. "Who knows?" Hunt sensed from the tone of the
voice in his ear that ZORAC had ceased operating in public-address mode and
was now handling separately the different conversations taking place on either
side. "For years now my people have lived on a dream. At this time more than
any other, it would be wrong to destroy that dream. Today they are tired and
think only of rest; tomorrow they will dream again."
      "We'll see what tomorrow brings at Pithead then," Hunt said. He caught
the eye of Danchekker, who was standing immediately behind them. "Are you
going to sit with us at dinner, Chris?"
      "With pleasure, provided you are prepared to tolerate my being
unsociable," the professor replied. "I absolutely refuse to eat with this
contraption hanging round my head."
      "Enjoy your meal, Professor," Garuth urged. "Let the socializing wait
until afterward."
      "I'm surprised you heard that," Hunt said. "How did ZORAC know we were
talking in a group of three? I mean, it must have known that to put it through
on your audio as well."
      "Oh, ZORAC is very good at things like that. It learns fast. We're quite
proud of ZORAC."
      "It's an amazing machine."
      "In more ways than you perhaps imagine," Garuth agreed. "It was ZORAC
that saved us at Iscaris. Most of us were overcome by the heat when the ship
was caught by the fringe of the nova; that was what caused many of the deaths
among us. It was ZORAC that got the Shapieron clear."
      "I really must stop calling its brethren contraptions," Danchekker
murmured. "Wouldn't want to upset it or anything if it's sensitive about such
matters."
      "That's okay by me." A different voice came through on the circuit. "As
long as I can still call your brethren monkeys."
      That was when Hunt learned to recognize when a Ganymean was laughing.
      When they all sat down to dinner, Hunt was mildly surprised to note that
the menu was completely vegetarian. Apparently the Ganymeans had insisted on
this.


Chapter Ten

      The period of leave that Hunt and Danchekker had originally intended to
spend on Jupiter Five had expired anyway, so the two scientists traveled the
next day with the mixed party of Earthmen and Ganymeans to Pithead Base. The
journey was indeed a mixed affair, with some Ganymeans squeezing into the UNSA
medium-haul transporters while the luckier Earthmen traveled as passengers in
one of the Shapieron's daughter vessels.
      The first thing the aliens were shown at Pithead was the distress beacon
that had brought them across the Solar System to Ganymede; already that event
seemed a long time ago. The aliens explained that ordinary electromagnetic
transmissions could not be received inside the zone of localized space-time
distortion that was generated by the standard form of Ganymean drive, and for
this reason most long-range communications were effected by means of modulated
gravity pulses instead; the beacon used precisely this principle. The
Ganymeans had picked up the signal after they had at last shut down their main
drives and entered the Solar System under auxiliary power, which was fine for
flitting around between planets but not much good for interstellar marathons.
Their subsequent bewilderment at what they found -- Minerva gone and an extra
planet where there shouldn't have been one -- could well be imagined; and then
they had picked up the signals. As one UNSA officer said to Hunt: "Imagine
coming back in twenty-five million years' time and hearing something out of
today's hit parade. They must have wondered if they hadn't really been
anywhere at all and had dreamed the whole thing."

      The party continued on through a metal-walled underground corridor which
brought them to the laboratories where preliminary examinations were normally
made of items brought up from the ship below. The room that they found
themselves in was a large one divided by half-height partitions into a maze of
work bays, each a clutter of machinery, test instruments, electronics racks
and tool cabinets. Above it all, the roof was barely visible behind the
tangles of piping, ducts, cables and conduits that spanned the room.
      Craig Patterson, the lab supervisor for that section, ushered the group
into one of the bays and gestured at a workbench on which lay a squat metal
cylinder, about a foot high and three feet or more across, surrounded by an
intricate arrangement of brackets, webs and flanges, all integral with the
main body. The whole assembly looked heavy and solid and had evidently been
removed from a mounting in some larger piece of equipment; there were several
ports and connections that suggested inlet and outlet points, possibly
electrical.
      "Here's something that's had us baffled," Patterson said. "We've brought
a few of these up so far -- all identical. There are hundreds more down there,
all over the ship. They're mounted under the floors at intervals everywhere
you go. Any ideas?"
      Rogdar Jassilane stepped forward and stooped to study the object
briefly.
      "It resembles a modified G-pack," Shilohin commented from the doorway
where she was standing next to Hunt. The Ganymeans were able to converse via
ZORAC, still at Main, seven hundred miles away. Jassilane ran a finger along
the casing of the object, examined some of the markings still visible in
places, and then straightened up, apparently having seen all he needed.
      "That's what it is, all right," he announced. "It seems to have a few
extras to the ones I'm used to, but the basic design's the same."
      "What's a G-pack?" asked Art Stelmer, one of Patterson's engineers.
      "An element in a distributed node field," Jassilane told him.
      "Great," Stelmer replied with a shrug, still mystified.
      Shilohin went on to explain. "I'm afraid it's to do with a branch of
physics that hasn't been discovered by your race yet. In your space vessels,
such as Jupiter Five, you simulate gravity by arranging for most portions of
the structure to rotate, don't you?" Hunt suddenly remembered the inexplicable
sensation of weight that he had felt on entering the Shapieron. The
implication of what Shilobin had just said became clear.
      "You don't simulate it," he guessed. "You manufacture it."
      "Quite," she confirmed. "Devices like that were standard fittings in all
Ganymean ships."
      The Earthmen present were not really surprised since they had suspected
for some time that the Ganymean civilization had mastered technologies that
were totally unknown to them. All the same they were intrigued.
      "We've been wondering about that," Patterson said, turning to face
Shilohin. "What kind of principles is it all based on? I've never heard of
anything like this before." Shilohin did not answer at once but seemed to
pause to collect her thoughts.
      "I'm not really sure where to begin," she replied at last. "It would
take rather a long time to explain meaningfully..."
      "Hey, there's a booster collar from a transfer tube," one of the other
Ganymeans broke in. He was staring over the partition into the adjoining bay
and pointing to another, larger piece of Ganymean machinery that was lying
there partially dismantled.
      "Yes, I believe you're right," Jassilane agreed, following his
companion's gaze.
      "What the hell's a booster collar?" Stelmer pleaded.
      "And a transfer tube?" Patterson added, forgetting his question of a few
seconds before.
      "There were tubes running all over the ship that were used for moving
objects, and people, from place to place," Jassilane answered. "You must know
them because I've seen them on the plans of the ship that your engineers have
drawn."
      "We kind of half-guessed what they were," Hunt supplied. "But we were
never really sure about how they worked. Is this another G-trick?"
      "Right," Jassilane said. "Local fields inside the tubes provided the
motive force. That collar next door is simply a type of amplifier that was
fitted around the tube to boost and smooth the field strength. There'd be one
-- oh -- every thirty feet or so, depending on how wide the tube was."
      "You mean people went hurtling through these things?" Patterson sounded
distinctly dubious.
      "Sure. We've got them in the Shapieron too," Jassilane replied
nonchalantly. "The main elevator that some of your people have already been in
runs in one. That one uses an enclosed capsule running inside, but the smaller
ones don't. In those you just freefall."
      "How do you avoid colliding with somebody?" Steliner asked. "Or are they
strictly one-way?"
      "Two-way," Jassilane told him. "A tube would usually carry a split
field, half up and half down. The traffic can be segregated without problems.
The collar contributes to that too -- part of it is what we call a 'beam edge
delimiter.'"
      "So how d'you get out?" Stelmer persisted, still clearly fascinated by
the idea.
      "You decelerate through a localized pattern of standing waves that's
triggered as you approach the drop-out point you've selected," Jassilane said.
"You enter in much the same way..."
      The conversation degenerated into a long discussion on the principles of
operation and traffic control employed in the networks of transfer tubes built
into Ganymean spacecraft and, as it turned out, most Ganymean buildings and
cities. Throughout it all, Patterson's question as to how it worked never did
get answered.

      After spending some time examining a few more items from the ship, the
party left that section of the base to continue their tour. They followed
another corridor to the subsurface levels of the Site Operations Control
Building and ascended several flights of stairs to the first floor. From there
an elevated walkway carried them into an adjacent dome, constructed over the
head of number-three shaft. Eventually, after negotiating a labyrinth of
walkways and passages, they were standing in the number-three high-level
airlock anteroom. A capsule was waiting beyond the airlock to take the first
half-dozen of them down to the workings below the surface. By the time the
capsule had returned and made its third descent, the whole party was together
again deep inside the ice crust of Ganymede.
      Accompanied by Jassilane, two other Ganymeans, and Commander Hew Mills,
the senior officer of the uniformed UNSA contingent at Pithead, Hunt emerged
from the capsule into number three low-level anteroom. From there a short
corridor brought them at last to the low-level control room, where the rest of
the party was already gathered. Nobody took any notice of the new arrivals;
all eyes were fixed on the view that confronted them from beyond the expanse
of glass that constituted the far wall of the control room.
      They were looking out over a vast cavern hewn and melted from the solid
ice, shining a hundred different hues from gray to brilliant white in the
light from a thousand arc lamps. The far side of the cavern was lost to view
behind a forest of huge steel jacks and columns of ice left intact to support
the roof. There, immediately before them, stretching away into the distance
and cutting a clean swath through the forest, was the Ganymean ship.
      Its clean, graceful lines of black metal were broken at scores of points
where sections of the hull had been removed to gain access or to remove
selected parts of the internal machinery. In some places the ship resembled
the skeleton of a whale stranded on a beach, just a series of curving ribs
soaring toward the cavern roof, to mark where whole sections of the ship had
been stripped down. Latticeworks of girders and metal tubing adorned its sides
in irregular and untidy clusters, in some places extending fully from floor to
roof, supporting a confusion of catwalks, ladders, platforms, ramps, rigs, and
winches wreathed intermittently in bewildering tangles of hydraulic and
pneumatic feed tubes, ventilator pipes and electrical supply lines.
      Scores of figures labored all across the panorama: up on the scaffolding
by the hull, down among the maze of stacked parts and fittings that littered
the floor, high on the walkways clinging to the rough-hewn walls of ice and
standing on the top of the hull itself. In one place a gantry was swinging
clear a portion of the outer skin; in another, the sporadic flashing of an
oxyacetylene torch lit up the interior of an exposed compartment; further
along, a small group of engineers was evidently in conference, making frequent
gestures at information being presented on a large, portable view-screen. The
site was a bustle of steady, deliberate earnest activity.
      The Earthmen waited in silence while the Ganymeans took in the scene.
      Eventually Jassilane said, "It's quite a size...certainly as large as we
expected. The general design is definitely a few steps ahead of anything that
was flying when we left Minerva. ZORAC, what do you make of it?"
      "Toroidal sections protruding from the large cutaway portion three
hundred feet along from where you're standing are almost certainly
differential resonance stress inductors to confine focus of the beam point for
the main drive," ZORAC answered. "The large assembly on the floor immediately
below you, with the two
      Earthmen standing in front of and underneath it is unfamiliar, but
suggests an advanced design of an aft compensating reactor. If so, propulsion
was probably by means of standard stress-wave propagation. If I am correct,
there should be a forward compensating reactor in the ship too. The Earthmen
at Main have shown me diagrams of a device that looks like one, but to be sure
we should make a point of looking inside the nose end to check it firsthand. I
would also like an opportunity to view the primary energy-converter section
and its layout."
      "Mmm...it could be worse," Jassilane murmured absently.
      "What was that all about, Rog?" Hunt asked him. The Giant half turned
and raised an arm toward the ship.
      "ZORAC has confirmed my own first impressions," he said. "Although that
ship was built some time after the Shapieron, the basic design doesn't seem to
have altered too much."
      "There's a good chance it might help you get yours fixed then, huh?"
Mills chimed in.
      "Hopefully," Jassilane agreed.
      "We'd need to see it close-up to be sure," Shilohin cautioned. Hunt
turned to face the rest of the party and spread his arms with palms upturned.
"Well, let's go on down and do just that," he said.
      They moved away from the viewing window and threaded their way through
and between the equipment racks and consoles of the control room to a door on
the opposite side to descend to the lower floor. After the door had closed
behind the last of the party, one of the duty operators at the consoles half
turned to one of his colleagues.
      "See Ed, I told ya," he remarked cheerfully. "They didn't eat anybody."
      Ed frowned dubiously from his seat a few feet away.
      "Maybe they're just not hungry today," he muttered.
      On the floor of the cavern, immediately below the 'window, the mixed
group of Ganymeans and Earthmen emerged through an airlock and began making
their way across the steel-mesh flooring and through the maze of assorted
engineering toward the ship.
      "It's quite warm," Shilohin commented to Hunt as they walked. "And yet
there's no sign of melting on the walls. How come?"
      "The air-circulation system's been carefully designed," he informed her.
"The warmer air is confined down here in the working area and screened off
from the ice by curtains of cold air blowing upward all round the sides to
extractors up in the roof. The way the walls are shaped to blend into the roof
produces the right flow pattern. The system works quite well."
      "Ingenious," she murmured.
      "What about the explosion risk from dissolved gases being released from
the ice?" another Ganymean asked. "I'd have thought there'd be a hazard
there."
      "When the excavations were first started it was a problem," Hunt
answered. "That was when most of the melting was being done. Everybody had to
work in suits down here then. They were using an argon atmosphere for exactly
the reason you just mentioned. Now that the ventilation's been improved
there's not really a big risk anymore so we can be a bit more comfortable. The
cold-air curtains help a lot too; they keep the rate of gas-escape down pretty
well to zero and what little there is gets swept away upward. The chances of a
bang down here are probably less than the base up top getting clobbered by a
stray meteorite."
      "Well, here we are," Mills announced from the front. They were standing
at the foot of a broad, shallow metal ramp that rose from the floor and
disappeared through a mass of cabling up into a large aperture cut in the
hull. Above them, the bulging contour of the ship's side soared in a monstrous
curve that swept over and out of sight toward the roof. Suddenly they were
like mice staring up at the underside of a garden roller.
      "Let's go in then," Hunt said.
      For the next two hours they walked every inch of the labyrinth of
footways and catwalks that had been built inside the craft, which had come to
rest on its side and offered few horizontal surfaces of its own upon which it
was possible to move easily. The Giants followed the cable-runs and the
ducting with eyes that obviously knew what they were looking for. Every now
and then they stopped to dismantle an item of particular interest with sure
and practiced fingers or to trace the connections to a device or component.
They absorbed every detail of the plans supplied by UNSA scientists, which
showed as much as the Earthmen could deduce of the vessel's design and
structure.
      After a long dialogue with ZORAC to analyze the results of these
observations, Jassilane announced, "We are optimistic. The chances of
restoring the Shapieron to a fully functional condition seem good. We'd like
to conduct a far more detailed study of certain parts of this ship, however --
one that would involve more of our technical experts from Main. Could you
accommodate a small group of our people here for, say, two or three weeks?" He
addressed these last words to Mills. The commander shrugged and opened his
hands.
      "Whatever you want. Consider it done," he replied.
      Within an hour of the party's return to the surface for a meal, another
UNSA transporter was on its way north from Main bringing more Ganymeans and
the necessary tools and instruments from the Shapieron.

      Later on, they went to the biological laboratories section of the base
and admired Danchekker's indoor garden. They confirmed that the plants he had
cultivated were familiar to them and represented types that were widespread in
the equatorial regions of the Minerva they had known. At the professor's
insistence they accepted some cuttings to be taken back to the Shapieron and
grown there as mementoes of their home. The gesture seemed to affect them
deeply.
      Danchekker then led the party down into a large storage room excavated
out of the solid ice below the biological labs. They emerged into a spacious,
well-lit area, the walls of which were lined with shelving that carried a
miscellany of supplies and instruments; there were rows of closed storage
cupboards all painted a uniform green, unrecognizable machines draped in
dustcovers, and in places stacks of unopened packing cases reaching almost to
the ceiling. But the sight that immediately captured every eye was that of the
beast towering before them about twenty feet from the doorway.
      It stood over eighteen feet high at the shoulder on four treetrunklike
legs, its massive body tapering at the front into a long sturdy neck to carry
its relatively small but ruggedly formed head high and well forward. Its skin
was grayish and appeared rough and leathery, twisting into deep, heavy
wrinkles that girded the base of its neck and the underside of its head below
its short, erect ears. Over two enormous flared nostrils and a yawning
parrotbeaklike mouth, the eyes were wide and staring. They were accentuated by
thick folds of skin above, and directed straight down to stare at the door.
      "This is one of my favorites," Danchekker informed them breezily as he
walked forward at the head of the party to pat the beast fondly on the front
of one of its massive forelegs.
      "Baluchitherium -- a late-Oligocene to early-Miocene Asian ancestor of
modern rhinoceroses. In this species the front feet have already lost their
fourth toe and adopted a three-toed structure similar to the hind feet -- a
trend which had become well pronounced in the Oligocene. Also, the
strengthening of the upper-jaw structure here is quite developed, although
this particular breed did not evolve into a true horned variety, as you can
see. Another interesting point is the teeth, which -- " Danchekker stopped
speaking abruptly as he turned to face his audience and realized that only the
Earthmen had followed him into the room to stand around the specimen he was
describing. The Ganymeans had come to a standstill in a close huddle just
inside the door, where they stood staring speechless up at the towering shape
of Baluchitherium. Their eyes were opened wide as if frozen in disbelief. They
were not exactly cowering at the sight, but the expressions on their faces and
their tense stances signaled uncertainty and apprehension.
      "Is something the matter?" Danchekker asked, puzzled. There was no
response. "It's quite harmless, I assure you," he went on, making his voice
reassuring. "And very, very dead...one of the samples preserved in the large
canisters that were found in the ship. It's been very dead for at least
twenty-five million years."
      The Ganymeans slowly returned to life. Still silent and somehow subdued,
they began moving cautiously toward the spot where the Earthmen were standing
in a loose semicircle. For a long time they gazed at the immense creature,
absorbing every detail in awed fascination.
      "ZORAC," Hunt muttered quietly into his throat mike. The rest of the
Earthmen were watching the Ganymeans silently, waiting for some signal to
resume their dialogue and not sure yet what exactly it was that was affecting
their guests so strongly.
      "Yes, Vie?" the machine answered in his ear.
      "What's the problem?"
      "The Ganymeans have not seen an animal comparable to Baluchitherium
before. It is a new and unexpected experience."
      "Does it come as a surprise to you too?" Hunt asked.
      "No. I recognize it as being very similar to other early terrestrial
species recorded in my archives. The information came from Ganymean
expeditions to Earth that took place before the time of the Shapieron's
departure from Minerva. None of the Ganymeans with you at Pithead has ever
been to Earth, however."
      "But surely they must know something about what those expeditions
found," Hunt insisted. "The reports must have been published."
      "True," ZORAC agreed. "But it's one thing to read a report about animals
like that, and another to come face to face with one suddenly, especially when
you're not expecting it. I suppose that if I were an organic intelligence that
had evolved from a survival-dominated organic evolutionary system, and
possessed all the conditioned emotional responses that implies, I'd be a bit
shocked too."
      Before Hunt could reply, one of the Ganymeans -- Shilohin -- finally
spoke up.
      "So...that is an example of an animal of Earth," she said. Her voice was
low and hesitant, as if she were having difficulty articulating the words.
      "It's incredible!" Jassilane breathed, still keeping his eyes fixed on
the huge beast. "Was that thing really alive once...
      "What's that?" Another Ganymean was pointing beyond Baluchitherium to a
smaller but more ferocious-looking animal posed with one paw raised and lips
curled back to reveal a set of fearsome, pointed teeth. The other Ganymeans
followed his finger and gasped.
      "Cynodictis," Danchekker answered with a shrug. "A curious mixture of
feline and canine characteristics from which both our modern cat and dog
families eventually emerged. The one next to it is Mesohippus, ancestor of all
modern horses. If you look carefully you can see..." He stopped in mid-
sentence and seemed to switch his line of thought abruptly. "But why do these
things seem so strange to you? Surely you have seen animals before. There were
animals on Minerva, weren't there?"
      Hunt observed intently. The reactions that he had witnessed seemed odd
from a race so advanced and which, until then, had seemed so rational in
everything they said and did.
      Shilohin took it upon herself to answer. "Yes...there were animals..."
She began looking from side to side at her companions as if seeking support in
a difficult situation. "But they were different..." she ended, vaguely.
Danchekker seemed intrigued.
      "Different," he repeated. "How interesting. In what way do you mean?
Weren't there any as big as this for instance?"
      Shilohin's anxiety seemed to increase. She was showing the same
inexplicable reluctance to discuss Oligocene Earth as on earlier occasions.
Hunt sensed a crisis approaching and saw that Danchekker, in his enthusiasm,
was not getting the message. He turned away from the rest of the party.
"ZORAC, give me a private channel to Chris Danchekker," he said in a lowered
voice.
      "You've got it," ZORAC responded a second later, sounding almost
relieved.
      "Chris," Hunt whispered. "This is Vic." He observed a sudden change in
Danchekker's expression and went on. "They don't want to talk about it. Maybe
they're still nervous about our links with the Lunarians or something -- I
don't know but something's bugging them. Wrap up and let's get out of here."
      Danchekker caught Hunt's eye, blinked uncomprehendingly for a second,
then nodded and abruptly changed the subject. "Anyway, I'm sure all that can
wait until we are in more comfortable surroundings. Why don't we go back
upstairs. There are some more experiments being conducted in the labs that I
think might interest you."
      The group began shuffling back toward the door. Behind them, Hunt and
Danchekker exchanged mystified glances.
      "What was the meaning of all that, may I ask?" the professor inquired.
      "Search me," Hunt replied. "Come on or we'll get left behind."

      Many hundreds of millions of miles from Pithead, the news of the meeting
with an intelligent alien race broke over an astounded world. As recordings of
the first face-to-face contact aboard the Shapieron and the arrival of the
aliens at Ganymede Main Base were replayed across the world's viewscreens, a
wave of wonder and excitement swept around the planet, exceeding even that
which had greeted the discoveries of Charlie and the first Ganymean spaceship.
Some of the reactions were admirable, some deplorable, some just comical --
but all of them predictable.
      At a high, official level, Frederick James McClusky, senior United
States delegate to the extraordinary session that had been called by the
United Nations, sat back in his chair and stared around the packed circular
auditorium while Charles Winters, the UK representative from US Europe,
delivered the final words of his forty-five-minute address:
      In summary it is our contention that the location at which the first
landing is to be effected should obviously be selected from within the
boundaries of the British Isles. The English language is now established as
the standard means of communication for social, business, scientific, and
political dialogue between all the races, peoples and nations of Earth. It has
come to symbolize the dissolution of the barriers that once divided us, and
the establishment of a new order of harmony, trust and mutual cooperation
across the surface of the globe. And so it is particularly appropriate that
the English tongue should have been the vehicle by which the first words
between our alien friends and ourselves were exchanged. Might I also remind
you that at present, the speech of the British Isles is the only human
language that has been assimilated by the Ganymean machine. What then,
gentlemen, could be more fitting than that the first Ganymean to set foot upon
our planet should do so on the soil where that language originated?"
      Winters concluded with a final appealing look around the auditorium and
sat down among a mixed murmuring of lowered voices and rustling of papers.
McClusky jotted a few notes on his pad and cast an eye over the collection
that he had already made.
      In a rare show of agreement, the governments of Earth had released a
joint statement declaring that the homeless wanderers from the past would be
welcome to settle there if they so wished. The present meeting was called
after the public announcement had been released, and had degenerated into a
heated wrangle in camera over which nation should enjoy the prestige of
receiving the aliens first.
      Initially, McClusky, following his brief from the Presidential Advisory
Committee and the State Department in Washington, had made first claim by
drawing attention to the predominantly American flavor of the UNSA operations
being staged around Jupiter. The Americans had found them, he had said in
effect, and the Americans therefore had a right to keep them. The Soviets had
taken two hours to say that since their nation occupied a larger portion of
the Earth's land surface than any other, it represented the majority of the
planet and that was what counted. China had countered by pointing out that she
represented more people than any other nation and therefore, making an
expedient appeal to democratic principles, China offered a more meaningful
interpretation of "majority." Israel had taken the view that it had more in
common with homeless minority groups and that considerations of such kind
would more accurately reflect the true nature of the situation. Iraq had
lodged a claim on the grounds of its being the site of the oldest known
nation, and one of the African republics on the grounds of its being the
youngest.
      By then McClusky was getting fed up with the whole business. Irritated
he threw his pen down onto his pad and stabbed a finger at the button that
caused his request light to come on. A few minutes later an indicator on his
panel informed him that the Chairman had acknowledged the request. McClusky
leaned to his microphone. "The Ganymeans haven't even said they want to come
to Earth yet, let alone settle here. Wouldn't it be a good idea to ask them
about it first before we spend more time on all this?"
      The remark prompted a further debate during which the opportunity for
diplomatic procrastination proved impossible to resist. In the end the matter
was duly Deferred, Pending Further Information.
      The delegates did, however, agree on one small item.
      They were concerned that the UNSA spacecrews, officers, scientists and
other on-the-spot personnel at Ganymede had not been schooled in the subtle
arts of diplomacy and found the risks implicit in their enforced status as
representatives and ambassadors for the whole of Earth worrisome. Accordingly
they drafted a set of guidelines impressing upon all UNSA personnel the
seriousness and importance of their responsibilities and, among other things,
urged them to "...desist from any thoughtless or impulsive statements or
actions that might conceivably be interpreted as provocative by unfamiliar
beings of uncertain disposition and intent..."
      When the message was transmitted and dutifully read to the UNSA crews
and scientists on Ganymede, it produced some amusement. Such was the
Earthmen's uncertainty of the "dispositions and intent..." that they read the
message to the Ganymeans, too.
      The Giants thought it was funny.


Chapter Eleven

      Compared to Main, Pithead was small and spartan, offering only limited
accommodations and restricted amenities. During the days that Ganymean experts
were conducting a more intensive examination of the ship there, the two races
found themselves intermingling more freely than before and getting to know one
another better. Hunt made the most of this opportunity to observe the aliens
at close hand and to gain a deeper insight into their ways and temperaments.
      The single most striking thing that set them apart from Earthmen was, as
he already knew, their total ignorance of the very concept of war or willful
violence in any form. At Pithead he gradually came to attribute this to a
common factor that he noticed in all of them -- something which, he realized,
represented a fundamental difference in their mental makeup. Not once had he
detected a hint of aggressiveness in a Ganymean. They never seemed to argue
about anything, show signs of impatience, or give any evidence of possessing
tempers that could be frayed. That in itself did not surprise him unduly; he
would hardly have expected less from an extremely advanced and civilized
people. But the point that did strike him was the complete absence of
emotional traits of the kind that would provide alternate outlets for such
instincts in a socially acceptable manner. They exhibited no sense of
competitiveness among themselves, no sense of rivalry, even in the harmless,
subtle, friendly ways that men accept as part of living and frequently find
enjoyable.
      The notion of losing face meant nothing to a Ganymean. If he were proved
wrong in some matter he would readily concede the fact; if he were proved
right he would feel no particular self-satisfaction. He could stand and watch
another perform a task that he knew he could do better, and say nothing -- a
feat almost impossible for most Earthmen. In the reverse situation he would
promptly ask for help. He was never arrogant, authoritative or disdainful, yet
at the same time never visibly humble, servile or apologetic; nothing in his
manner ever sought to intimidate, and neither did it acknowledge implied
intimidation from others. There was simply nothing in anything they said or
did, or in the way that they said and did them, that signaled any instinctive
desire to seek status or superiority. Many psychologists believed this aspect
of human social behavior constituted a set of substitute rituals that
permitted release of underlying aggressive instincts which communal patterns
of living required to be suppressed. If this was so, then the only conclusion
Hunt could draw from his observations was that for some reason these
underlying instincts just didn't exist in the Ganymeans.
      All this was not to say that the Ganymeans were a cold and unemotional
people. As their reactions to the destruction of Minerva had shown, they were
warm, friendly and deeply sentimental, at times to a degree that an Earthman
reared in the "old school" might have considered unbecoming. And they
possessed a well-developed, though very subtle and sophisticated, sense of
humor, not a little of which was evident in the basic design of ZORAC. Also as
Shilohin had indicated, they were a cautious people, cautious not in the sense
of being timid, but of premeditating every move and action. They never did
anything without knowing exactly what they were trying to achieve, why they
wanted to achieve it, how they were going to do it, and what they would do if
the expected failed to materialize. To the average engineer from Earth the
disaster of Iscaris would have been shrugged off as just one of those things
to be forgotten or tried again with hopes for better luck; to the Ganymeans it
was inexcusable that such a thing should ever have happened and they had not
yet fully come to terms with it, even after twenty years.
      Hunt saw them as a dignified and proud race, moderate in speech and
noble in bearing, yet underneath it all sociable and approachable. They
exhibited none of the suspicion and mistrust of strangers that was typical
through much of the society of Earth. They were quiet, reserved, self-assured,
and above all they were rational. As Danchekker remarked to Hunt one day in
the bar at Pithead: "If the whole universe went insane and blew itself up, I'm
sure the Ganymeans would still be there at the end of it to put the pieces
together again."
      The bar at Pithead became the main focus of social activity between the
small group of Ganymeans and the Earthmen. Every evening after dinner, ones
and twos of both races would begin trickling in until the room was filled to
capacity and every square foot of horizontal space, including the floor, was
covered by a sprawling body of one kind or the other, or littered with
glasses. The discussions rambled on to touch every subject conceivable and
usually went through to the early hours of the morning; for anybody not
disposed to seek solitude and privacy, there was little else to do after work
at Pithead.
      The Ganymeans developed a strong partiality for scotch whiskey, which
they preferred neat, by the tumblerful. They reciprocated by bringing in a
distillation of their own from the Shapieron. A number of the Earthmen
experimented with it and found it to be pleasant, warming, slightly
sweet...and of devastating potency, but not until about two hours after
beginning to drink it. Those who had learned the hard way christened it GTB --
Ganymean Time Bomb.
      It was during one of these evenings that Hunt decided to broach directly
the subject that had been puzzling more than a few of the Earthmen for some
time. Shilohin was present, so was Monchar, Garuth's second-in-command,
together with four other Ganymeans; on the Earth side were Danchekker, Vince
Carizan the electronics engineer, and a half-dozen others.
      "There is a point that's been bothering some of us," he said, by that
time having come to appreciate the Ganymean preference for direct speech. "You
must know that having people around today who can describe how Earth was in
the distant past makes us want to ask all kinds of questions, yet you never
seem to want to talk about it. Why?" A few murmurs from all around endorsed
the question. The room suddenly became very quiet. The Ganymeans seemed ill at
ease again and looked at each other as if hoping someone else would take the
lead.
      Eventually Shilohin replied. "We know very little about your world. It's
a delicate issue. You have a culture and history that are completely
strange..." She gave the Ganymean equivalent of a shrug. "Customs, values,
manners...accepted ways of saying things. We wouldn't want to offend somebody
by unwittingly saying the wrong thing, so we tend to avoid the subject."
      Somehow the answer was not really convincing.
      "We all believe there's a deeper reason than that," Hunt said candidly.
"We in this room might come from different origins, but first and foremost we
are all scientists. Truth is our business and we shouldn't shy away from the
facts. This is an informal occasion and we all know each other pretty well
now. We'd like you to be frank. We're curious."
      The air became charged with expectancy. Shilohin looked again toward
Monchar, who quietly signaled his acquiescence. She downed the last of her
drink slowly as she collected her thoughts, then looked up to address the
room.
      "Very well. Perhaps, as you say, we would do better without any secrets.
There was one crucial difference between the patterns of natural evolution
that unfolded on your world and on our world -- on Minerva there were no
carnivores." She paused as if waiting for a response, but the Earthmen
continued to sit in silence; obviously there was more to come. She felt a
twinge of sudden relief inside. Perhaps the Ganymeans had been over-
apprehensive of the possible reactions of these unpredictable and violently
inclined dwarves after all.
      "The basic reason for this difference, believe it or not, lay in the
fact that Minerva was much farther away from the Sun." She went on to explain.
"Life could never have developed on Minerva at all without the greenhouse
effect, which you already know about. Even so, it was a cold planet, certainly
in comparison to Earth.
      "But this greenhouse effect kept the Minervan oceans in a liquid state
and, as on Earth, life first appeared in the shallower parts of the oceans.
Conditions there did not favor progression toward higher forms of life as much
as on the warmer Earth; the evolutionary process was relatively slow."
      "But intelligence appeared there much earlier than it did on Earth,"
somebody tossed in. "Seems a little strange."
      "Only because Minerva was further from the Sun and cooled more quickly,"
Shilohin replied. "That meant that life got off to an early start there."
      "Okay."
      She resumed. "The patterns of evolution on the two worlds were
remarkably similar to start with. Complex proteins appeared, leading
eventually to self-replicating molecules, which in time led to the formation
of living cells. Unicellular forms came first, then colonies of cells and
after them multicelled organisms with specialized features -- all of them
variations on the basic marine invertebrate form.
      "The point of departure at which the two lines went their own way, each
in response to the conditions prevailing on its own planet, was marked by the
appearance of marine vertebrates -- boned fishes. This stage marked a plateau
beyond which the Minervan species couldn't progress toward anything higher
until they had solved a fundamental problem that was not faced by their
counterparts on Earth. The problem was simply their colder environment.
      "You see, as improvements appeared in the Minervan fish species, the
improved body processes and more highly refined organs demanded more oxygen.
But the demand was already high because of the lower temperature. The
primitive circulatory systems of the early Minervan fish couldn't cope with
the dual workload of carrying enough oxygen to the cells, and of carrying
wastes and toxins away from the cells -- not if progress toward anything more
advanced was going to be made, anyway."
      Shilohin paused again to invite questions. Her listeners were too
intrigued, however, to interrupt her story at that point.
      "As always happens in situations like that," she continued, "Nature
tried a number of alternatives to find a way around the problem. The most
successful experiment took the form of a secondary circulation system
developing alongside the first to permit load-sharing -- a completely
duplicated network of branching ducts and vessels; thus, the primary system
concentrated exclusively on circulating blood and delivering oxygen, while the
secondary took over fully the job of removing the toxins."
      "How extraordinary!" Danchekker could not help exclaiming.
      "Yes, I suppose that when judged by the things you're used to it was,
Professor."
      "One thing -- how did the different substances find their way in and out
of the right system?"
      "Osmotic membranes. Do you want me to go into detail now?"
      "No, er, thank you." Danchekker held up a hand. "That can wait until
another time. Please continue."
      "Okay. Well, after this basic architecture had become sufficiently
refined and established, evolution toward higher stages was able to resume
once more. Mutations appeared, the environment applied selection principles,
and life in the Minervan seas began diverging and specializing into many and
varied species. After a while, as you would expect, a range of carnivorous
types established themselves..."
      "I thought you said there weren't any," a voice queried.
      "That came later. I'm talking about very early times."
      "Okay."
      "Fine. So, carnivorous fish appeared on the scene and, again as you
would expect, Nature immediately commenced looking for ways of protecting the
victims. Now the fish that had developed the double-circulatory-system
architecture, who tended to be more advanced forms anyway because of this, hit
on a very efficient means of defense: the two circulatory systems became
totally isolated from one another, and the concentration of toxins in the
secondary system increased to lethal proportions. In other words, they became
poisonous. The isolation of the secondary system from the primary prevented
poison from entering the bloodstream. That would have been fatal for the owner
itself, naturally."
      Carizan was frowning about something. He caught her eye and gestured for
her to hold the conversation there a moment.
      "Can't really say I see that as being much protection at all," he said.
"What's the good in poisoning a carnivore after it's eaten you? That'd be too
late, wouldn't it?"
      "To the individual who was unfortunate enough to encounter one that
hadn't learned yet, yes," she agreed. "But don't forget that Nature can afford
to be very wasteful when it comes to individuals; it's the preservation of the
species as a whole that matters. When you think about it, the survival or
extermination of a species can depend on whether or not a strain of predators
becomes established that has a preference for them as a diet. In the situation
I've described, it was impossible for such a strain of predators to emerge; if
a mutation appeared that had a tendency in that direction, it would promptly
destroy itself the first time it experimented in following its instinct. It
would never get a chance to pass its characteristic on to any descendants, so
the characteristic could never be reinforced in later generations."
      "Another thing too," one of the UNSA biologists interjected. "Young
animals tend to imitate the feeding habits of their parents on Earth anyway.
If that was true on Minerva too, the young that managed to get born would
naturally tend to pick up the habits of parents that avoided the poisonous
species. It would have to be that way since any mutant that didn't avoid them
wouldn't live long enough to become a parent in the first place."
      "You can see the same thing in terrestrial insects, for example,"
Danchekker threw in. "Some species mimic the coloring of wasps and bees,
although they are quite harmless. Other animals leave them alone completely --
it's the same principle."
      "Okay, that makes sense." Carizan motioned for Shilohin to continue.
      "So marine life on Minerva developed into three broad families:
carnivorous types; nonpoisonous noncarnivores, with specialized alternative
defense mechanisms; and poisonous noncarnivores, which possessed the most
effective defense and were left free to carry on their development from what
was already an advanced and privileged position."
      "This didn't alter their resistance to cold then?" somebody asked.
      "No, the secondary system in these species continued to perform its
original function as well as ever. As I said, the only differences that had
occurred were that the toxin concentration was increased and it became
isolated from the primary."
      "I got it."
      "Fine. Now, the two types of noncarnivores had to eat, so they competed
between themselves for what was available -- plants, certain rudimentary
invertebrate organisms, water-borne organic substances and so on. But Minerva
was cold and did not offer an abundance of things like that -- nothing like
what is found on Earth, for instance. The poisonous species were efficient
competitors and gradually became overwhelmingly dominant. The nonpoisonous
noncarnivores declined and, since they constituted the food supply for the
carnivores, the numbers and varieties of carnivores declined with them.
Eventually two distinct groups segregated out of all this and from that time
on lived separate lives: the nonpoisonous types moved out into the oceans away
from the competition, and the carnivores naturally followed them. Those two
groups evolved into a pattern of deep-sea life that eventually found its own
balance and stabilized. The poisonous types retamed the shallower, coastal
waters as their sole preserve, and it was from them that land dwellers
subsequently emerged."
      "You mean that all the land-dwelling species that developed later
inherited the basic pattern of a double system?" Danchekker said, fascinated.
"They were all poisonous?"
      "Precisely," she replied. "By that time the trait had become firmly
established as a fundamental part of their basic design -- much as many
vertebrate characteristics on your own world. It was faithfully passed on to
all later descendants, essentially unchanged..."
      Shilohin paused as a few mutterings and murmurs of surprise arose from
the listeners; the implication of what she was saying was beginning to dawn on
them. Somebody at the back finally put it into words.
      "That explains what you said at the start -- why there were no
carnivores on Minerva later on. They could never become established for all
the reasons you've been talking about, even if they appeared spontaneously
from time to time."
      "Quite so," she confirmed. "Occasionally an odd mutation in that
direction would appear but, as you point out, it could never gain a foothold
again. The animals that evolved on Minerva were exclusively herbivorous. They
did not follow the same lines of development as terrestrial animals because
the selective factors operating in their natural environment were different.
They evolved no fight-or-flight instincts since there was nothing to defend
against and nothing to flee from. They did not develop behavior patterns based
on fear, anger or aggression since such emotions had no survival value to
them, and hence were not selected and reinforced. There were no fast runners
since there were no predators to run from, and there was no need for natural
camouflage. There were no birds, since there was nothing to stimulate their
appearance."
      "Those murals in the ship!" Hunt turned to Danchekker as the truth
suddenly hit him. "They weren't children's cartoons at all, Chris. They were
real!"
      "Good Lord, Vic." The professor gaped and blinked through his spectacles
in surprise, wondering why the same thought hadn't struck him. "You're right.
Of course...you're absolutely right. How extraordinary. We must study them
more closely..." Danchekker seemed about to say something else but stopped
abruptly, as if another thought had just occurred to him. He frowned and
rubbed his forehead but waited until the hubbub of voices had died away before
he spoke.
      "Excuse me," he called when normality had returned. "There is something
else...If there were no predators in existence at all, what kept the numbers
of the herbivores in check? I can't see any mechanism for preserving a natural
balance."
      "I was just coming to that," Shilohin answered. "The answer is:
accidents. Even slight cuts or abrasions would allow poison to seep from the
secondary system into the primary. Most accidents were fatal to Minervan
animals. Natural selection favored natural protection. The species that
survived and flourished were those with the best protection -- leathery outer
skins, thick coverings of fur, scaly armor plating, and so on." She held up
one of her hands to display extensive nails and knuckle pads, and then shifted
the collar of her shirt slightly to uncover part of the delicate, overlapping,
scaly plates that formed a strip along the top of her shoulder. "Many remnants
of ancestral protection are still detectable in the Ganymean form today."
      Hunt realized now the reasons for the Ganymeans' temperament being the
way it was. From the origins that Shilohin had just described, intelligence
had emerged not in response to any need to manufacture weapons or to outwit
foe or prey, but as a means of anticipating and avoiding physical damage.
Learning and the communication of knowledge would have assumed a phenomenal
survival value among the primitive Ganymeans. Caution in all things, prudence,
and the ability to analyze all possible outcomes of an action would have been
reinforced by selection; haste and rashness would be fatal.
      Evolving from such ancestors, what else could they be but instinctively
cooperative and nonaggressive? They would know nothing of violent competition
in any form or of the use of force against a rival; hence they exhibited none
of the types of complex behavior patterns which, in a later and more civilized
society, would "normally" afford symbolic expression of such instincts. Hunt
wondered what was "normal." Shilohin, as if reading his thoughts, supplied a
definition from the Ganymean point of view.
      "You can imagine then how, when civilization eventually began to
develop, the early Ganymean thinkers looked upon the world that they saw about
them. They marveled at the way in which Nature, in its infinite wisdom, had
imposed a strict natural order upon all living things: the soil fed the plants
and the plants fed the animals. The Ganymeans accepted this as the natural
order of the universe."
      "Like a divinely ordained plan," somebody near the bar suggested.
"Sounds like a religious outlook."
      "You're right," Shilohin agreed, turning to face the speaker. "In the
early history of our civilization religious notions did prevail widely. Before
scientific principles were better understood, our people attributed many of
the mysteries that they were unable to explain to the workings of some
omnipotent agency...not unlike your God. The early teachings held that the
natural order of living things was the ultimate expression of this guiding
wisdom
      I suppose you would say: The will of God."
      "Except in the deep-ocean basins," Hunt commented.
      "Well, that fitted in quite well too," Shilohin replied. "The early
religious thinkers of our race saw that as a punishment. In the seas, way back
before history, the law had been defied. As a punishment for that, the
lawbreakers had been banished permanently to the deepest and darkest depths of
the oceans and never emerged to enjoy sunlight."
      Danchekker leaned toward Hunt and whispered, "Rather like the Fall from
Eden. An interesting parallel, don't you think?"
      "Mmm...with a T-bone steak in place of an apple," Hunt murmured.
      Shilohin paused to push her glass across the bar and waited for the
steward to refill it. The room remained quiet while the Earthmen digested the
things she had been saying. At last she sipped her drink, and then resumed.
      "And so, you see, to the Ganymean, Nature was indeed perfect in all its
harmony, and beautiful in its perfection. As the sciences were discovered and
the Ganymeans learned more about the universe in which they lived, they never
doubted that however far among the stars their knowledge might take them and
however far they might one day probe toward infinity, Nature and its natural
law would everywhere reign supreme. What reason had they even to imagine
otherwise? They were unable even to conceive how things could be otherwise."
      She stopped for a moment and swept her eyes slowly around the room, as
if trying to weigh up the expressions on the circle of faces.
      "You asked me to be frank," she said, then paused again. "At last, we
realized a dream that we had been nurturing for generations -- to go out into
space and discover the wonders of other worlds. When at last the Ganymeans,
still with their idyllic convictions, came to the jungles and savagery of
Earth, the effect on them was shattering. We called it the Nightmare Planet."


Chapter Twelve

      The Ganymean engineers announced that the ship beneath Pithead would
provide the parts needed to repair the drive system of the Shapieron and that
the work would take three to four weeks. A shuttle service between Pithead and
Main came into being as technicians and scientists of both races cooperated in
the venture. The Ganymeans, of course, directed and carried out the technical
side of the operation while the Earthmen took care of the transportation,
logistics, and domestic arrangements. Parties of UNSA experts were invited
aboard the Shapieron to observe the work in progress and to stand in
spellbound fascination as some of the mysteries and intricacies of Ganymean
science were explained. One eminent authority on nuclear engineering from
Jupiter Five declared later that the experience made him feel like "an
unapprenticed plumber's mate being shown around a fusion plant."
      While all this was going on, a team of UNSA specialists at Main worked
out a schedule to give ZORAC a crash course on terrestrial computer science
and technology. The result of this exercise was the construction of a code-
conversion and interface system, most of the details of which were worked out
by ZORAC itself, to couple the Ganymean computer directly into the
communications network at Main and thus into the computer complex of J5. This
gave ZORAC, and through it the Ganymeans as well, direct access to J5's data
banks and opened up a mine of information on many aspects of the ways of life,
history, geography and sciences of Earth -- for which the aliens had
insatiable appetites.
      One day, in the communications room of the Mission Control Center at
UNSA Operational Command Headquarters, Galveston, there was consternation when
a strange voice began speaking suddenly and unexpectedly over the loudspeaker
system. It was another of ZORAC's jokes. The machine had composed its own
message of greeting to Earth and injected it into the outgoing signal stream
of the laser link from Jupiter.
      Earth was, of course, clamoring to know more about the Ganymeans. In a
press conference staged specifically for broadcast over the world news grid, a
panel of Ganymeans answered questions put to them by scientists and reporters
who had traveled with the J5 mission. A large local audience was expected for
the event and, since none of the facilities available at Main seemed to be
large enough, the Ganymeans readily agreed to the idea of holding the event
inside the Shapieron. Hunt was a member of the group that flew down from
Pithead to take part.
      The first questions concerned the concepts and principles behind the
design of the Shapieron, especially its propulsive system. In reply, the
Ganymeans stated that the speculations of the UNSA scientists had been partly
right, but did not tell the whole story. The arrangement of massive toroids
containing tiny black holes that spun in closed circular paths did indeed
generate very high rates of change of gravity potential which resulted in a
zone of intense space-time distortion, but this did not propel the ship
directly; it created a focal point in the center of the toroids at which a
trickle of ordinary matter was induced to annihilate out of existence. The
mass-equivalent appeared in the form of gravitational energy, though not in
any way as simple as the classical notion of a force directed toward a central
point; the Ganymeans described the resultant effect as resembling "a stress in
the structure of space-time surrounding the ship..." It was this stress wave
that propagated through space, carrying the ship with it as it went.
      The idea of being able to cause matter to annihilate at will was
astonishing, and that the annihi1ation should result in artificial gravity
phenomena was a revelation. But to learn that all this merely represented a
means of bringing under control something that went on naturally anyway all
over the universe...was astounding. For this, apparently, was exactly the way
in which gravity originated in Nature; all forms of matter were all the time
decaying away to nothing, albeit at an immeasurably slow rate, and it was the
tiny proportion of basic particles that were annihilating at any given moment
that gave rise to the gravitational effect of mass. Every annihilation event
produced a microscopic, transient gravity pulse, and it was the additive
effect of millions of these pulses occurring every second which, when
perceived at the macroscopic level, produced the illusion of a steady field.
Thus, gravity ceased to be something static and passive that existed wherever
a quantity of mass happened to be; now, no longer an oddity standing apart, it
fell into line with all the other field phenomena of physics and became a
quantity that depended on the rate of change of something -- in this case, the
rate of change of mass. This principle, together with the discovery of a means
of artificially generating and controlling the process, formed the basis of
Ganymean gravitic engineering technology.
      This account caused consternation among the scientists from Earth who
were present. Hunt voiced their reactions by asking how some of the
fundamental laws of physics -- conservation of mass-energy and momentum, for
example -- could be reconciled with the notion of particles being able to
vanish spontaneously whenever they chose. The cherished fundamental laws, it
turned out, were neither fundamental nor laws at all. Like the Newtonian
mechanics of an earlier age, they were just approximations that would be
repealed with the development of more precise theoretical models and improved
measurement techniques, similar to the way in which careful experiments with
light waves had demonstrated the untenability of classical physics and
resulted in the formulation of special relativity. The Ganymeans illustrated
the point by mentioning that the rate at which matter decayed was such that
one gram of water would require well over ten billion years to disappear
completely -- utterly undetectable by any experiment that could be devised
within the framework of contemporary terrestrial science. While that remained
true, the established laws that Hunt had referred to would prove perfectly
adequate since the errors that resulted from them would make no practical
difference. In the same way, classical Newtonian mechanics continued to
suffice for most day-to-day needs although relativity provided the more
accurate description of reality. The history of Minervan science had shown the
same pattern of development; when terrestrial science had progressed further,
no doubt, similar discoveries and lines of reasoning would lead to the same
reexamination of basic principles.
      This led to the question of the permanency of the universe. Hunt asked
how the universe could still exist at all let alone still be evolving if all
the matter in it was decaying at the rate that the Ganymeans had indicated,
which was not slow on a cosmic time scale; there ought not to have been very
much of the universe left.
      The universe went on forever, he was told. All the time, throughout the
whole volume of space, particles were appearing spontaneously as well as
vanishing spontaneously, the latter process taking place predominantly inside
matter -- naturally, since that was where there were more of them to vanish
from in the first place. Thus the evolution of progressively more complex
mechanisms of creating order out of chaos-basic particles, interstellar
clouds, stars, planets, organic chemicals, then life itself and after that
intelligence -- formed a continuous cycle, a perpetual stage where the show
never stopped but individual actors came and went. Underlying it all was a
unidirectional pressure that strove always to bring high levels of
organization from lower ones. The universe was the result of a conflict of two
opposing, fundamental trends; one, represented by the second law of
thermodynamics, was the tendency for disorder to increase, while the other --
the evolutionary principle -- produced local reversals by creating order. In
the Ganymean sense, the term evolution was not something that applied only to
the world of living things, but one that embraced equally the whole spectrum
of increasing order, from the formation of an atomic nucleus from stellar
plasma to the act of designing a supercomputer; within this spectrum, the
emergence of life was reduced to just another milestone along the way. They
compared the evolutionary principle to a fish swimming upstream against the
current of entropy; the fish and the current symbolized the two fundamental
forces in the Ganymean universe. Evolution worked the way it did because
selection worked; selection worked because probability worked in a particular
way. The universe was, in the final analysis, all a question of statistics.
      Basic particles thus appeared, lived out their mortal spans, and then
vanished. Where did they come from and where did they go to? This question
summed up the kinds of problem that had existed at the frontier of Ganymean
science at the time of the Shapieron's departure. The whole universe perceived
by the senses was compared to a geometric plane through which a particle
passed, to be observable for a while as it made its contribution to the
evolving histories of the galaxies. But in what kind of superuniverse was this
plane embedded? Of what kind of truer reality was everything that had ever
been observed just a pale and insignificant shadow? These were the secrets
that the researchers of Minerva had been beginning to probe and which, they
had confidently believed, would eventually yield the key not only to
practicable intergalactic travel, but also to movement in domains of existence
that even they were incapable of imagining. The scientists from the Shapieron
wondered how much their descendants had learned in the years, decades, or even
centuries, that had elapsed after their departure from Minerva. Could the
abrupt disappearance of a whole civilization have a connection with some
undreamed of universe that they had discovered?
      The newsmen present were interested in the cultural basis of the
Minervan civilization, particularly the means of conducting everyday
commercial transactions between individuals and between organizations. A
freely competing economy based on monetary values seemed incompatible with the
noncompetitive Ganymean character and raised the question of what alternative
system the aliens used to measure and control the obligations between an
individual and the rest of society.
      The Ganymeans confirmed that their system had functioned without the
motivational forces of profit and a need to maintain any kind of financial
solvency. This was another area in which the radically different psychology
and conditioning of the Ganymeans made a smooth dialogue impossible, mainly
because they had no comprehension of many of the facts of living that were
accepted as self-evident on Earth. That some means of control was desirable to
insure that everybody put into society at least as much as he took out was
strange to them; so was the concept that any measure of a "normal" input-
output ratio could be specified since, they maintained, every individual had
his own preferred ratio at which he functioned optimally, and which it was his
basic right to choose. The concept of financial necessity or any other means
of coercing somebody to live a life that he would not otherwise follow was, to
them, a grotesque infringement of freedom and dignity. Besides that, they
seemed unable to understand why it should be necessary to base any society on
such principles.
      What then, they were asked, was there to prevent everybody becoming
purely a taker, with no obligation to give anything in return? That being the
case, how could a society survive at all? Again the Ganymeans seemed unable to
understand the problem. Surely, they pointed out, individuals possessed an
instinct to contribute and one of the essential needs of living was the
satisfaction of that instinct; why would anybody deliberately deprive himself
of the feeling of being needed? Apparently that was what motivated the
Ganymean in place of monetary incentives -- he simply could not live with the
thought of not being of any use to anybody. He was just made that way. The
worst situation he could find himself in was that of having to depend on
society for his wants without being able to reciprocate, and anybody who
sought such an existence deliberately was regarded as a social anomaly in need
of psychiatric help and an object of sympathy -- rather like a mentally
retarded child. The observation that this was regarded by many on Earth as the
ultimate fulfillment of ambition reinforced the Ganymean conviction that Homo
sapiens had inherited some awful defects from the Lunarians. On a more
encouraging note they expressed the view, based on what they knew of the last
few decades of Man's history, that Nature was slowly but surely repairing the
damage.
      By the time the conference had finished Hunt found that all the talking
had made him thirsty. He asked ZORAC if there was anywhere nearby where he
might get a drink and was informed that if he went out through the main door
of the room he was in, turned right and followed the corridor for a short
distance, he would come to an open seating area where refreshments were
available. Hunt ordered a GTB and Coke -- the latest product of the fusion of
the two cultures and an instant hit with both -- and left the melee of
producers and technicians to follow the directions and pick up the drink at
the dispensing unit.
      As he turned and cast an eye around the area to look for a suitable
seat, he noted absently that he was the only Earthman present. A few Ganymeans
were scattered around singly or in small groups, but most of the places were
empty. He picked out a small table with a few unoccupied chairs around it,
sauntered across and sat down. Apart from one or two slight nods of
acknowledgment, none of the Ganymeans took any notice of him; anyone would
have thought it an everyday occurrence for unaccompanied aliens to wander
around their ship. The sight of the ashtray on the table prompted him to reach
into his pocket for his cigarette pack. Then he stopped, momentarily puzzled;
the Ganymeans didn't smoke. He peered more closely at the ashtray and realized
that it was standard UNSA issue. He looked around. Most of the tables had UNSA
ashtrays. As usual the Ganymeans had thought of everything; naturally there
would be Earthmen around with the conference that day. He sighed, shook his
head in admiration and settled back into the huge expanse of upholstered
luxury to relax with his thoughts.
      He didn't realize Shilohin was standing nearby until ZORAC spoke in his
ear with the voice that it reserved for her. "Dr. Hunt, isn't it? Good
afternoon."
      Hunt looked up with a start and then recognized her. He grinned at the
standard salutation and gestured toward one of the empty seats. Shilohin sat
down and placed her own drink on the table.
      "I see we seem to have had the same idea," she said. "It's thirsty
work."
      "You can say that again."
      "Well...how do you think it went?"
      "It was great. I think they were all fascinated...I bet it'll cause some
pretty lively arguments back home."
      Shilohin seemed to hesitate for a second before going on. "You don't
think Monchar was too direct...too openly critical of your way of life and
your values? Those things he said about the Lunarians for example..."
      Hunt reflected for a moment while he drew on his cigarette.
      "No, I don't think so. If that's the way Ganymeans see it, it's much
better if it's said straight...If you ask me, something like that has needed
saying for a long time. I can't think of anybody better to say it; more people
might start taking notice now good thing too."
      "That's nice to know anyway," she said, sounding suddenly more at ease.
"I was beginning to feel a little worried about it."
      "I don't think anybody's very worried about that side of it," Hunt
commented. "Certainly the scientists aren't. They're more worried about having
the laws of physics collapse around their ears. I don't think you've realized
yet what a stir you've started. Some of our most basic convictions are going
to have to be rethought -- right from square one. We thought we had just a few
more pages to add to the story; now it looks as if we might have to rewrite
the whole book."
      "That's true I suppose," she conceded. "But at least you won't have to
go all the way back as far as the Ganymean scientists did." She noted his look
of interest. "Oh yes, believe me, Dr. Hunt, we went through the same process
ourselves. The discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics turned all of our
classical ideas upside down just as happened in your own science in the early
twentieth century. And then when the things we were talking about earlier
began fitting together, we had another major scientific upheaval; all the
concepts that had survived the first time and were regarded as absolute turned
out to be wrong -- all the ingrained beliefs had to be changed."
      She turned to look at him and made a Ganymean gesture of resignation.
"Your science would have reached the same point eventually even if we hadn't
arrived, and not all that far in the future either if my judgment is anything
to go by. As things are, you'll dodge the worst since we can show you most of
what's involved anyway. Fifty years from now you'll be flying ships like this
one."
      "I wonder." Hunt's voice was far away. It sounded incredible, but then
he thought of the history of aviation; how many of the colonial territories of
the 1920s would have believed that fifty years later they would be independent
states running their own jet fleets? How many Americans would have believed
that the same time span would take them from wooden biplanes to Apollo?
      "And what happens after that?" he murmured, half to himself. "Will there
be more scientific upheavals waiting...things that even you people don't know
about yet either?"
      "Who knows?" she replied. "I did outline where research had got to when
we left Minerva; anything could have happened afterward. But don't make the
mistake of thinking that we know everything, even within our existing
framework of knowledge. We've had our surprises too, you know -- since we came
to Ganymede. The Earthmen have taught us some things we didn't know."
      This was news to Hunt.
      "How do you mean?" he asked, naturally intrigued. "What kind of things?"
      She sipped her drink slowly to collect her thoughts. "Well, let's take
this question of carnivorism, for example. As you know, it was unknown on
Minerva, apart from in certain deep-sea species that only scientists were
interested in and most other Ganymeans preferred to forget."
      "Yes, I know that."
      "Well, Ganymean biologists had, of course, studied the workings of
evolution and reconstructed the story of how their own race originated.
Although layman's thinking was largely governed by the concept of some
divinely ordained natural order, as I mentioned earlier, many scientists
recognized the chance aspect of the scheme that had established itself on our
world. Purely from the scientific viewpoint, they could see no reason why
things had to be the way they were. So, being scientists, they began to ask
what might have happened if things had been different...for example, if
carnivorous fish had not migrated to midocean depths, but had remained in
coastal waters."
      "You mean if amphibian and land-dwelling carnivores had evolved," Hunt
supplied.
      "Exactly. Some scientists maintained that it was just a quirk of fate
that led to Minerva being the way it was -- nothing to do with any divine laws
at all. So they began constructing hypothetical models of ecological systems
that included carnivores...more as intellectual exercise, I suppose."
      "Mmm...interesting. How did they turn out?"
      "They were hopelessly wrong," Shilohin told him. She made a gesture of
emphasis. "Most of the models predicted the whole evolutionary system slowing
down and degenerating into a stagnant dead end, much as happened in our own
oceans. They hadn't managed to separate out the limitations imposed by an
aquatic environment, and attributed the result to the fundamentally
destructive nature of the way of life there. You can imagine their surprise
when the first Ganymean expedition reached Earth and found just such a land-
based ecology in action. They were amazed at how advanced and how specialized
the animals had become...and the birds! That was something none of them had
dreamed of. Now you can see why many of us were stunned by the sight of the
animals that you showed us at Pithead. We had heard of such creatures, but
none of us had actually seen one."
      Hunt nodded slowly and began to comprehend fully at last. To a race that
had grown up surrounded by Danchekker's cartoons, the sight of Trilophodon,
the four-tusked walking tank, or of the saber-toothed killing machine
Smilodon, must have been awesome. What kind of picture had the Ganymeans
formed of the ferocious arena that had molded and shaped such gladiators, he
Wondered.
      "So, they had to change their ideas on that subject in a hurry as well,"
he said.
      "They did...They revised all their theories on the strength of the
evidence from Earth, and they worked out a completely new model. But, I'm
afraid, they got it all wrong again."
      Hunt couldn't suppress a short laugh.
      "Really? What went wrong this time?"
      "Your level of civilization and your technology," she told him. "All our
scientists were convinced that an advanced race could never emerge from the
pattern of life that they saw on Earth twenty-five million years ago. They
argued that intelligence could never appear in any stable form in such an
environment, and even if it did it would destroy itself as soon as it had the
power to do so. Certainly any kind of sociable living or communal society was
out of the question and, since the acquisition of knowledge depends on
communication and cooperation, the sciences could never be developed."
      "But we proved that was all baloney, eh?"
      "It's incredible!" Shilohin indicated bewilderment. "All our models
showed that any progression from the life forms of your Miocene period toward
greater intelligence would depend on selection for greater cunning and more
sophisticated methods of violence; no coherent civilization could possibly
develop from a background like that. And yet...we have returned and found not
only a civilized and technologically advanced culture, but one that is
accelerating all the time. It seemed impossible. That was why we took so much
convincing that you came from the third planet from the Sun -- the Nightmare
Planet."
      These remarks made Hunt feel flattered, but at the same time he
remembered how close the Ganymean prophecies had come to being true.
      "But you were so nearly right, weren't you," he said soberly. "Don't
forget the Lunarians. They did destroy themselves in just the way that your
model predicted, although it looks as if they too advanced further than you
thought they would. It was only the fact that a handful of them survived it
that we're here at all, and they only made it on a million-to-one shot." He
shook his head and exhaled a cloud of smoke sharply. "I wouldn't feel too bad
about what your models said; they came far too near the truth for comfort as
far as I'm concerned...far too near. If whatever it was that made the
Lunarians the way they were hadn't modified itself somehow and become diluted
in the course of time, we'd be going the same way and your model would be
proved right again. With luck though, we're over that hump now."
      "And that's the most incredible thing of all," Shilohin said, picking up
the point immediately. "The very thing that we believed would prove an
insurmountable barrier to progress has turned out to be your biggest
advantage."
      "How do you mean?"
      "The aggressiveness, the determination -- the refusal to let anything
defeat you. All that is built deep into the basic Earthman character. It's a
relic from your origins, modified, refined, and adapted. But that's where it
comes from. You maybe don't see it that way, but we can. We're astounded by
it. Try to understand, we've never seen or imagined anything like it before."
      "Danchekker said something like that," Hunt mumbled, but Shilohin
continued, apparently not having heard him.
      "Our instincts are to avoid any form of danger, because of the way we
originated...certainly not to seek it deliberately. We are a cautious people.
But Earthmen...! They climb mountains, sail tiny boats around a planet alone,
jump out of aircraft for fun! All their games are simulated combat; this thing
you call 'business' reenacts the survival struggle of your evolutionary system
and the power-lust of your wars; your 'politics' is based on the principle of
meeting force with force and matching strength with strength." She paused for
a moment, and then went on. "These are completely new to Ganymeans. The idea
of a race that will actually rise up and answer threats with defiance
is...unbelievable. We have studied large portions of your planet's history.
Much of it is horrifying to us, but also, beneath the superficial story of
events, some of us see something deeper -- something stirring. The
difficulties that Man has faced are appalling, but the way in which he has
always fought back at them and always won in the end -- I must confess there
is something about it that is strangely magnificent."
      "But why should that be?" Hunt asked. "Why should the Ganymeans feel
that we have some unique advantage, especially with their different
background? They achieved the same things...and more."
      "Because of the time it's taken you to do it," she said.
      "Time?"
      "Your rate of advancement. It's stupendous! Haven't Earthmen realized?
No, I don't suppose there's any reason why they should." She looked at him
again, seemingly at a loss for a second. "How long ago did Man harness steam?
It took you less than seventy years from learning to fly to reach your Moon.
Twenty years after you invented transistors half your world was being run by
computers..."
      "That's good, compared to Minerva?"
      "Good! It's miraculous! It makes our own development pale into
insignificance. And it's getting faster all the time! It's because you attack
Nature with the same innate aggressiveness that you hurl at anything that
stands in your way. You don't hack each other to pieces or bomb whole cities
anymore, but the same instinct is still there in your scientists,
engineers...your businessmen, your politicians. They all love a good fight.
They thrive on it. That's the difference between us. The Ganymean learns for
knowledge and finds that he solves problems as a by-product; the Earthman
takes on a problem and finds that he's learned something when he's solved it,
but it's the kick he gets out of fighting and winning that matters. Garuth
summed it up fairly well when I was talking to him yesterday. I asked him if
he thought that any of the Earthmen really believed in this God they talk
about. Know what he said?"
      "What'd he say?"
      "'They will once they've made Him.'
      Hunt couldn't help grinning at Garuth's bemusement that was at the same
time a compliment. He was about to reply when ZORAC spoke into his ear in its
own voice:
      "Excuse me, Dr. Hunt."
      "Yes?"
      "A Sergeant Brukhov wants to talk for a second. Are you accepting
calls?"
      "Excuse me a minute," he said to Shilohin. "Okay. Put him on."
      "Dr. Hunt?" The voice of one of the UNSA pilots came through clearly.
      "Here."
      "Sorry to bother you, but we're sorting out the arrangements for getting
everybody back to Pithead. I'm taking a transporter back half an hour from now
and I've got a couple of empty seats. Also there's a Ganymean ship leaving
about an hour later and some of the guys are hitching a ride on it. You're on
the list to go; it's your choice which way."
      "Any idea who's going on the Ganymean ship?"
      "Don't know who they are, but they're standing right in front of me. I'm
in the big room that the conference was held in."
      "Give me a shot, would you?" Hunt asked.
      He activated his wrist unit and observed the view being picked up by
Brukhov's headband. It showed a group of faces that Hunt recognized at once,
all of them from the labs at Pithead. Carizan was there...so was Frank Towers.
      "Thanks for the offer," Hunt said. "I'll go with them though."
      "Okay...oh...hang on a sec..." Indistinct background noises, then
Brukhov again. "One of them wants to know where the hell you've got to."
      "Tell him I've found the bar."
      More noises.
      "He wants to know where the hell that is."
      "Okay, look over at the wall," Hunt replied. "Now follow it along to
your left...a bit farther..." He watched the image move across the screen.
"Hold it there. You're looking at the main door."
      "Check."
      "Through there, turn right and follow the passage. They can't miss it.
Drinks are on the house; order through ZORAC."
      "Okay, I got it. They say they'll see you there in a coupla minutes.
Over and out."
      "Channel cleared down," ZORAC informed him.
      "Sorry about that," Hunt said to Shilohin. "We've got company on the
way."
      "Earthmen?"
      "Bunch of drunks from up north. I made the mistake of telling them where
we are."
      She laughed -- he could recognize the sound now -- and then, slowly, her
mood became serious again. "You strike me as a very rational and level-headed
Earthman. There is something that we have never mentioned before because we
were unsure of the reactions it might produce, but I feel it is something that
we can talk about here."
      "Go on." Hunt sensed that she had been giving some thought to whatever
the matter was while he had been talking to the pilot. He detected a subtle
change in her manner; she was not quite conveying that the topic was one of
strict confidence, but that how he chose to use the information would be left
to his own discretion. He knew his own kind better than she did.
      "There was an occasion when the Ganymeans resorted to the use of willful
violence...deliberate destruction of life."
      Hunt waited in silence, unsure of what kind of response would be
appropriate.
      "You know," she went on, "about the problem that Minerva was
experiencing -- with the carbon-dioxide level rising. Well, one possible
solution presented itself immediately -- simply migrate to another planet. But
this was at a time before there were any ships like the Shapieron...before we
could travel to other stars. Therefore we could contemplate only the planets
of the Solar System. Apart from Minerva itself, only one of them could have
supported life."
      Hunt looked at her blankly; the message had not quite registered.
      "Earth," he said with a slight shrug.
      "Yes, Earth. We could move our whole civilization to Earth. As you know,
we sent expeditions to explore it, but when they sent back details of the
environment that they found there, we knew that there could be no simple
answer to Minerva's problems. Ganymeans could never have survived amid such
savagery."
      "So the idea was abandoned then?" Hunt suggested.
      "No...not quite. You see, the whole terrestrial ecology and the
creatures that formed part of it were thought by many Ganymeans to be so
unnatural as to constitute a perversion of life itself -- a smear upon an
otherwise perfect universe that the universe would be a better place without."
Hunt gaped at her as what she was saying began to sink in. "A suggestion was
put forward that the whole planet be wiped clean of the disease that infested
it. Terrestrial life would be exterminated, and then Minervan forms would be
substituted. After all, the supporters of the scheme argued, it would be
simply playing the game by Earth's own rules."
      Hunt was stunned. After everything that had been said, the Ganymeans
could actually have been capable of conceiving a scheme like that? She watched
and seemed to read the thought in his mind.
      "Most Ganymeans opposed the idea, instinctively, totally and without
compromise. It was completely against their basic nature. The public protest
that it provoked was probably the most vigorous in our whole history.
      "Nevertheless, our own world was in danger of becoming uninhabitable,
and some members of the government took the view that they had an obligation
to investigate every possible alternative. So, in secret, they set up a small
colony on Earth to experiment on a local scale." She saw the questions forming
on Hunt's lips and held up a hand to forestall them. "Don't ask me where on
Earth this colony was or what methods they employed to do the things they were
sent there to do; I have great difficulty in speaking about this at all. Let
us just say that the results were catastrophic. In some regions the ecology
collapsed completely as a consequence of the things that were done and many
terrestrial species became extinct during what you call the Oligocene period
for this reason. Some of the areas affected remain deserts on Earth to this
day."
      Hunt didn't know what to say, so said nothing. The things he had just
been told were shocking not because of the means or ends that they implied,
which were all too familiar to humans, but because they were so unexpected.
For him the conversation was a revelation and a staggering one at that, but no
more. For the Ganymean, he realized, it was traumatic.
      Shilohin seemed somewhat reassured by the absence of any violent
emotional response on his part, and so continued. "Not surprisingly, the
psychological effects on the colonists were equally disastrous. The whole
sorry affair was quietly ended and filed away as one of the shabbier episodes
of our history. We prefer to try and forget about it."
      A babble of human voices interspersed with laughter came from further
along the corridor. As Hunt looked up expectantly Shilobin touched his arm to
retain his attention for a moment longer.
      "That, Dr. Hunt, is the real reason why we feel too ashamed to talk
about the Oligocene Earth and its animals," she said.


Chapter Thirteen

      The Shapieron was pronounced fully functional once more and the
Ganymeans announced their intention to take the ship for a test flight to the
outermost fringe of the Solar System. The trip was expected to take about a
week.
      A mixed gathering of scientists, engineers and UNSA personnel had
congregated in the messroom at Pithead to watch the takeoff, the view of which
was being relayed from Main Base and shown on the wall screen. Hunt, Carizan
and Towers were sharing a table at the back of the room and drinking coffee.
As the countdown neared zero, the hubbub of conversation quieted and an air of
expectancy descended.
      "All UNSA vessels have cleared the area. You're okay to go on schedule."
The voice of the controller at Main sounded from the audio grille.
      "Acknowledged," the familiar voice of ZORAC replied. "All our prelaunch
checks are positive. We're lifting off now. Au revoir until about a week from
now, Earthmen."
      "Sure. See ya around."
      For a few seconds longer the huge, majestic shape, its tail end now
retracted and its outer bays closed, remained motionless, towering skyward to
dominate the untidy sprawl of the base in the foreground. Then the ship began
to lift, slowly and smoothly, sliding up into an unbroken background of stars
as the camera followed it and the last ice crest disappeared off the bottom of
the picture. Almost at once it started to contract rapidly as the
foreshortening increased with the angle at a rate that hinted of the fearsome
buildup of speed.
      "Man, look at her go!" came the voice from Main. "Do you have radar
contact yet, J5?"
      "It's going like greased lightning out of hell," another voice answered.
"We're starting to lose it. The image is breaking up. They must be on main
drive already -- their stress field's starting to scramble the echoes. Image
on the optical scanners is losing coherence too..." And then: "That's it. It's
gone...like it was never there at all. Fantastic!"
      That was that. A few low whistles of surprise broke the silence in the
messroom at Pithead, followed by muttered exclamations and murmurings.
Gradually the fragments of conversation flowed together and merged into a
steady continuum of noise that rose and found its own level. The picture on
the screen reverted to the view of Main, now looking somehow empty and
incomplete without the ship standing in the background. Even after so short a
time, life on Ganymede without the Giants around didn't feel quite right.
      "Well, I've got to go," Hunt said, rising from his chair. "Chris wants
to talk about something. See you both later." The other two looked up.
      "Sure. See you later."
      "See you, Vic."
      As he moved toward the door, Hunt realized that Pithead didn't seem
right either without a single Ganymean in sight. It was strange, he thought,
that every one of them should need to go on a test flight; but...that was not
really something for Earthmen to reason why. He realized also that not having
ZORAC around would also take some getting used to. He had come unconsciously
to accept the ability to communicate directly with others and to consult with
the machine, whatever time of day it was or wherever he happened to be. ZORAC
had come to be a guide, mentor, tutor and advisor all rolled into one -- an
omniscient and omnipresent companion. Hunt suddenly felt very alone and
isolated without it. The Ganymeans could have left specialized relay equipment
at Ganymede that would have sustained a link to ZORAC, but the mutual slowing
down of clocks that the Shapieron's velocity would produce, together with the
large distance that its flight would entail, would soon have made any form of
meaningful communication impossible. It was, he admitted privately to himself,
going to be a long week.

      Hunt found Danchekker in his lab fussing over his Minervan plants, which
by this time were proliferating in every corner of the room and seemed set to
embark on an invasion of the corridor outside. The subject that the professor
wanted to discuss was the theory that he and Hunt had formulated jointly,
before the arrival of the Ganymeans, concerning the low inherent tolerance of
all Minervan land-dwelling species to atmospheric carbon dioxide. This theory
held that the trait had been inherited, along with the basic system of
chemical metabolism, from some very early, common, marine ancestor. After
discussing the matter at some length with various Ganymean scientists through
ZORAC, Danchekker now knew that this theory was wrong.
      "In fact, when land dwellers eventually appeared on Minerva, they
evolved a very efficient method of coping with the planet's high carbon-
dioxide level. The way in which they did it was one which, with the benefit of
hindsight, was very obvious and very simple." Danchekker stopped rummaging
around among the mass of leaves for a moment and half turned his head to allow
Hunt time to reflect on the statement. Hunt, perched casually on one of the
stools with an elbow resting on the edge of the bench beside him, said nothing
and waited.
      "They adapted their secondary circulation systems to absorb the excess,"
Danchekker told him. "Systems that had evolved specifically to remove toxins
in the first place. They provided a ready-made mechanism ideal for the job."
      Hunt turned the proposition over in his mind and rubbed his chin
thoughtfully.
      "So..." he said after a while. "This idea we had that they all inherited
a low tolerance was way off the rails...all baloney."
      "Baloney."
      "And this characteristic stayed, did it? I mean, all the species that
came later inherited the mechanism...they were all well adapted to their
environment?"
      "Yes. Perfectly adequately."
      "But there's still something I don't see yet," Hunt said, frowning. "If
what you've just said was true, the Ganymeans should have inherited an
adequate resistance too. If they did, they wouldn't have had a CO2 problem.
But they themselves said they did have a CO2 problem. So how come?"
      Danchekker turned to face him and wiped his palms on the front of his
lab coat. He beamed through his spectacles and showed his teeth.
      "They did inherit it...the resistance mechanism. They did have a problem
too. But, you see, the problem wasn't natural; it was artificial. They brought
it upon themselves, far later in their history."
      "Chris, you're talking in riddles. Why not start at the beginning?"
      "Very well." Danchekker began wiping dry the tools he had been using and
replaced them in one of the drawers as he spoke. "As I said a moment ago, when
land-dwelling life appeared on Minerva, the secondary circulation systems that
all species already possessed -- which caused them to be poisonous -- adapted
to absorb the excess carbon dioxide. Thus although Minervan air was high in
carbon dioxide compared to that of Earth, all the forms of life that emerged
there flourished quite happily since they had evolved a perfectly good means
of adapting to their surroundings, which is the way one would expect Nature to
work. When, after hundreds of millions of years, intelligence emerged in the
form of primitive Ganymeans, they too possessed the same basic architecture,
which had remained essentially unchanged. So far so good?"
      "They were still poisonous and they were well adapted," Hunt said.
      "Quite so."
      "What happened then?"
      "Then a very interesting thing must have happened. The Ganymean race
appeared and went through all the stages you would expect of a primitive
culture beginning to grope its way toward civilization -- making tools,
growing food, building houses and so on. Well, by this time, as you might
imagine, the ancient self-defense that they had inherited from their remote
marine ancestors for protecting them against carnivores was turning out to be
more of a damned nuisance than a help. There were no carnivores to be
protected from and it was soon obvious that none were likely to appear. On the
other hand, the acute accident-proneness that resulted from self-poisoning was
proving to be a severe handicap." Danchekker held up a finger to show a small
band of adhesive plaster around the second joint. "I nicked myself with a
scalpel yesterday," he commented. "Had I been one of those early Ganymeans, I
would most probably have been dead within the hour."
      "Okay, point taken," Hunt conceded. "But what could they do about it?"
      "Somewhere around the time that I was describing -- the early beginnings
of civilization -- the ancients discovered that the poisons in the secondary
system could be neutralized by including certain plants and molds in their
diet. They discovered this by observing the habits of some animals whose
immunity to damage that should have meant certain death was well known. That
simple step was probably their biggest single leap forward. Coupled with their
intelligence it virtually insured dominance over all forms of Minervan life.
It opened up the whole of medical science, for example. With their self-
poisoning mechanism defused, surgery became possible. At a later stage in
their history they developed a simple surgical method of neutralizing the
secondary system permanently without having to rely on drugs. It became
standard practice for every Ganymean to be treated in this way soon after
birth. Even later still, when they had progressed to a level beyond ours, they
isolated the gene that caused the secondary system to develop in the fetus in
the first place and eradicated it completely. They literally bred this trait
out of themselves. None of the Ganymeans we've met was born with a secondary
system at all, and neither were quite a few generations before them. Rather an
elegant solution, don't you think?"
      "Incredible," Hunt agreed. "I've never had a chance to talk about that
kind of thing with them...not yet anyway."
      "Oh, yes." Danchekker nodded. "They were extremely proficient genetic
engineers, were our Ganymean friends...very proficient."
      Hunt thought for a second and then snapped his fingers in sudden
comprehension.
      "But of course," he said. "In doing that they buggered their CO2
tolerance too."
      "Precisely, Vic. All the other animals on Minerva retained the high
natural tolerance. Only the Ganymeans were different; they sacrificed it in
exchange for accident-resistance."
      "But I don't see how they could," Hunt said, frowning again. "I mean, I
can see how they did it, but I don't see how they could get away with it. They
must have needed the CO2 tolerance, otherwise they wouldn't have evolved it in
the first place. They must have known that too. Surely they weren't stupid."
      Danchekker nodded as if he already knew what Hunt was going to say.
      "That probably wasn't so obvious at the time," he said. "You see, the
composition of the Minervan atmosphere fluctuated through the ages much the
same as that of Earth has. From various researches the Ganymeans established
that at the time land life first emerged, volcanic activity was at a peak and
the level of CO2 was very high; naturally, therefore, the earliest species
developed a high resistance. But as time went on the level decreased
progressively and appeared to have stabilized itself by the time of the
Ganymeans. They came to regard their tolerance mechanism as an ancient relic
of conditions that no longer existed and their experiences showed that they
could get by without it. The margin was small -- the CO2 level was still high
by our standards -- but they could manage. So, they decided to do away with it
permanently."
      "Ah, but then the level started going up again," Hunt guessed. "Suddenly
and catastrophically," Danchekker confirmed. "On a geological time scale
anyway. They were in no immediate danger, but all their measurements and
calculations indicated that if the rate of increase went on, they -- or their
descendants one day anyway -- would be in trouble. They would be unable to
survive without their ancient tolerance mechanism, but they had eliminated
that mechanism from their race. All the other animals would have no difficulty
in adapting, but the Ganymeans were somewhat stuck."
      The full magnitude of the problem that had confronted the Ganymeans
dawned on Hunt at last. They had bought a one-way ticket out of the hard-labor
camp only to find that it led to the death cell.
      "What could they do?" Danchekker asked, and then went on to answer the
question for himself. "First -- use their technology to hold the CO2 level
down by artificial means. They thought of that but their models couldn't
guarantee them a tight enough measure of control over the process. There was a
high risk that they'd end up freezing the whole planet solid and, being the
cautious breed that they were, they elected not to try it -- at least not
until it was a last-resort measure.
      "Second -- they could reduce the CO2 as before, but have ready at hand a
method for warming up the Sun to compensate for the loss of the greenhouse
effect if the atmospheric engineering got out of control. They tried that on
Iscaris but it went wrong, as the scientists on Minerva learned when they
received a message from the Shapieron that was sent just before the ship
itself got away."
      Hunt made no move to interrupt, so Danchekker continued. "Third -- they
could migrate to Earth. They tried doing so on a pilot scale, but that went
wrong too." Danchekker shrugged and held the posture, his arms extended to
indicate that he had run out of possibilities. Hunt waited for a moment
longer, but the professor evidently had nothing more to say.
      "So what the devil did they do?" Hunt asked.
      "I don't know. The Ganymeans don't know either, since whatever else may
have been thought of was thought of after they had left Minerva. They are as
curious as we are -- more so I would imagine. It was their world."
      "But the animals from Earth," Hunt insisted. "They were all imported
later on. Couldn't they have had something to do with the solution?"
      "They could have, certainly, but what exactly, I've no idea. Neither
have the Ganymeans. We're satisfied, though, that it would not have been
anything to do with using a terrestrial type of ecology to absorb the CO2.
That simply wouldn't have worked."
      "That idea's gone right out the window, eh?"
      "Right out," Danchekker said decisively. "Why they brought the animals
there and whether or not it had anything to do with their atmospheric problem
is still all a mystery..." The professor paused and peered intently over the
top of his spectacles. "There's another mystery too now -- a new one -- from
what we've just been talking about."
      "Another one?" Hunt returned his stare curiously. "What?"
      "All the other Minervan animals," Danchekker replied slowly. "You see,
if they all possessed a perfectly adequate mechanism for dealing with CO2, it
couldn't have been the changing atmosphere of Minerva that wiped them all out
after all. If that didn't, then what did?"


Chapter Fourteen

      The landscape was a featureless, undulating sheet of ice that extended
in every direction to merge into the gloom of a perpetual night. Overhead a
diminutive Sun, barely more than just a bright star among millions, sent down
its feeble rays to paint an eerie and foreboding twilight on the scene.
      The huge shadowy shape of the ship soared upward to lose itself in the
blackness above; arc lights set high on its side cast down a brilliant cone of
whiteness, etching out an enormous circle on the ice next to where the ship
stood. Around the inside of the periphery of the pool of light, several
hundred spacesuited, eight-foot-tall figures stood four deep in unmoving
ranks, their heads bowed and their hands clasped loosely before them. The area
within the circle was divided into a series of concentric rings and at regular
intervals around each ring rectangular pits had been cut into the ice, each
one aligned with the center. By the side of each of the pits lay a metallic,
box-shaped container roughly nine feet long and four feet wide.
      A small group of figures walked slowly to the center and began moving
around the innermost ring, stopping at each pit in turn and watching in
silence while the container was lowered before moving on to the next. A second
small group followed, filling each of the pits with water from a heated hose;
the water froze solid in seconds. When they had finished the first ring they
moved out to begin on the second, and continued until they were back at the
edge of the circle.
      They stood gazing for a long time at the simple memorial that they had
erected in the center of the circle -- a golden obelisk with an inscription on
each face, surmounted by a light that would burn for a hundred years. And as
they gazed, their thoughts went back in time to friends and faces that they
once had known, and who could never again be more than memories.
      Then, when the time had come, they turned away and began filing slowly
back toward their ship. When the arc lights were turned out, only the tiny
glow of light around the obelisk remained to hold the night at bay.
      They had honored the pledge that they had made and carried with them
through all the years that had brought them here, from another place, from
another time.
      Beneath the ice field of Pluto lay the soil of Minerva.
      The Giants had come home to lay their dead to rest.
Chapter Fifteen

      The Shapieron reappeared out of space as suddenly as it had gone. The
surveillance radars of Jupiter Five picked up an indistinct echo hurtling in
from the void and rapidly consolidating itself as it shed speed at a
phenomenal rate. By the time the optical scanners had been brought to bear,
there it was, coasting into orbit over Ganymede just like the first time. This
time, however, the emotions that greeted its arrival were very different.
      The exchange of messages recorded in Jupiter Five's Communications
Center Day Log was enthusiastic and friendly.

      Shapieron Good afternoon.
      J5 Hi. How was the trip?
      Shap. Excellent. How has the weather   been?
      J5 Pretty much the same as ever. How   were the engines?
      Shap. Never better. Did you save our   rooms?
      J5 Same ones as before. You wanna go   on down?
      Shap. Thanks. We know the way.

      Within five hours of the Shapieron touching down at Ganymede Main Base,
familiar eight-foot-tall figures were clumping up and down the corridors at
Pithead once again.

      Hunt's conversation with Danchekker had stimulated his curiosity about
biological mechanisms for combating the effects of toxins and contaminants in
the body, and he spent the next few days accessing the data banks of Jupiter
Five to study up on the subject. Shilohin had mentioned that terrestrial life
had evolved from early marine species that hadn't developed a secondary
circulation system because they hadn't needed one; the warmer environment of
Earth had imposed less strenuous demands for oxygen with the result that load-
sharing had not been necessary. But it was this same mechanism that had later
enabled the emerging Minervan land dwellers to adapt to a CO2-rich atmosphere.
The terrestrial animals imported to Minerva had obviously possessed no similar
mechanism, and yet they had adapted readily enough to their new home. Hunt was
curious to find out how they did it.
      His researches failed, however, to throw up anything startling. Each
world had evolved its own family of life, and the two systems of fundamental
chemistry on which the two families were based were not the same. Minervan
chemistry was rather delicate, as Danchekker had deduced long ago from his
study of the preserved Minervan fish discovered in the ruins of a wrecked
Lunarian base; land animals inheriting such chemistry would be inherently
sensitive to certain toxins, including carbon dioxide, and would require an
extra line of defense to give them a reasonable tolerance if atmospheric
conditions were extreme -- hence the adaptation of the secondary system in the
earliest land dwellers. Terrestrial chemistry was more rugged and flexible and
could survive a far wider range of changes, even without any assistance. And
that was really all there was to it.

      One afternoon, Hunt found himself sitting in front of the view-screen in
one of the computer console rooms at Pithead at the end of another
unsuccessful attempt to uncover a new slant on the subject. Having nobody else
to talk to, he activated his channel into the Ganymean computer network and
discussed the problem with ZORAC. The machine listened solemnly without
offering much in the way of comment while Hunt spoke. Afterward it had one
comment. "I really don't see much to add, Vic. You seem to have got it pretty
wrapped up."
      "There's nothing you can think of that I might have left out?" Hunt
queried. It seemed a funny question for a scientist to put to a machine, but
Hunt had come to know well ZORAC's uncanny ability to spot a missing detail or
a small flaw in what appeared to be a watertight line of reasoning.
      "No. The evidence adds up to what you've already concluded:
      Minervan life needed the help of a secondary system to adapt and
terrestrial life didn't. That is an observed fact, not a deduction. Therefore
there's not a lot I can say."
      "No, I guess not," Hunt conceded with a sigh. He flipped a switch to cut
off the terminal, lit a cigarette and slumped back in a chair. "It wasn't
really that important, I suppose," he commented absently after a while. "I was
just curious to see if the differences in biochemistry between our life forms
and Minervan ones pointed to anything significant. Looks as if they don't."
      "What were you hoping to find?" ZORAC asked. Hunt shrugged
automatically.
      "Oh, I don't know...something that might shed light on the kinds of
things we've been asking...what happened to all the Minervan land dwellers,
what was it that they couldn't survive that the animals from Earth could -- we
know it wasn't the CO2 concentration now...Things like that."
      "Anything unusual, in fact," ZORAC suggested.
      "Mmm...guess so."
      A few seconds passed before ZORAC spoke again. Hunt had the uncanny
impression that the machine was turning the proposition over in its mind. Then
it said in a matter-of-fact voice:
      "Maybe you've been asking the wrong question."
      It took a moment for the implication to sink in. Then Hunt snatched the
cigarette from his lips and sat forward in his chair with a start.
      "What d'you mean?" he asked. "What's wrong with the question?"
      "You're asking why Minervan life and terrestrial life were different and
succeeding only in proving that the answer is, 'because they were.' It's
undeniably true, but singularly ineffective in telling you anything new. It's
like asking, 'Why does salt dissolve in water when sand doesn't?' and coming
up with the answer, 'because salt's soluble and sand isn't.' Very true, but it
doesn't tell you much. That's what you're doing."
      "You mean I've simply been working around a circular argument?" Hunt
said, but even as he spoke he could see it was true.
      "An elaborate one, but when you analyze the logic of it -- yes," ZORAC
confirmed.
      Hunt nodded to himself and flicked his cigarette to the ashtray.
      "Okay. What question should I be asking?"
      "Forget about Minervan life and terrestrial life for a moment, and just
concentrate on the terrestrial," ZORAC replied. "Now ask why Man is so
different from any other species."
      "I thought we knew all that," Hunt said. "Bigger brains, opposable
thumbs, high-quality vision all in one species together -- all the tools you
need to stimulate curiosity and learning. What's new?"
      "I know what the differences are," ZORAC stated. "My question was why
are they?"
      Hunt rubbed his chin with his knuckle for a while as he reflected on the
question. "Do you think that's significant?"
      "Very."
      "Okay. I'll buy it. Why is Man so different from any other species?"
      "I don't know."
      "Great!" Hunt exhaled a long stream of smoke with a sigh. "And how
exactly is that supposed to tell us more than my answers did?"
      "It doesn't," ZORAC conceded. "But it's a question that needs answering.
If you're looking for something unusual, that's a good place to start. There's
something very unusual about Man."
      "Oh, how come?"
      "Because by rights Man shouldn't exist. It shouldn't have been possible
for him to evolve. Man simply can't happen, but he did. That seems very
unusual to me."
      Hunt shook his head, puzzled. The machine was speaking in riddles.
      "I don't understand. Why shouldn't Man have happened?"
      "I have computed the interaction matrix functions that describe the
responses of neuron trigger potentials in the nervous systems of higher
terrestrial vertebrates. Some of the reaction coefficients are highly
dependent on the concentrations and distributions of certain microchemical
agencies. Coherent response patterns in key areas of the cerebral cortex could
not stabilize with the levels that are usual in all species except Man."
      Pause.
      "ZORAC, what are you talking about?"
      "I'm not making sense?"
      "To put it mildly -- no."
      "Okay." ZORAC paused for a second as if getting its thoughts organized.
"Are you familiar with Kaufmann and Randall's recent work at the University of
Utrecht, Holland? It is fully recorded in Jupiter Five's data bank."
      "Yes, I did come across some references to it," Hunt replied. "Refresh
my memory on it."
      "Kaufmann and Randall conducted extensive research on the way in which
terrestrial vertebrates protect themselves against toxic agents and harmful
microorganisms that enter their systems," ZORAC said. "The details vary
somewhat from species to species, but essentially the basic mechanism is the
same -- presumably handed down and modified from common remote ancestral
forms."
      "Ah yes, I remember," Hunt said. "A kind of natural self-immunization
process, wasn't it?"
      He was referring to the discovery by the scientists at Utrecht that the
animals of Earth manufactured a whole mixture of contaminants and toxins on a
small scale, which were injected into the bloodstream in quantities just high
enough to stimulate the production of specific antitoxins. The "blueprint" for
manufacturing these antitoxins was thus permanently impressed into the body's
chemical system in such a way that production would multiply prodigiously in
the event of the body being invaded on a dangerous scale.
      "Correct," ZORAC answered. "It explains why animals are far less
bothered by unwholesome environments, polluted diets and so on than Man is."
      "Because Man is different; he doesn't work that way -- right?"
      "Right."
      "Which brings us back to your question."
      "Right."
      Hunt regarded the blank screen of the console for a while, frowning to
himself in an effort to follow what the machine was getting at. Whatever it
was, it failed to register.
      "I still don't see where it gets us," Hunt said at last. "Man's
different because he's different. It's just as much a pointless question as
before."
      "Not quite," ZORAC said. "The point is that it shouldn't have been
possible for Man to become different. That's what's interesting."
      "How come? I'm not with you."
      "Permit me to show you some equations that I have solved," ZORAC
suggested.
      "Go ahead."
      "If you key in a channel-activate command I'll put them on the large
screen via the UNSA comnet."
      Hunt obliged by tapping a quick sequence of characters into the keyboard
in front of him. A second later the screen above kaleidoscoped into a blaze of
colors which immediately stabilized into a mass of densely packaged
mathematical expressions. Hunt stared at the display for a few seconds and
then shook his head.
      "What's it all supposed to be?" he asked.
      ZORAC was happy to explain. "Those expressions describe quantitatively
certain aspects of behavior of the generalized central nervous system of the
terrestrial vertebrate. Specifically they define how the basic nervous system
will respond to the presence of given concentrations and mixes of various
chemical agents in the bloodstream. The coefficients indicated in red are
modifiers that would be fixed for a given species, but the dominant factors
are the general ones shown in green."
      "So?"
      "It reveals a fundamental drawback in the method that was adopted by
terrestrial animals to protect themselves from their chemical environment. The
drawback is that the substances introduced into the bloodstream by the self-
immunization process will interfere with the functions of the nervous system.
In particular, they will inhibit the development of higher brain functions."
      Suddenly Hunt realized what ZORAC was driving at. Before he could voice
his thoughts, however, the machine went on.
      "In particular, intelligence shouldn't be capable of emerging at all.
Larger and more complex brains demand a greater supply of blood; a greater
supply of blood carries more contaminants and concentrates them in the brain
cells; contaminated brain cells can't coordinate sufficiently to exhibit
higher levels of activity, that is, intelligence.
      "In other words, intelligence should never have been able to evolve from
the terrestrial line of vertebrate evolution. All the figures there say that
terrestrial life should have got itself truly stuck up a dead end."
      Hunt gazed for a long time at the symbols frozen on the screen while he
pondered the meaning of all this. The ancient architecture evolved by the
remote ancestors of the vertebrates hundreds of millions of years before had
met a short-term need but failed to anticipate the longer-term consequences.
But Man, somewhere along his evolutionary line, had abandoned the self-
immunization mechanism. In doing this he had increased his vulnerability to
his surroundings, but at the same time he had opened up the way to evolving
the superior intelligence that would, in time, more than make up for the
initial disadvantage.
      The intriguing question of course was: How and when had Man done it? The
theory offered by the Utrecht researchers was: during the forced exodus of his
ancestors to Minerva, during the period that lasted from twenty-five million
to fifty thousand years ago. Twenty-five million years before, many species of
ordinary terrestrial life had been shipped there; nearly that long later, only
one had come back -- one that had been very far from ordinary. Homo sapiens,
in the shape of the Lunarians, had returned -- the most ferocious adversary
that the survival arena of either world had ever witnessed. He had dominated
Minerva while contemporaneous anthropoids on Earth groped around in the dim
twilight zone on the fringes of self-awareness, and then, having destroyed
that world, had returned to Earth to claim his place of origin, completely and
ruthlessly extinguishing his remote cousins in the process.
      Danchekker had reasoned that a violent mutation had taken place along
the line of human descent isolated on Minerva. This latest piece of
information pointed out the area in which the mutation had occurred; it didn't
attempt to explain why it had happened. But then, mutations are random events;
there was nothing to suggest that there had been any specific cause to look
for.
      The evident fact of the emergence of Ganymean intelligence fitted in
nicely with this body of theory too. The architecture of Minervan land
dwellers had isolated the system that carried the toxins from the system that
carried blood. Thus, when larger brains became in order, the way was clear to
evolve a brain that could draw more blood without more toxins -- the density
of one network simply increased while that of the other didn't. Higher brain
functions could develop without hindrance. The intelligence of the Ganymeans
was the natural and logical outcome of Minervan evolution. Terrestrial
evolution, however, pointed to no such natural and logical outcome; Man had
somehow cheated the system.
      "Well," Hunt declared finally. "It's interesting, sure. But what makes
you say it shouldn't have happened? Mutations are random events. The change
came about as a mutation that took place on Minerva, somewhere along the line
that led to the Lunarians and from there to Man. It looks straightforward.
What's wrong with that?"
      "I thought you'd say that," ZORAC commented, somehow managing to give
the impression of sounding quite pleased with itself. "That's the obvious
first reaction."
      "So -- what's wrong with it?"
      "It couldn't work. What you're saying is that somewhere early on in the
primate line on Minerva, a mutation must have occurred that deactivated the
self-immunization system."
      "Yes," Hunt agreed.
      "But there's a problem in that," ZORAC advised him. "You see, I have
performed extensive computations on further data available from J5 -- data
that describe the genetic coding contained in vertebrate chromosomes. In all
species, the coding that controls the development of the self-immunization
process in the growing embryo contains the coding that enables the animal
specifically to absorb excess carbon dioxide. In other words, if you
deactivated the self-immunization mechanism, you'd also lose the ability to
tolerate a CO2-rich environment..."
      "And Minerva was becoming CO2-rich," Hunt supplied, seeing the point.
      "Exactly. If a mutation of the kind you're suggesting occurred, then the
species in which it had occurred could not have survived on Minerva. Hence,
the ancestors of the Lunarians could not have mutated like that. If they did,
they'd have died out. The Lunarians would never have existed and you wouldn't
exist."
      "But I do," Hunt pointed out needlessly, but with a certain sense of
satisfaction.
      "I know, and you shouldn't, and that's my question," ZORAC concluded.
      Hunt stubbed out his cigarette and lapsed into thought again. "What
about the funny enzyme that Chris Danchekker is always talking about? He found
it in all the preserved Oligocene animals in the ship here, didn't he? There
were traces of a variant of it in Charlie too. D'you reckon that could have
something to do with it? Maybe something in the environment on Minerva reacted
in some complicated way and got around the problem and the enzyme appeared
somehow in the process. That would explain why today's terrestrial animals
haven't got it; the ancestors they're descended from never went there. Perhaps
that's why modern Man doesn't have it either -- he's been back on Earth for a
long time now and away from the environment that stimulated it. How about
that?"
      "Impossible to confirm," ZORAC pronounced. "Inadequate data available on
the enzyme at present. Very speculative. Also, there's another point it
doesn't explain."
      "Oh, what?"
      "The radioactive decay residues. Why should the enzymes found in the
Oligocene animals appear to have been formed from radioisotopes while the ones
found in Charlie didn't?"
      "I don't know," Hunt admitted. "That doesn't make sense. Anyhow, I'm not
a biologist. I'll talk about all this to Chris later." Then he changed the
subject. "ZORAC -- about all those equations you computed."
      "Yes?"
      "Why did you compute them? I mean...do you just do things like that
spontaneously...on your own initiative?"
      "No. Shilohin and some of the other Ganymean scientists asked me to."
      "Any idea why?"
      "Routine. The computations were relevant to certain researches that they
are conducting."
      "What kind of researches?" Hunt asked.
      "On the things we have been discussing. The question that I suggested a
few minutes ago was not something that I originated myself; it was a question
that they have been asking. They are very interested in the whole subject.
They're curious to find out how Man came to exist at all when all available
data says he shouldn't and all their models predicted that he would destroy
himself if he did."
      Hunt was intrigued to learn that the Ganymeans were studying his kind
with such intensity, especially since they appeared to have progressed so much
further in their deductions than the UNSA team had. He was surprised also that
ZORAC would so readily divulge something that could be considered sensitive
information.
      "I'm amazed that there aren't any restrictions on you talking about
things like that," he said.
      "Why?"
      The question caught Hunt unprepared.
      "Oh, I don't know really," he said. "On Earth I suppose things like that
would only be accessible to people authorized...certainly not freely available
to anyone who cared to ask for it. I suppose I...just assumed it would be the
same."
      "The fact that Earthmen are neurotic is no reason for Ganymeans to be
furtive," ZORAC told him bluntly.
      Hunt grinned and shook his head slowly.
      "I guess I asked for that," he sighed.


Chapter Sixteen

      The first and most important task that the Ganymeans had faced -- that
of getting their ship in order again -- had now been successfully
accomplished. So the focal point of their activities shifted to Pithead, where
they commenced working intensively toward their second objective -- coming to
grips with the computer system of the wrecked ship. Whether the Ganymean race
had migrated to another star, and if so which star, had still not been
answered. A strong probability remained that this information was sitting
waiting to be found, buried somewhere in the intricate molecular circuits and
storage banks that went to make up the data-processing complex of a ship that
had been built after the answers to these questions were known. The ship might
even have been involved in that very migration.
      The task turned out to be nowhere near as straightforward as the first
one. Although the Pithead ship was of a later and more advanced design than
the Shapieron, its main drives worked on similar principles and used
components which, although showing certain modifications and refinements in
some instances, performed functions that were essentially the same as those of
their earlier counterparts. The drive system thus exemplified a mature
technology that had not changed radically between the times of the two ships'
construction, and the repair of the Shapieron had been possible as a
consequence.
      The same was not true for the computer systems. After a week of
intensive analysis and probing, the Ganymean scientists admitted they were
making little headway. The problem was that the system components that they
found themselves trying to comprehend were, in most cases, unlike anything
they had seen before. The processors themselves consisted of solid crystal
blocks inside which millions of separate circuit elements of molecular
dimensions were interconnected in three dimensions with complexities that
defied the imagination. Only somebody who had been trained and educated in the
design and physics of such devices could hope to unravel the coding locked
inside them.
      Some of the larger processors were completely revolutionary in concept,
even to the Ganymeans, and seemed to represent a merging of electronic and
gravitic technologies; characteristics of both were inextricably mingled
together to form devices in which the physical interconnections between cells
holding electronic data could be changed through variable gravitic-bonding
links. The hardware configuration itself was programmable and could be
switched from nanosecond to nanosecond to yield an array in which any and
every cell could function as a storage element at one instant or as a
processing site the next; processing could, in the ultimate, be performed
everywhere in the complex, all at the same time -- surely the last word in
parallelism. One interested but bemused UNSA engineer described it as "soft
hardware. A brain with a billion times the speed..."
      And every subsystem of the ship -- communications, navigation,
computation, propulsion control, flight control, and a hundred others --
consisted of a network of interconnected processing nodes like that, with all
the networks integrated into an impossible web that covered the length and
breadth of the vessel.
      Without detailed documentation and technical design information there
was no way of tackling the problem. But no documentation was available. All
the information was locked away inside the same system that they needed the
information to get into; it was like having a can with the can opener inside
it.
      So, at the next progress meeting aboard the Shapieron, the senior
Ganymean computer scientist declared himself ready to quit. When somebody
commented that the Earthmen wouldn't have given up so easily, he thought about
it, agreed with the evaluation and went back to Pithead to try again. After
another week he came back again and stated, emphatically and finally, that if
anybody thought the Earthmen could do better they'd be welcome to try. He'd
quit.
      And that, it seemed, was that.

      There was nothing further to be achieved on Ganymede. Therefore the
aliens at last announced their long-awaited decision to accept the invitation
that had been extended to them by the world's governments, and come to Earth.
This did not mean that they had also accepted the invitation to settle there.
Admittedly there was nowhere else within many light-years for them to go, but
many of them still harbored misgivings at what might await them on the
Nightmare Planet. But they were rational beings and the rational thing to do
was obviously to go and see the place before prejudging it. Any decision as to
what to do about the longer-term future would wait until they were in
possession of more concrete information on which to base it.
      A number of UNSA personnel from the Jupiter missions were at the end of
their duty tours and already scheduled to return to Earth as the comings and
goings of ships permitted. The Ganymeans offered a ride in the Shapieron to
anybody planning on going their way and were almost overwhelmed by the rush to
accept.
      Fortuitously, Hunt's latest communication from Gregg Caldwell, executive
director of UNSA's Navcomms Division and Hunt's immediate chief, had indicated
that Hunt's assignment on Ganymede was considered fulfilled and there was
other work to be done back at Houston. Arrangements were being put in hand to
ship him back. He had no difficulty in getting his name deleted from the UNSA
schedule and added to the list of passengers due to go with the Shapieron.
      Danchekker's main reason for coming to Ganymede had been to investigate
the terrestrial Oligocene animals found in the Pithead ship. The professor
persuaded Monchar, second in command of the Ganymean expedition, that there
was plenty of room in the Shapieron to carry all the specimens of interest;
after that he persuaded his director, at the Westwood Biological Institute,
Houston, that the investigations would be carried out more thoroughly back on
Earth, where all the facilities needed were available for the asking. The
outcome was exactly as he had intended: Danchekker was going too.
      And so the time came for Hunt to pack his belongings and take one last
look around the tiny room that had been home for so long. Then he made the
familiar walk along the well-worn corridor that led to the Domestic Dome to
join the handful of others who were shipping out. There they stood a last
round of drinks for their friends staying on and made their farewells. After
promises to keep in touch and assertions that everybody's paths would cross
again one day, they trooped through into the Site Operations Control building
where the base commander and some of his staff were waiting in the airlock
anteroom to bid them an official adieu. The access tube beyond the airlock
took them through into the cabin of the tracked ice crawler that would carry
them across to the landing pads, where a transporter ship was waiting.
      Hunt's feelings were mixed as he gazed out of one of the crawler's
viewing ports at the shadowy snatches of buildings and constructions that came
and went among Pithead's swirling, eternal methane-ammonia mist. Going home
after a long time away was always a nice feeling of course, but he would miss
many aspects of the life he had grown used to in the tightly knit UNSA
community here, where everybody shared in everybody else's problems and
strangers were unknown. The spirit of comradeship that he had found here, the
feeling of belonging, the sense of a common purpose...all these things gave a
special intimacy to this tiny, manmade haven of survival that had been carved
out of the hostile Ganymedean wilderness. The feelings he was experiencing so
intensely at that moment would soon be diluted and forgotten when he returned
to Earth and again rubbed shoulders every day with faceless millions, all
busily living out their different lives in their different ways and with their
different aims and values. There, custom and synthetic social barriers served
to mark out the lines of demarcation that men needed in order to satisfy their
psychological need to identify with definable cultural groups. The colony on
Ganymede had not needed to build any artificial walls around itself to set it
apart from the rest of the human race; Nature and several hundred million
miles of empty space provided all the isolation necessary.
      Perhaps, he thought to himself, that was why men pitched camps on the
South Cal of Everest, sailed ships across the seven seas, and held reunion
dinners year after year to share nostalgic memories of school or army days.
The challenges and the hardships that they faced together forged bonds between
them that the protective cocoon of normal society could never emulate and
awakened an awareness of qualities in themselves and in each other that could
never be erased. He knew then that, like the sailor or the mountaineer, he
would return time after time to know again the things that he had found on
Ganymede.
      Danchekker, however, was less of a romantic.
      "I don't care if they discover seven-headed monsters on Saturn," the
professor said as they boarded the transporter. "Once I get home again I'm
staying there. I've lived quite enough of my life already surrounded by these
wretched contraptions."
      "I bet you find you've developed agoraphobia when you get there," Hunt
told him.

      At Main there was another round of farewells to go through before they
were driven out, now wearing spacesuits, to the Shapieron's lowered entrance
section; they could not be flown directly up into the ship's outer bays
because the telescopic access tubes that projected from the buildings of the
base -- affording direct entry to UNSA ships and vehicles -- were not designed
to mate with the airlocks of Ganymean daughter vessels. Members of the
Ganymean crew received them at the foot of the entrance ramp and conducted
them up into the stern section, where an elevator was waiting to carry them up
into the main body of the ship.
      Three hours later loading was complete and the final departure
preparations had been made. Garuth and a small Ganymean rear-guard exchanged
formal words of parting with the base commander and some of his officers, who
had driven out to the ramp for the ceremony. Then the Earthmen boarded their
vehicle and returned to the base while the Ganymeans withdrew into the
Shapieron and the stern section retracted upward into its flight position.
      Hunt was alone in the cabin that had been allocated to him, taking in
his last view of Main from a mural videoscreen, when ZORAC announced that
takeoff was imminent. There was no sensation of motion at all; the view just
started to diminish in size and flatten out as the ground fell away beneath.
The Ganymedean landscape flowed inward from the edges of the picture and the
surface details rapidly dissolved into a uniform sea of frosty whiteness as
the ship gained altitude. Soon even the pinpoint of reflected light that was
Main faded into the background, and an arc of blackness began advancing upward
across the view as Ganymede's dark side moved into the picture. At the top,
the curvature of the moon's sunlit side appeared, ushering in a gaggle of
attendant background stars. The bright strip left in the center of the screen
continued to narrow steadily, and at last its ends slipped in from beyond the
edges of the frame to reveal it as a brilliant crescent hanging in the
heavens, and already shrinking as he watched.
      Then the crescent and the stars seemed to dissolve into diffuse smudges
of light that flowed into one another until the whole screen was reduced to a
uniform expanse of featureless, iridescent fog. The ship was now under main
drive, he realized, and temporarily shut off from information coming in from
the rest of the universe -- information carried as electromagnetic waves
anyway. He wondered what the Ganymeans used instead -- to navigate by, for
instance. Here was something he would raise with ZORAC.
      But that could wait for now. For the moment he just wanted to relax and
prepare his mind for other things. Unlike his voyage out aboard Jupiter Five,
the journey to Earth would be measured in days.


Chapter Seventeen

      And so the Ganymeans came at last to Earth.
      After the failure of the various governments to reach agreement among
themselves as to where the aliens should be received in the event of their
accepting the invitation to visit, the Parliament of the United States of
Europe had voted to go it alone and make their own preparations anyway -- just
in case. The place they selected was an area of pleasant open country on the
Swiss shore of Lake Geneva, where, it was hoped, the climate would prove
agreeable to the Ganymean constitution and the historical tradition of
nonbelligerence would add a singularly appropriate note.
      About halfway between the city of Geneva and Lausanne, they fenced off
an area just over a mile square on the edge of the lake, and inside it erected
a village of chalets that had been designed for Ganymean occupation; the
ceilings were high, the doorways big, the beds strong, and the windows
slightly tinted. Communal cooking and dining facilities were provided, along
with leisure rooms, terminals linked into the World's integrated
entertainments! data/news grid, an outsize swimming pool, a recreation area,
and just about anything else which seemed likely to contribute to making life
comfortable and could be included in the time available. A huge concrete pad
was laid to support the Shapieron and afford parking for vehicles and daughter
ships, and accommodation inside the perimeter was provided for delegations of
visiting Earthmen, together with conference and social facilities.
      When the news came in from Jupiter that the aliens were planning on
departing for Earth in just a couple of weeks' time and -- even more startling
-- the journey would take only a few days, it was obvious that the issue of
where to receive them had already been decided. By the time the Shapieron
appeared from the depths of space and went into Earth orbit, a fleet of
suborbital aircraft was converging on Geneva with officials and Heads of State
from every corner of the globe, all hurrying to participate in the hastily
worked out welcoming formalities. Swarms of buzzing VTOL jets shuttled back
and forth between Geneva International Airport and what was now being called
Ganyville to convey them to their final destination while traffic on the
Geneva/Lausanne highway below deteriorated to a bumper-to-bumper jam, private
aircars having been banned from the area. A peppering of colors, becoming
denser as the hours went by, appeared on the green inland slopes that
overlooked Ganyville, as the first spectators arrived and set up camp with
tents, sleeping bags, blankets and picnic stoves, determined to secure and
hold a grandstand view. A continuous cordon of jovial but overworked
policemen, including some from Italy, France and Germany since the numbers of
the tiny Swiss force were simply not up to the task, maintained a clear zone
two hundred meters wide between the rapidly growing crowd and the perimeter
fence, while on the lakeward side a flotilla of police launches scurried to
and fro to keep at bay an armada of boats, yachts and craft of every
description. Along the roadsides an instant market came into being as the more
entrepreneurial members of the shopkeeping fraternity from the nearby towns
loaded their stocks into trucks and brought the business to where the
customers were. A lot of small fortunes were made that day, from selling
everything from instant meals and woolly sweaters to hiking boots and high-
power telescopes.
      Several thousand miles above, the Shapieron was not quite away from it
all. An assortment of UNSA craft had formed themselves into a ragged escort
around the ship, sweeping with it round the Earth every hour and a half. Many
of them carried newsmen and camera crews broadcasting live to an enthralled
audience via the World-News Grid. They had exchanged messages with ZORAC and
the Earthmen aboard who had come with the Shapieron from Jupiter, thrilled the
viewers below by beaming down views from inside an alien spacecraft, and mixed
in constantly updated reports of the latest developments at Lake Geneva. In
between, the commentators had described ad nauseam how the ship had first
appeared over Ganymede, what had transpired since, where their race had
originated in the first place, why the expedition had gone to Iscaris and what
had happened there, and anything else they could think of to fill in time
before the big event. Half the factories and offices on Earth were estimated
to have given it up as a bad job and closed down until after the big event was
all over, since the employees who weren't glued to a screen somewhere else
were glued to one being paid out of the firm's money. As one president of a
New York company commented to an NBC street interviewer: "I'm not gonna spend
thousands to find out all over again what King Canute proved centuries ago --
you can't stop the   tide once it's made its mind up. I've sent 'em all home to
get it outta their   systems. I guess this year we've got an extra day's public
holiday." On being   asked what he himself intended doing, he replied with
surprise: "Me? I'm   going home to watch the landing, of course."

      Inside the Shapieron, Hunt and Danchekker were among the mixed group of
Ganymeans and Earthmen gathered in the ship's command center -- the place to
which Hunt had been conducted with Storrel and the others at the time of their
momentous first visit from Jupiter Five. A number of eggs had been dispatched
from the Shapieron to descend to lower altitudes and obtain, for the aliens'
benefit, a bird's-eye preview of different parts of Earth. The Earthmen were
explaining the significance of some of the pictures that the eggs were sending
back. Already the Ganymeans had gazed incredulously at the teeming density of
life in cities such as New York, Tokyo and London, gasped at the spectacles of
the Arabian desert and the Amazon jungle -- terrain unlike any that had
existed on Minerva -- and stared in mute, horrified fascination at a
telescopic presentation of lions stalking zebra in the African grasslands.
      To Hunt, the familiar sights of green continents, sun-drenched plains
and blue oceans, after what felt like an eternity of nothing but rock, ice and
the blackness of space, were overpowering. As different parts of the mosaic of
Earth came and went across the main screen, he detected a steady change in the
moods of the Ganymeans too. The earlier misgivings and apprehensions that some
of them had felt were being swept away by an almost intoxicating enthusiasm
that became contagious as time went by. They were becoming restless and
excited -- keen to see more, firsthand, of the incredible world where chance
had brought them.
      One of the eggs was hovering three miles up over Lake Geneva and
relaying up to the Shapieron its telescopic view of the throngs that were
still building up on the hills overlooking Ganyville and all over the meadows
surrounding it. The Ganymeans were pleasantly surprised, and at the same time
astounded, that they should be the objects of such widespread interest and
such a display of mass emotion. Hunt had tried to explain that the arrival of
alien spacecraft was not something that happened very often, let alone one
from twenty-five million years in the past, but the Ganymeans appeared unable
to comprehend how anything could give rise to a spontaneous demonstration of
emotion on so vast a scale. Monchar had wondered if the Earthmen that they had
so far met represented "the more stable and rational end to the human spectrum
rather than a typical cross section." Hunt had decided to say nothing and
leave it at that. Monchar would no doubt be able to answer that for himself in
good time.
      A lull in the conversation had occurred and everybody was watching the
screen as one of the Ganymeans muttered commands to ZORAC to take the egg a
little lower and zoom in closer. The view expanded and closed in on the side
of a small, grassy hill, by this time thick with people of all ages, sizes,
manners and garbs. There were people cooking, people drinking, people playing
and people just sitting; it could have been a day at the races, a pop
festival, a flying display, or all of them rolled into one.
      "Are they all safe out in the open there?" one of the Ganymeans asked
dubiously after a while.
      "Safe?" Hunt looked puzzled. "How do you mean?"
      "I'm surprised that none of them seem to be carrying guns. I'd have
thought they would have guns."
      "Guns? What for?" Hunt asked, somewhat bewildered.
      "The carnivores," the Ganymean replied, as if it was obvious. "What will
they do if they are attacked by carnivores?"
      Danchekker explained that few animals existed that were dangerous to
Man, and that those that did lived only in a few restricted areas, all of them
many thousands of miles from Switzerland.
      "Oh, I assumed that was why they have built a defensive system around
the place," the Ganymean said.
      Hunt laughed. "That's not to keep carnivores out," he said. "It's to
keep humans out."
      "You mean they might attack us?" There was a sudden note of alarm in the
question.
      "Not at all. It's simply to insure your privacy and to make sure that
nobody makes a nuisance of himself. The government assumed that you wouldn't
want crowds of sightseers and tourists wandering around you all the time and
getting in the way."
      "Couldn't the government just make a law ordering them to stay away?"
Shilohin asked from across the room. "That sounds much simpler."
      Hunt laughed again, probably because the feeling of seeing home again
was affecting him a little. "You haven't met many Earth-people yet," he said.
"I don't think they'd take very much notice. They're not what you might
call...easily disciplined."
      Shilohin was evidently surprised by the statement. "Really?" she said.
"I had always imagined them to be precisely the opposite. I mean...I've
watched some of the old newsreels from Earth -- from the archives of your J5
computers, newsreels from the times when there were wars on Earth. Thousands
of Earthmen all dressed the same walked backward and forward in straight lines
while others shouted commands which they obeyed instantly. And the wars...when
they were ordered to fight the wars and kill other Earthmen, they obeyed. Is
that not being disciplined?"
      "Yes...it is," Hunt admitted uncomfortably, hoping he wasn't about to be
asked for an explanation; there wasn't one.
      But the Ganymean who had been worried about carnivores was persistent.
      "You mean that if they are ordered to do something that is clearly
irrational, they will do it unhesitatingly," he said. "But if they are ordered
to do something that is not only eminently sensible but also polite, they will
take no notice?"
      "Er...I guess that's about it," Hunt said weakly. "Very often anyway."
      Another Ganymean crewman half turned from the console that he was
watching.
      "They're all mad," he declared firmly. "I've always said so. It's the
biggest madhouse in the Galaxy."
      "They are also our hosts," Garuth broke in sharply. "And they have saved
our lives and offered us their home as our home. I will not have them spoken
of in that manner."
      "Sorry, sir," the crewman mumbled and returned his attention to his
console.
      "Please forgive the remark, Dr. Hunt," Garuth said.
      "Think nothing of it," Hunt replied with a shrug. "I couldn't have put
it better myself...It's what keeps us sane, you see," he added for no
particular reason, causing more bewildered looks to be exchanged between his
alien companions.
      At that moment ZORAC interrupted with an announcement.
      "Ground Control is calling from Geneva. Shall I put the call through for
Dr. Hunt again?"
      Hunt walked over to the communications console from which he had acted
as intermediary during previous dialogues. He perched himself up on the huge
Ganymean chair and instructed ZORAC to connect him. The face of the controller
at Geneva, by now familiar, appeared on the screen.
      "Allo again, Dr. 'unt. 'Ow are zings going up zere?"
      "Well, we're still waiting," Hunt told him. "What's the news?"
      "Ze Prime Meenister of Australia and ze Chinese Premier 'ave now arrived
at Geneva. Zey weel be at Ganyville eenside ze 'all ower. I am now auzorized
to clear you for touchdown een seexty meenutes from now. Okay?"
      "We're going down one hour from now," Hunt announced to the expectant
room. He looked at Garuth. "Do I have your approval to confirm that?"
      "Please do," Garuth replied.
      Hunt turned back toward the screen. "Okay," he informed the controller.
"Sixty minutes from now. We're coming down."
      Within minutes the news had flashed around the globe and the world's
excitement rose to fever pitch.


Chapter Eighteen

      Hunt stood inside one of the central elevators of the Shapieron, gazing
at the blank expanse of the door panel in front of him while the seemingly
interminable length of the vessel sped by outside. Behind him, the rest of the
UNSA contingent from Ganymede were packed tightly together, every one of them
silently absorbed in his own thoughts as the moment of homecoming drew nearer.
The Shapieron was now descending stern-first on its final approach. A number
of Ganymeans were present in the elevator too, on their way to join the main
body of Ganymeans that had been selected to make the first exit out onto the
surface of Earth, most of whom were already assembled in the stern section of
the ship.
      The symbols appearing and disappearing on the face of the indicator
panel by the door suddenly stopped changing and became stable. A second later
the wide doors slid aside and the company began spilling out of the elevator
to find themselves in a vast, circular space that extended all the way around
the cylindrical wall of the ship's inner core. Entrances to six huge airlocks
were equally spaced around the outer walls and the floor in between was filled
with a dense throng of Ganymeans, most of them strangely silent. Hunt spotted
Garuth, surrounded by a small group of Ganymeans, standing near one of the
airlocks. Shilohin was on one side of him and Monchar on the other; Jassilane
was nearby. Like all of the Ganymeans present, they were staring up at an
enormous display screen set high on the wall of the central core, dominating
the floor from above the elevator doorways. Hunt made his way through the
throng of giant figures toward where Garuth's group was standing. He stopped
next to Garuth and turned to look back at the screen.
      The view being shown was one looking vertically down on the shore of the
lake. The picture was bisected into two roughly equal halves, one showing the
greens and browns of the hills, the other the reflected blues of the sky. The
colors were vivid and obscured in places by scattered puffs of small white
clouds. The shadows of the clouds made sharp blotches on the land beneath,
indicating the day was bright and sunny. The features in the terrain slowly
revealed themselves and began flowing outward toward the edges of the screen
as the ship descended.
      The clouds blossomed up from flat daubs of paint to become islands of
billowing whiteness floating on the landscape; then they were gone from the
steadily narrowing and enlarging view.
      Dots that were houses were visible now, some standing isolated among the
bills and others clustered together along the twisting threads of the roads
that were becoming discernible. And precisely in the center of the screen,
vertically below the Shapieron's central axis, a speck of whiteness right on
the shoreline marked the concrete landing area of Ganyville, with the rows of
neatly aligned chalets inside the perimeter now beginning to take shape. A
narrow strip of green emphasized the perimeter line, denoting the zone outside
the fence that had been kept clear of people. Beyond the cleared zone the land
was visibly lighter in hue with the additive effect from thousands upon
thousands of upturned faces.
      Hunt noticed that Garuth was speaking quietly into his throat microphone
and pausing at intervals as if to listen to replies. He assumed that Garuth
was updating himself with reports from the flight crew back in the command
center, and elected not to interrupt. Instead he activated his own channel via
his wrist unit. "ZORAC, how's it going?"
      "Altitude nine thousand six hundred feet, descent speed two hundred feet
per second, reducing," the familiar voice replied. "We've locked on to the
approach radars. Everything's under control and looking good."
      "Looks like we're in for a hell of a welcome," Hunt commented.
      "You should see the pictures coming in from the probes. The hills are
packed for miles around and there are hundreds of small boats on the lake all
packed together about a quarter-mile offshore. The air space above and around
the landing zone is clear, but the sky's thick with aircars all around. Half
your planet must have turned out."
      "How are the Ganymeans taking it?" Hunt asked.
      "A bit overawed, I think."
      At that moment Shilohin noticed Hunt and moved across to join him.
      "This is incredible," she said, gesturing upward toward the screen. "Are
we really important enough for all this?"
      "They don't get many aliens dropping in from other stars," Hunt told her
cheerfully. "So they're making the most of the occasion." He paused as another
thought struck him, then said: "You know, it's a funny thing...people on Earth
have been claiming that they've seen UFOs and flying saucers and things like
that for hundreds of years, and all the time there's been all kinds of arguing
about whether they really existed or not. You'd think they'd have guessed that
when it really happened, it'd be unmistakable. Well, they sure know all about
it today."
      "Touchdown in twenty seconds," ZORAC announced. Hunt could sense a wave
of emotion rippling through the ranks of Giants all around him.
      All that was visible on the screen now was the waffle-iron pattern of
the chalets of Ganyville and the white expanse of the concrete landing area.
The ship was descending toward the lakeward side of the landing area, which
was clear; on the landward side, between the landing area and the edge of the
chalets, rows of dots arranged into ordered geometric groups became visible,
and resolved themselves rapidly into human figures.
      "Ten seconds," ZORAC recited. The murmuring that had been building up as
a vague background subsided abruptly. The only sound was the distant rush of
air around the ship and the muted surging of power from its engines.
      "Touchdown. We have landed on the planet Earth. Awaiting further
instructions."
      "Deploy ship for surface access," Garuth ordered. "Proceed with routing
shutdown of flight systems and prepare Engineers' Report."
      Although there was no sensation of motion, Hunt knew that the whole
section of the ship in which they were all standing was now moving smoothly
toward the ground as the three elevator tubes telescoped downward from the
main body of the vessel. While this was taking place, the main screen high
above their heads presented a full-circle scan of the ground in the immediate
vicinity of the ship.
      Beyond the area bridged by the Shapieron's tail fins, arrayed in a vast
arc between the ship and the rows of chalets in the background, several
hundred people were standing stiffly at attention in a series of boxed groups,
as if lined up for inspection at a military parade. In front of every group
was a flag bearer carrying the standard of one of the nations of Earth; in
front of the flag bearers the Heads of State and their aides, all attired in
dark business suits and standing rigidly erect, were waiting. Hunt picked out
the Stars and Stripes of the USA, the Union Jack and several more of the
emblems of US Europe, the Hammer and Sickle of the USSR and the Red Star of
China. There were scores more that he could not identify readily. Behind and
to the sides he caught snatches of brightly colored ceremonial military
uniforms and the glint of sunlight reflected from brass. He tried to put
himself in the position of those people standing outside. None of them had yet
seen an alien face to face. He tried to capture their feelings and emotions as
they stood there gazing up at the huge tower of silver metal that they had
just watched slide down out of the sky. The moment was unique; never before in
history had anything like this happened, and it could never happen for the
first time again.
      Then ZORAC's voice sounded once more.
      "Tailgate is down. Pressures are balanced, outer lock-doors open and
surface-access ramps extended. Ready to open up."
      Hunt sensed the expectation building up around him. All heads were now
turning to gaze toward Garuth. The Ganymean leader cast his eyes slowly around
the assembly, allowed them to rest for a moment on the party of Earthmen still
grouped together by the elevator door, and then shifted them toward Hunt.
      "We will go out in the order already agreed. However, we are strangers
on this world. There are others among us who are coming home. This is their
world and they should lead us out onto it."
      The Ganymeans needed no further prompting. Even as Garuth finished
speaking, their ranks parted to form a long, straight aisle leading from the
group of Earthmen by the elevators to where Garuth and Hunt were standing.
After a few seconds, the Earthmen began walking slowly forward. Danchekker was
in front. As they approached the airlock near which Hunt was waiting, the
Ganymeans moved aside to make room for them in front of the inner door.
      "All set then, Chris?" Hunt asked as the two drew face to face. "A few
more seconds and you'll be home again."
      "I must say all this publicity is something I could have done without,"
the professor replied. "I feel rather like some kind of Moses leading the
tribes in. However, let us get on with it."
      Hunt turned to stand beside Danchekker, facing the inner door. He
glanced at Garuth and nodded.
      "ZORAC, open inner door, lock five," Garuth ordered.
      The ribbed metal panels slid noiselessly out of Hunt's field of vision.
He stepped forward into the lock chamber and began moving forward toward the
outer door, vaguely aware through the torrent of emotions rising inside him of
Danchekker to one side and the rest of the UNSA contingent following behind.
Beyond the outer door a broad, shallow ramp sloped down to the concrete. They
stepped out onto the top of the ramp to find themselves in what appeared to be
a vast cathedral of arched metal vaulting ribs, formed by the sweeping curves
of the undersides of the Shapieron's tail fins, soaring upward and inward to
meet the body of the ship high above their heads. The ramp and the area
straddled by the ship were in the shadow of the bulk of the vessel and its
mighty fins. But beyond the ship the day was a blaze of sunlight, painting the
scene around them in a riot of color -- the green of the overlooking hills and
the purple, white and blue of the mountains and the sky behind; the rainbow
speckling of the crowds packed on the hillsides; the pastel pinks, greens,
reds, blues and oranges of the chalets; the whiteness of the concrete apron
below them and even the snowy shirtfronts of the delegates standing there in
their precise, unmoving ranks.
      And then came the cheering. It was like a slow tide of noise that seemed
to begin far away on the tops of the hills and roll downward gathering
strength and momentum as it went, until it broke over them in a roaring ocean
of sound that flooded their senses. The hills themselves suddenly seemed to
become alive as a pattern of spontaneous movement erupted as far as the eye
could see. People in the tens of thousands were on their feet, shouting out
the tension and the anticipation that had been building up inside them for
days, and as they shouted, they waved -- arms, hats, shirts, coats -- anything
that came to hand. And behind it all, rising and falling and rising again as
if striving to be heard above the din came sporadic strains of massed bands.
      The Earthmen halted a few feet down the ramp, momentarily overcome by
the combined assault on their senses from all sides.
      Then they began moving again, down the ramp and onto the solid ground of
Earth beneath the towering columns of the Shapieron's fins. They marched
forward into the sunlight toward a spot where a small party of Earth's
representatives were standing ahead of the main body. They walked as if in a
trance, their heads turning to take in the scenes around them, the multitudes
on the hills, the lake behind...to gaze up at the ship stretching toward the
sky above, now quiet and motionless. A few of them raised their arms and began
waving back at the crowds on the surrounding bills. The noise redoubled as the
crowds roared their approval. Soon they were all waving.
      Hunt drew closer to the party ahead and recognized the features of
Samuel K. Wilby, Secretary General to the UN. Beside him were Irwin Frenshaw,
Director General of UNSA from Washington, D.C., and General Bradley Cummings,
Supreme Commander of the uniformed arm of the UNSA. Wilby greeted him with an
extended hand and a broad smile.
      "Dr. Hunt, I believe," he said. "Welcome home. I believe you've brought
some friends with you." He shifted his eyes. "Ah -- and you are Professor
Danchekker. Welcome."
      Danchekker had no sooner completed shaking hands when the noise around
them rose to an unprecedented crescendo. They looked up and back at the ship.
      The Ganymeans were coming out.
      With (3aruth in the lead, the first group of Giants had emerged at the
top of the ramp. There they had stopped, and were staring around them in a way
that hinted at their complete bewilderment.
      "ZORAC," Hunt said. "They look a bit lost up there. Tell 'em to come on
down and meet the folks."
      "They will," the machine replied in his ear. "They need a minute to get
used to it. Remember they have not breathed natural air for twenty years. This
is the first time they've been out in the open for all that time."
      At the tops of other ramps around the ship's stem section more airlocks
had opened and more Ganymeans were appearing. Garuth's carefully planned order
of emergence was already forgotten. Some of the Giants were milling around in
the airlock doors, while others were already partway down the ramps; some were
just standing motionless and staring.
      "They're a bit lost," Hunt said to Wilby. "We ought to go over and
straighten them Out." Wilby nodded and motioned his group to follow. Some UN
aides conducted the main party of Earthmen from Ganymede toward the national
delegations while Hunt, Danchekker and a couple of others turned back to
escort Wilby's group to the ramps.
      "ZORAC, connect me to Garuth," Hunt muttered as they walked.
      "You're through."
      "This is Vic Hunt. Well, how d'you like it?"
      "My people are temporarily overwhelmed," the familiar voice answered.
"Come to that, so am I. I had expected that the sensation of coming out under
an open sky after so long would be traumatic, but never anything like this.
And all these people...the shouting...I can find no words."
      "I'm with the group that's approaching the ramp you're on now," Hunt
advised. "Get your act together and come on down. There's people here you have
to say hello to."
      As they neared the base of the ramp, Hunt looked up and saw Garuth,
Shilohin, Monchar, Jassilane and a few others moving down toward them. To the
left and right, other Ganymeans who had already reached the ground via the
other ramps began converging on the spot where Wilby's group was waiting.
      Garuth stepped off the ramp, his companions following close behind, and
halted to look down at the Secretary General. Slowly and solemnly they shook
hands.
      Hunt acted as an interpreter via ZORAC and concluded introductions
between the two groups.
      "This is one of the guys who runs the whole of the UNSA show," he said
to Garuth when they came to Irwin Frenshaw. "Without it we'd never have been
there for you to find."
      And then the two groups turned and, now mingled together, began walking
away from the ramp. From above and behind them, scores of eight-foot-tall
figures flowed downward along the ramps to join the lead group from behind.
They came out into the sunlight and halted for a moment to survey the
delegations from the nations of Earth arrayed before them. A sudden hush
descended upon the hills behind.
      And then Garuth slowly raised his right arm in a gesture of salutation.
One by one the rest of the Ganymeans copied him. They stood there silent and
unmoving, a hundred arms extended and raised to convey a common message of
greeting and friendship to all of the peoples of Earth.
      At once the roar swept down from the hillsides again. If what had come
before had been a flood, then this was a tidal wave. It seemed to echo back
and forth across the valleys as if the mountains of Switzerland themselves
were reverberating and joining in their welcome.
      Wilby turned toward Hunt and leaned forward to speak close to his ear.
      "I think your friends have made something of a hit," he said. "I
expected some fuss," Hunt told him, "but never this in a million years. Shall
we carry on?"
      "Let's go."
      Hunt turned toward Garuth and tuned in.
      "Come on, Garuth," he said. "It's time to pay our respects. Some of
these people out there have come a long way to meet you."
      Slowly, with the small mixed party of Earthmen and Ganymean leaders in
front, the Giants began moving forward en masse toward the waiting heads of
the governments of Earth's nations.


Chapter Nineteen

      For the next hour or so, the Ganymean leaders went from one group of
national representatives to the next, exchanging brief formal speeches of
goodwill. As the Ganymeans moved on, the groups broke up and dispersed to join
the growing mass of Earthmen and aliens mingling on the concrete apron below
the Shapieron. It was a very different reception from the one that had greeted
the first hesitant emergence of the Ganymeans out onto the ice at Ganymede
Main Base.
      "I still don't quite understand it," Jassilane said to Hunt as the party
moved toward the delegation from Malaysia. "So far you've told us that
everyone we've met was from a government. But what I want to know is who is
the government?"
      "The government?" Hunt asked, not quite following. "Which one?" The
Giant made motions of exasperation in the air.
      "The one that runs the planet. Which one is it?"
      "None of them," Hunt told him.
      "That's what I thought. So where are they?"
      "There isn't one," Hunt said. "It's run by all of them and none of
them."
      "I should have guessed," Jassilane replied. In translating, ZORAC
managed to inject a good simulation of a weary sigh.
      For the rest of the day the formalities continued amid an almost
carnival atmosphere. Garuth and the Ganymean leaders spent some time with each
group of government representatives, establishing relationships and arranging
a timetable of projected official visits to the various nations represented.
It was a busy day for Hunt and the other Earthmen from Ganymede, whose
familiarity with the aliens put them in great demand for performing
introductions and made them the obvious choice for acting as general mediators
in the dialogues. By invitation of the European Government, a liaison bureau -
- a representative international body operating under UN sponsorship -- had
been established as a permanent institution within the Earthman sector of
Ganyville. By evening the program of affairs to be discussed between the two
races was being handled in a more-or-less orderly and coordinated fashion.

      That night there was a grand welcoming banquet in Ganyville, vegetarian
of course, in which words, and wine flowed freely. After the meal and still
more speeches were over and the two races had begun mixing and socializing,
Hunt found himself, glass in hand, standing to one side of the room with three
Ganymeans -- Valio and Kralom, two of the crew officers from the Shapieron,
and Strelsya, a female administrator. Valio was explaining his confusion over
some of the things he had learned that day.
      "Ethmanuel Crow, I think he said his name was," Valio told them. "He was
with the delegation from the place you live in, Vic -- USA. Said he was from
Washington...State Department or something. The thing that puzzled me was when
he said he was a Red Indian."
      Hunt propped himself casually against the table behind him and sipped
his scotch.
      "Why, what's the problem?" he asked.
      "Well, we met the Indian government spokesman later on, and he said
India isn't anywhere near the USA," Valio explained. "So how could Crow be an
Indian?"
      "That's a different Indian," Hunt replied, fearing as he spoke that the
conversation was about to get itself into a tangle. Sure enough, Kralom had
something to add.
      "I met someone who was a West Indian, but he said he came from the
east."
      "There is an East Indies..." Strelsya began.
      "I know, but that's way over in the west," Kralom said.
      Hunt groaned inwardly and reached in his pocket for his cigarette pack
while he collected his thoughts. Before he could inject a word of explanation,
Valio resumed.
      "I thought that maybe when he said he was a Red Indian he might be
really from China because they're supposed to be red and they're not far from
India, but it turns out they're yellow."
      "Perhaps he was Russian," Kralom suggested. "Somebody told me they're
red too."
      "No, they're pink," Strelsya declared firmly. She motioned her head in
the direction of a short, heavily built man in a black suit with his back
toward them, talking to another mixed group. "There -- he's one if I remember
rightly. See for yourself."
      "I've met him," Kralom said. "He's a White Russian. He said so, but he
doesn't look white."
      The three aliens looked imploringly toward Hunt for some words of wisdom
to make sense of it all.
      "Not to worry -- it's all hangovers from a long time ago. The whole
world's getting so mixed up together now that I really don't suppose it'll
matter much longer," he said lamely.
      By the early hours of the morning, while a thousand lights still
twinkled on the shadows of the surrounding hills, all was quiet, except for
occasional scuffling noises and every now and again an ominous crash of bulk
against timber, as gigantic frames tottered unsteadily but contentedly to bed
through the narrow alleys between the chalets.
      The next morning, the august visitors from every corner of the globe
began departing to give Ganyville a week of undisturbed rest and relaxation. A
light schedule of discussions with visiting groups of Earthmen, mainly
scientists, had been arranged for the week and some news features were laid on
for the benefit of the public; for the most part, however, the Giants were
left free to enjoy the feeling of having a world under their feet again.
      Many simply spent their time stretched out on the grass, basking in a
splendor that was, to them, tropical. Others walked for hours along the
perimeter, stopping all the time to savor the air as if making sure they were
not dreaming it all and standing and staring in unconcealed delight at the
lake, the hills, and the snowcapped peaks of the distant Alps. Others became
addicted to the Earthnet terminals in the chalets, and displayed an insatiable
appetite for information on every facet of Earth, its people, its history, its
geography, and everything else there was to know about it. To facilitate this,
ZORAC had been connected into the Earthnet system, enabling an enormous
interchange of the accumulated knowledge of two civilizations.
      But best of all to watch was the reaction of the Ganymean children. Born
aboard the Shapieron during its epic voyage from Iscaris, they had never seen
a blue sky, a landscape or a mountain, never breathed natural air, and had
never before conceived the notion of leaving their ship without requiring any
kind of protection. To them, the lifeless void between the stars was the only
environment that existed.
      At first, many of them shrank from coming out of the ship at all,
fearful of consequences that had been instilled into them all their lives and
which they accepted unquestioningly as fundamental truths. When at last a few
of the more trusting and adventurous ones crept warily to the doors at the
tops of the access ramps and peered outside, they froze in utter disbelief and
confusion. From the things both their elders and ZORAC had told them, they had
a vague idea of planets and worlds -- places bigger than the Shapieron that
you could live on instead of in, they gathered, though what this could
possibly mean had never been clear. And then they had come to Ganymede;
obviously that was a planet, they'd thought.
      But now this! Hundreds of people outside the ship clad only in their
shirtsleeves; how could that be possible? How could they breathe and why did
they not explode with decompression? Space was supposed to be everywhere, but
it wasn't here; what had happened to it? How did the universe suddenly divide
itself into two parts, half "up" and half "down" -- words that could only mean
anything inside a ship? Why was down all green; who could have made anything
so large and why had they made it in strange shapes that stretched away as far
as one could see? Why was up all blue and why weren't there any stars? Where
did all the light come from?
      Eventually, with much coaxing, they ventured down the ramps and onto the
ground. Nothing awful happened to them. Soon they became reassured and began
to explore their new and wondrous surroundings. The concrete at the bottom of
the ramps, the grass beyond, the wooden walls of the chalets -- all were new
and each held its own particular fascination. But the most astounding sight of
all was that stretching away, seemingly forever, on the other side of the ship
-- more water than they had ever believed existed in the whole of the
universe.
      Before long they were romping and reveling in an ecstasy of freedom
greater than anything they had ever known. The crowning glory came when the
Swiss police launches started running joy rides for them, up along the shore,
out into the middle of Lake Geneva, and back again. It soon became obvious
that only the grownups and their hang-ups stood in the way of the question of
settling on Earth; the kids had made their minds up in no uncertain manner.

      Two days after the landing, Hunt was enjoying a coffee break in the
residents' cafeteria at Ganyville when a low buzz from his Ganymean wrist unit
signaled an incoming call. He touched a button to activate the unit and
ZORAC's voice promptly informed him: "The coordination office in the Bureau
Block is trying to contact you. Are you accepting?"
      "Okay."
      "Dr. Hunt?" The voice sounded young and, somehow, pretty.
      "That's me," he acknowledged.
      "Coordination office here. Sorry to trouble you but could you come over?
We could use your help on something."
      "Not until you promise to marry me." He was in that kind of mood. Maybe
it was coming home after being away for so long.
      "What?..." The voice rose in surprise and confusion. "I don't...that is,
I'm serious..."
      "What makes you think I'm not?"
      "You're crazy. Now how about coming over?...on business." At least, he
thought, she recovered her balance nice and quickly.
      "Who are you?" he asked lightly.
      "I told you -- the coordination office."
      "Not them -- you."
      "Yvonne...why?"
      "Well, I'll make a deal. You need me to help you out. I need someone to
show me around Geneva before I go back to the States. Interested?"
      "That's different," the voice retorted, though not without a hint of a
smile. "I'm doing a UN job. You're conducting private enterprise. Now are you
coming over?"
      "Deal?"
      "Oh...maybe. We'll see later. For the moment what about our problem?"
      "What's the problem?"
      "Some of your Ganymean pals are here and want to go outside. Somebody
thought it would be a good idea if you went too."
      Hunt sighed and shook his head to himself. "Okay," he said finally.
"Tell 'em I'm on my way."
      "Will do," the voice replied, then in a suddenly lowered and more
confidential tone added: "I'm off on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays." Then it
cut itself off with a click. Hunt grinned to himself, finished his coffee and
rose to leave the table. A sudden thought struck him.
      "ZORAC," he muttered.
      "Yes, Vic?"
      "Are you coupled into the Earthnet local comms grid?"
      "Yes. That's howl routed the call through."
      "Yes I know...What I meant was, was she talking through a standard two-
way vi-terminal?"
      "Yes."
      "With a visual pickup?"
      "Yes."
      Hunt rubbed his chin for a moment.
      "You didn't record the visual by any chance, did you?"
      "I did," ZORAC informed him. "Want a playback?"
      Without waiting for an answer, the machine reran a portion of the
conversation on the screen of the wrist unit. Hunt nodded and whistled his
silent approval. Yvonne was blond, blue-eyed, and attractive, her appearance
somehow enhanced by the trim cut of her light-gray UN uniform jacket and white
blouse.
      "Do you record everything you handle?" Hunt inquired as he sauntered
toward the door.
      "No, not everything."
      "What made you record that then?"
      "I knew you'd ask for it," ZORAC told him.
      "I don't think I like eavesdroppers in on my calls," Hunt said.
"Consider yourself reprimanded."
      ZORAC ignored the remark. "I logged her extension number too," it said.
"Seeing as you didn't think to ask for it."
      "D'you know if she's married?"
      "How could I know that?"
      "Oh, I don't know...Knowing you, you could probably crack the access
codes and get into UN's personnel records through the Earthnet or something
like that."
      "I could, but I won't," ZORAC said. "There are things that a good
computer will do for you and things that it won't. From here on in, you're on
your own."
      Hunt cut off the channel. Shaking his head, he emerged from the
cafeteria and turned in the direction of the Bureau Block.
      He appeared a few minutes later inside the coordination office on the
first floor, where Garuth and some other Ganymeans were waiting with a number
of UN officials.
      "We feel we want to return the welcome that the people of Earth have
given us," Garuth said. "So, we'd like to go for a walk outside the perimeter
to meet them."
      "That okay?" Hunt asked, directing his words at the portly, silver-
haired man who appeared to be the most senior of the officials present.
      "Sure. They're guests here, not prisoners. We thought it would be a good
idea if someone they knew went with them though."
      "Fine by me," Hunt said, nodding. "Let's go." As he turned toward the
door, he caught a glimpse of Yvonne operating a vi-console at the back of the
office and winked mischievously. She colored slightly and looked down at the
keyboard below the screen. Then she glanced up, winked back with a quick smile
and busied herself at the keyboard again.
      Outside the building they were joined by more Ganymeans and a contingent
of Swiss police headed by an apprehensive chief. The party walked down a path
to the roadway and turned left to proceed between the rows of chalets toward a
steel-mesh gate that formed part of the perimeter fence. As they walked clear
of the chalets and continued up along the gently sloping gravel road toward
the gate, a stir ran through the crowds sitting on the grassy mounds beyond
the fence on the far side of the clear zone. People began jumping to their
feet and looking down toward the fence. The excitement grew as the Ganymeans
halted while Swiss constables unlocked the gate and swung it aside.
      With Garuth on one side of him and the Swiss police chief on the other,
Hunt led the party through the gate as the clamor of voices ahead of them rose
and became cheering. People began running down the slopes to press together
just short of the police cordon, waving and calling as the party continued
along the roadway across the clear zone.
      The cordon opened to let them through, and suddenly the people massed
together across the roadway found themselves staring up into the awesome faces
from another world. While the noise from all around continued unabated, the
ranks immediately in front of the Giants grew strangely hushed, and fell back
as if to maintain a respectful distance. Garuth stopped and looked slowly
around the semicircle of faces. As his gaze traveled from one to another the
eyes averted. Hunt could understand their uncertainty, but at the same time he
was anxious that the gesture the Giants had wanted to make should not go
unreciprocated.
      "I'm Vic Hunt," he called to the crowd in a loud voice. "I have traveled
with these people all the way from Jupiter. This is Garuth, commander of the
Ganymean ship. He and his companions have come to meet you all personally and
at their own request. Let's make them feel at home."
      Still the people seemed to shrink back. Some seemed to want to make a
welcoming gesture, but everybody was waiting for somebody else to take the
first step. And then a boy at the front of the crowd wrenched his hand free
from his mother's, marched forward and confronted Garuth's towering frame
boldly. Wearing stout mountain boots below a pair of alpine-style leather
shorts, he was about twelve years old with a tangle of fair hair and a face
covered with freckles. His mother started forward instinctively, but the man
standing next to her restrained her with his arm.
      "I don't care about them, Mr. Garuth," the boy declared loudly. "I wanna
shake your hand." With that he confidently extended his arm upward. The Giant
stooped, his face contorting into an expression that could only be a smile,
grasped the hand and shook it warmly. The tension in the crowd evaporated and
they began surging forward jubilantly.
      Hunt looked around and saw that the scene had suddenly transformed
itself. In one place a Ganymean was posing with an arm around the shoulders of
a laughing middle-aged woman while her husband took a photograph; in another,
a Giant was accepting a proffered cup of coffee while behind him a third was
looking down dubiously at a persistent, tail-wagging Alsatian dog that one
family had brought along. After patting it experimentally a few times, the
Giant squatted down and began ruffling its fur, to be rewarded by a frenzy of
licks on the tip of his long, tapering face.
      Hunt lit a cigarette and sauntered across to join the Swiss police
chief, who was mopping copious perspiration from his brow with a pocket
handkerchief.
      "There -- it didn't go badly at all, Heinrich," he said. "Told you there
was nothing to worry about."
      "Maybe, Dr. 'unt," Heinrich answered, still not sounding too happy. "All
ze same, I will be much ze 'appier when we can, 'ow you say in ze
America...get ze 'ell out of 'ere."

      Hunt spent a couple more days in the Earthmen sector of Ganyville
helping the liaison bureau get organized and taking his own share of rest and
relaxation. Then, having voted himself a spell of special leave for conduct
which, he was sure, was well beyond the call of duty, he collected Yvonne,
hitched them both a ride into Geneva on one of the still-shuttling VTOL jets,
and embarked on a spree in the city. Three days later they tumbled out of an
eastbound groundcar that stopped on the main highway running along the
perimeter, slightly disheveled, distinctly unsteady on their feet and
deliriously happy.
      By that time -- over a full week since the day the Shapieron had landed
-- the liaison bureau had got things fully under control and parties of
Ganymeans were already beginning to leave to make visits and attend
conferences all over the world. Some groups, in fact, had been gone for some
time and news reports were already coming in on how they were faring.
      Small panties of eight-foot-tall aliens, together with their ever-
vigilant police escorts, had become accepted, if not yet commonplace, sights
in Times Square, Red Square, Trafalgar Square and the Chanips-Elysees. They
had listened appreciatively to a Beethoven concert in Boston, toured the
London Zoo with a mixture of awe and horror, attended lavish receptions in
Buenos Aires, Canberra, Cape Town and Washington, D.C., and paid their
respects at the Vatican. In Peking their culture had been complimented as the
ultimate exemplification of the communist ideal, in New York as that of the
democratic ideal, and in Stockholm as that of the liberal ideal. And
everywhere the crowds thronged to greet them.
      The reports from around the globe told of the aliens' total amazement at
the variety of life, color, vitality and exuberance that they saw all around
them wherever they went. Everybody on Earth, they said, seemed to be in a
hurry to live a whole lifetime each day, as if they feared there might not be
sufficient hours in a mortal span to accommodate all the things to be seen and
done. The Minervan cities had been bigger in terms of engineering
constructions and architecture, but had offered nothing that compared even
remotely with the variety, energy and sheer zest for living that teemed day
and night in the metropolises of Earth. The Minervan technology had been
further advanced, but its rate of advancement was paltry compared to the
stupendous mushrooming of human civilization that resulted from the hustling,
bustling, restlessness exploding outward from this incredible planet.
      Speaking at a scientific conference in Berlin, a Ganymean told his
audience: "The Ganymean theory of the origin of the universe describes a
steady equilibrium in which matter appears, quietly acts out its appointed
role, and then quietly vanishes -- a slow, easy-going, evolutionary situation
that goes well with our temperament and our history. Only Man could have
conceived the catastrophic discontinuity of the Big Bang. I believe that when
you have had an opportunity to examine our theories more closely, you will
discard your Big Bang ideas. And yet I feel it singularly appropriate that Man
should have formulated such a theory. You see, ladies and gentlemen, when Man
visualized the cataclysmic expansion of the Big Bang Model, he was not seeing
the universe at all; he was seeing himself."
      After he had been back on Earth for ten days, Hunt was contacted again
by UNSA, who conveyed their hopes that he had enjoyed his leave. But some
people at Houston knew him better than he thought and suggested that it might
be a good idea if he began thinking about coming back.
      More to the point, UNSA had made arrangements through the bureau for a
Ganymean scientific delegation to visit Navcomms Headquarters at Houston,
primarily to learn more about the Lunarians. The Ganymeans had been expressing
a lot of interest in Man's immediate ancestral race for some reason and, since
the Lunarian investigations had been controlled from Houston and much of the
work had been done there, it was the obvious place to bring them. UNSA
suggested that since Hunt was due to return to Houston anyway, he could act as
organizer and courier for the delegation and insure their safe arrival in
Texas. Danchekker, who was also due to return to Houston to resume his duties
at the Westwood Biological Institute, decided to fly with them.
      And so, at the end of his second week home, Hunt found himself in a
familiar environment: the inside of a Boeing 1017 skyliner, fifty miles up
over the North Atlantic and westward bound.


Chapter Twenty

      "When I sent you off to Ganymede, I just wanted you to find out a little
bit more about the guys. I didn't expect you to come back with a whole shipful
of them." Gregg Caldwell chewed on his cigar and looked out across his desk
with an expression that was half amusement and half feigned exasperation.
Hunt, sprawled in the chain opposite, grinned and took another sip of his
scotch. It was good to be back among the familiar surroundings of Navcomms HO
again. The inside of Caldwell's luxurious office with its murals and one wall
completely dedicated to a battery of view-screens; the panoramic view down
over the rainbow towers of Houston -- nothing had changed.
      "So you've got more than your money's worth, Gregg," he replied. "Not
complaining, are you?"
      "Hell no. I'm not complaining. You've done another good job by the way
things are shaping up. It's just that whenever I set you an assignment, things
seem to have this tendency to kinda...get outta hand. I always end up with
more than I bargained for." Caldwell removed his cigar from his teeth and
inclined his head briefly. "But as you say, I'm not complaining."
      The executive director studied Hunt thoughtfully for a few seconds.
"So...what was it like to be away from Earth for the first time?"
      "Oh, it was...an experience," Hunt answered automatically, but when he
looked up he saw from the mischievous twinkle that danced in the eyes below
the craggy brows that the question had been more than casual. He should have
known. Caldwell never said or did anything without a reason.
      "Know thyself," Caldwell quoted softly. "And others too, maybe, huh?" He
shrugged as if making light of the matter, but the twinkle still remained in
his eyes.
      Hunt's brows knitted for a split second, and then his eyes slowly
widened as the cryptic message behind this turn in the conversation became
clear. It took perhaps two seconds for the details to click into place in his
brain. In the early days of the Lunarian investigations, just after Hunt had
moved to Houston from England, his relationship with Danchekker had been
caustic. Progress toward unraveling the mystery was more often than not
hampered because the two scientists dissipated their energies fruitlessly in
personal conflicts. But later on, in the wilderness of Luna and out in the
void between Earth and Jupiter, all that had somehow been forgotten. It was
then that the two scientists had begun to work in harmony, and the
difficulties had crumbled before the powerful assault of their combined
talents, which was what had been needed to solve the Lunarian problem. Hunt
could see that clearly now. Suddenly, he also realized that this state of
affairs had not come about through mere accident. He stared at Caldwell with
new respect, and slowly nodded ungrudging approval.
      "Gregg," he said, in a tone of mock reproach. "You've been pulling
strings again. You set us up."
      "I did?" Caldwell's voice was suitably innocent.
      "Chris and me. It was out there we began to see each other as people and
learned to pool our marbles. That's what cracked the Lunarian riddle. You knew
it would happen..." Hunt pointed an accusing finger across the desk. "That's
why you did it."
      Caldwell compressed his heavy jowls momentarily into a tight-lipped grin
of satisfaction. "So, you got more than your money's worth," he threw back.
"Not complaining, are you?"
      "Smooth operator," Hunt complimented, raising his glass. "Okay, we've
both had a good deal. That's how I think business ought to be. But now to the
present and the future -- what have you got lined up next?"
      Caldwell sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. He exhaled a
long stream of blue smoke. "What about this bunch of alien guys you brought
back from Europe; are you still tied up most of the time with looking after
them?"
      "They've been introduced over at Westwood now," Hunt told him. "They're
interested in the Lunarians and particularly want to have a look at Charlie
over there. Chris Danchekker is handling that side of things, which leaves me
fairly free for a while."
      "Fine. What I'd like you to start giving some thought to is a
preliminary overview of Ganymean science," Caldwell said. "What with this
ZORAC machine of theirs and all the conferences and discussions they're having
all over the place, there's more information coming across than we can handle.
When all the excitement dies down there's going to be one hell of a lotta work
to get through with all that. When you were coordinating the Charlie business
you operated a pretty good network of channels to most of the leading
scientific institutions and establishments around the world. I'd like you to
use those channels again to make a start at cataloging and evaluating
everything that's new, especially things that could be of particular use to
UNSA -- like their gravitics. We may find we want to revise a lot of our own
research programs in light of what these big guys have got to tell us. Now
seems as good a time as any to begin."
      "The group stays intact for a while then?" Hunt guessed, referring to
the team that he had headed during the Lunarian investigations and which had
continued working under the supervision of his deputy, mainly to tidy up the
unresolved details, during his time on Ganymede.
      "Yep." Caldwell nodded. "The way they work seems set up for the job.
Have you said hello to them yet?"
      Hunt shook his head. "Only got back this morning. I came straight on
here."
      "Do that then," Caldwell said. "There are probably a lot of old friends
around here that you want to see. Take the rest of this week to settle in
again. Then make a start on what we just talked about on Monday. Okay?"
      "Okay. The first thing I'll do is go see the group and give them an idea
of what our next job's going to be. I think they'll like it. Who knows...they
might even have half of it organized for me by Monday if they start thinking
about it." He cocked an inquiring eye at Caldwell. "Or is that what you figure
you pay me to do?"
      "I pay you to think smart," Caldwell grunted. "That's called delegation.
If you wanna delegate too, that's what I call thinking smart. Do it."

      Hunt spent the rest of that day with his own staff, familiarizing
himself with some of the fine points of how they had been getting on -- he had
kept in touch with them almost daily for the general things -- and outlining
for them his recent directive from Caldwell. After that there was no getting
away; they quizzed him for hours about every scrap of information that he had
managed to absorb on Ganymean scientific theory and technology, kept him
talking all through lunch, and succeeded in extracting a commitment from him
to arrange for a Ganymean scientist or two to come and give them an intensive
teach-in. At least, he reflected as he finally, left for home at nine o'clock
that night, he was not going to have any problems with motivation there.
      Next morning he made a point of avoiding that part of Navcomms HO
building that contained his own offices and started his day by paying a call
on another old friend of his -- Don Maddson, head of the linguistics section.
It was Don's team, working in cooperation with several universities and
research institutes all over the world, that had played one of the most
important roles in the Lunarian saga by untangling the riddle of the Lunarian
language, using documents found on Charlie's person and, later, a library of
microdot texts from the remains of a Lunarian base that had come to light near
Tycho, Without the translations, it would never have been possible even to
prove conclusively that the Lunarians and the Ganymeans had come from the same
planet.
      Hunt stopped outside the door of Maddson's office, knocked lightly and
entered without waiting for a reply. Maddson was sitting behind his desk
studying a sheet from a stack of the innumerable pieces of paper without which
his office would never have seemed complete. He glanced up, stared
incredulously for a second, and then his face split into a broad ear-to-ear
smile.
      "Vic! What the..." He half rose from his chair and began pumping Hunt's
proffered hand vigorously. "It's great to see ya great. I knew you were back
on Earth but nobody told me you were Stateside yet..." He beckoned Hunt toward
an easy chair on the other side of the desk. "Sit down, sit down
      When did you get in?"
      "Yesterday morning," Hunt replied, settling himself comfortably. "I had
to see Gregg and then I got tied up completely with the Group L bunch. Gregg
wants us to start thinking about writing a compendium of Ganymean science.
They're all dead keen to go on it...kept me talking till heavens knows what
time last night in the Ocean Bar."
      "Ganymeans, eh?" Maddson grinned. "I thought maybe you'd have brought us
one back."
      "There's a load of 'em over at Westwood with Chris Danchekker right
now."
      "Yeah. I know about that. They're due to pay us a call here later.
Everybody around here's getting keyed up with the suspense. They can't wait."
Maddson sat back in his chair and regarded Hunt over interlaced fingers for a
few seconds. At last he shook his head. "Well, I dunno where to start, Vic.
It's been all this time...there are so many questions...I guess there's enough
to keep us talking all day, huh? Or maybe you're getting tired of people
asking all the same things all the time, over and over?"
      "Not at all," Hunt said. "But why don't we save all that for lunch?
Maybe some of the others might like to join us and then I'll only need to say
it all to everybody once; otherwise I might end up getting tired of it, and
that wouldn't do."
      "Great idea," Maddson agreed. "We'll reserve the topic for lunch. In the
meantime, have a guess what we're into now?"
      "Who?"
      "Us...the section...Linguistics."
      "What?"
      Maddson took a deep breath, stared Hunt straight in the eye and
proceeded to deliver a string of utterly meaningless syllables in a deep,
guttural voice. Then he sat back and beamed proudly, his expression inviting
Hunt to accept the implied challenge.
      "What the hell was that all about?" Hunt asked, as if doubting his own
ears.
      "Even you don't know?"
      "Why should I?"
      Maddson was evidently enjoying himself. "That, my friend, was Ganymean,"
he said.
      "Ganymean?"
      "Ganymean!"
      Hunt stared at him in astonishment. "How in God's name did you learn
that?"
      Maddson waited a moment longer to make the most of Hunt's surprise, then
gestured toward the display unit standing on one side of his desk.
      "We've got ourselves a channel through to ZORAC," he said. "There's been
a pretty fantastic demand for access into it ever since it was hooked into the
Earthnet, just as you'd imagine. But being UNSA we qualify for high priority.
That sure is one hell of a machine."
      Hunt was duly impressed. "So, ZORAC's been teaching you Ganymean, eh,"
he said. "It fits. I should have guessed you wouldn't let a chance like that
slip by."
      "It's an interesting language," Maddson commented. "It's obviously
matured over a long period of time and been rationalized extensively -- hardly
any irregular forms or ambiguities at all. Actually, it's pretty
straightforward to learn structure-wise, but the pitch and vocal inflections
don't come naturally to a human. That's the most difficult part." He made a
throwing-away motion in the air. "It's only of academic interest I guess...but
as you say, a chance we couldn't resist."
      "How about the Lunarian texts from Tycho," Hunt asked. "Been making
progress on the rest of those too?"
      "You bet." Maddson waved toward the piles of papers covering the desk
and the table standing against the wall on one side of his office. "We've been
pretty busy here all around."
      Maddson proceeded to describe some of the details his team of linguists
had been able to fill in during Hunt's absence, concerning the Lunarian
culture and the way in which it had been organized on the Minerva of fifty
thousand years before. There was a thumbnail sketch of the war-torn history of
the Lunarian civilization; some detailed maps of parts of the planet's surface
with accounts of geographic, climatic, agricultural and industrial
characteristics; a treatise on the citizen's obligations and duties toward the
State in the totalitarian fortress-factory that was Minerva; a description of
native Minervan life forms as reconstructed from fossil remains and some
speculations on the possible causes of their abrupt extinction twenty-five
million years before. There were numerous references to the earlier race that
had inhabited the planet before the Lunarians themselves had emerged;
obviously, a civilization such as that of the Ganymeans could never have
passed away without leaving ample traces of itself behind for posterity. The
Lunarians had marveled at the ruins of Ganymean cities, examined their awesome
machines without growing much the wiser, and reconstructed a fairly
comprehensive picture of how their world had once looked. In most of their
writings, the Lunarians had referred to the Ganymeans simply as the Giants.
      Then, more than an hour after they had begun talking, Maddson drew out a
set of charts from below some other papers and spread them out for Hunt's
inspection. They were views of the heavens at night, showing the stars in
groupings that were not immediately recognizable. Captions, which Hunt
identified as being written in Lunarian, were scattered across the charts and
below each caption, in smaller print, a translation appeared in English.
      "These might interest you, Vic," Maddson said, still bubbling with
enthusiasm. "Star charts drawn by Lunarian astronomers fifty thousand years
ago. When you've looked at them for a little while, you'll pick out all the
familiar constellations. They're a bit distorted from the ones we see today
because the relative displacements have altered a little with time, of course.
In fact, we passed these on to some astronomers at Hale who were able to
calculate from the distortions exactly how long ago these charts were drawn.
It doesn't come out at too far off fifty thousand years at all."
      Hunt said nothing but leaned forward to peer closely at the charts. This
was fascinating -- a record of the skies as they had appeared when the
Lunarian civilization had been at its peak, immediately prior to its
catastrophic fall. As Maddson had said, all the familiar constellations were
there, but changed subtly from those seen in modern times. The other thing
that made them difficult to identify were the sets of lines drawn all over the
charts to interconnect groups of the more prominent stars into patterns and
shapes that bore no resemblance to the familiar constellations; the lines
tended to draw the eye along unfamiliar paths and obscure the better-known
patterns. Orion, for example, was there, but not connected up as a single,
intact configuration; part of it was grouped independently into a subset,
while the other part was separated from the rest of Orion and linked to the
normally distinct parallelogram of Lepus to form something else instead. The
result was that it took time to identify the two parts of Orion and mentally
fuse them back together again to reveal that Orion was there at all.
      "I see," Hunt observed thoughtfully at last. "They saw pictures in the
stars just like we do, only they saw different ones. Takes a while to get used
to, doesn't it?"
      "Yeah -- interesting, huh?" Maddson agreed. "They not only saw different
shapes; they grouped the stars differently too. That doesn't really come as a
surprise though; I've always said there was more dog in the mind of the
beholder than there ever was in Canis Major. Still, it's interesting to see
that their minds seemed to work the same way...even if they were every bit as
susceptible to autosuggestion."
      "What's this?" Hunt inquired after a few more seconds. He indicated a
pattern that lay over toward the left-hand side of the chart he had been
studying. The Lunarians had formed a large constellation by connecting
together Hercules, Serpens, Corona Borealis and part of Bootes to produce a
starfish-shaped pattern. The English translation of its name read simply The
Giant.
      "I wondered if you'd spot that one," Maddson said, nodding in approval.
"Well, as we know, the Lunarians knew all about the Ganymeans having been
there before them. I guess they musta kinda named one of their
constellations...sort of in honor of them, or something like that." He swept a
hand over the chart to take in the whole extent of it. "As you can see, they
named their constellations after all kinds of things, but mainly after animals
just like we did. I suppose it must be a natural tendency in some kind of
way." He pointed back at the one Hunt had picked out. "If you're the
imaginative kind, you can see something in that which vaguely suggests the
Ganymean form...it does to me anyhow. I mean...in Hercules you can see the
head and the two arms raised up...Serpens forms a slightly flexed leg trailing
back...and then the lines through Corona Borealis and then down to Arcturus
give you the other leg. See what I mean? It sorta looks like a figure running
or leaping."
      "It does, doesn't it," Hunt agreed. His eyes held a faraway look for a
moment, then he went on: "I'll tell you something else this tells us, Don: The
Lunarians knew about the Giants very early in their history too -- not just
later on after they discovered the sciences."
      "How d'you figure that?"
      "Well, look at the names that they've given to all their constellations.
As you said, they're all simple, everyday things -- animals and so on. Those
are the kinds of names that a simple and primitive people would think
up...names that come from the things they see in the world around them. We got
our names for our constellations in exactly the same way."
      "You mean that these names were handed down from way back," Maddson
said. "Through the generations...from the early times when the Lunarians were
just starting to think about getting civilized. Yeah, I suppose you could be
right." He paused to think for a second. "I see what you mean now...The ones
they called The Giant was probably named at about the same time as the rest.
The rest were named while the Lunarians were still primitive, so The Giant was
named while they were still primitive.
      Conclusion: The Lunarians knew about the Ganymeans right from the early
days. Yeah -- I'll buy that...I suppose it's not all that surprising, though.
I mean, from the pictures that the Ganymeans have shown us of their
civilization, there must have been all kinds of evidence left lying around all
over the planet. The early Lunarians could hardly have missed it, primitive or
not. All they had to do was have eyes."
      "No wonder their writings and legends were full of references to the
Giants then," Hunt said. "That knowledge must have had a terrific influence on
how their civilization and thinking developed. Imagine what a difference it
might have made if the Sumerians had seen evidence of a long-lost, technically
advanced race all around them. They might -- hey, what's this?" Hunt had been
scanning idly over the remaining star charts while he was talking. Suddenly he
stopped and peered closely at one of them, at the same time pointing to one of
the inscriptions with his finger. The inscription did not refer to a
constellation of stars this time, but to a single star, standing alone and
shown relatively faintly. The inscription, however, stood out in bold Lunarian
characters. Its English equivalent read: The Giants' Star.
      "Something wrong?" Maddson asked.
      "Not wrong...just a bit odd." Hunt was frowning thoughtfully. "This star
-- it's nowhere near that other constellation. It's in another hemisphere
completely, out near Taurus...yet it's got a name like that. I wonder why they
gave it a name like that."
      "Why not?" Maddson shrugged. "Why shouldn't they give it a name like
that? It's as good as any other. Maybe they were kinda running outa names."
      Hunt was still looking perturbed.
      "But it's so faint," he said slowly. "Don, are the different
brightnesses of the stars shown on these charts significant? I mean, did they
tend to show the brighter stars larger, same as we do?"
      "As a matter of fact, yes they did," Maddson answered. "But what of it?
Does it really..."
      "Which star is this?" Hunt asked, now evidently intrigued and apparently
not hearing.
      "Search me." Maddson spread his hands wide. "I'm no astronomer. Is it so
important?"
      "I think it is." Hunt's voice was curiously soft, and still held a
faraway note.
      "How come?"
      "Look at it this way. That looks like a very faint star to me --
magnitude four, five or less at a guess. Something makes me wonder if that
star would be visible at all from the Solar System to the naked eye. Now if
that were the case, it could only have been discovered after the Lunarians
invented telescopes. Right?"
      "That figures," Maddson agreed. "So what?"
      "Well, now we get back to the name. You see, that kind of name -- The
Giants' Star -- is in keeping with all the rest. It's the kind of name that
you'd expect the ancients of the Lunarian race to come up with. But what if
the ancients of the Lunarian race never knew about it...because they'd never
seen it? That means that it had to have been given its name later, after the
science of astronomy had been refined to a high level, by the advanced
civilization that came later. But why would an advanced civilization give it a
name like that?"
      A look of growing comprehension spread slowly across Maddson's face. He
looked back at Hunt but was too astounded by the implication to say anything.
Hunt read the expression and nodded to confirm what Maddson was thinking.
      "Exactly. We have to grope around in the dark to find out anything about
what kind of evidence of their existence the Ganymeans left behind them. The
Lunarian scientists had no such problem because they had the one thing
available to them that we don't have -- the planet Minerva, intact, right
under their feet, no doubt with enough evidence and clues buried all over it
to keep them busy for generations." He nodded again in response to Maddson's
incredulous stare. "They must have built up a very complete record of what the
Ganymeans had done, all right. But all the evidence they used to do it was
lost with them."
      Hunt paused and drew his cigarette case slowly from his inside jacket
pocket while he quickly checked over the line of reasoning in his mind.
      "I wonder what they knew about that star that we don't know," he said at
last, his voice now had become very quiet. "I wonder what they knew about that
star that caused them to choose a name like that. We've suspected for a long
time that the Giants might have migrated to another star, but we've never been
able to prove it for sure or been able to say what star it might have been.
And now this turns up..."
      Hunt stopped with his lighter poised halfway toward his mouth. "Don," he
said. "In your life, do you find that fate steps in and lends a hand every now
and again?"
      "Never really thought about it," Maddson admitted. "But now you come to
mention it, I guess I have to agree."


Chapter Twenty-one

      As time went by, the Ganymean scientists grew to know better and work
more closely with the scientific community of Earth. In several areas,
information supplied by the aliens contributed significantly to advances in
human knowledge.
      Maps reproduced from ZORAC's data banks showed the surface of the Earth
as it had appeared at the time of the early Minervan expeditions to the
planet, during its late Oligocene period. These same maps showed the Atlantic
Ocean little more than half as wide as was shown on twenty-first-century maps,
indicating that the time represented was that much nearer to the breaking
adrift of the American continent. The Mediterranean Sea was much wider with
Italy half rotated prior to being driven into Europe by Africa's relentless
northward drive to create the Alps; India had just made contact with Asia and
begun throwing up the Himalayas; Australia was much closer to Africa.
Measurements of these maps enabled current theories of plate tectonics to be
thoroughly checked and brought a whole new light to bear on many aspects of
the Earth sciences.
      Throughout all this the Ganymeans declined to say exactly where their
experimental colonies on Earth had been located, or what areas had been
affected by the ecological catastrophes that they had induced. These matters,
they said, were best left in the past where they belonged.
      At institutes of physics and universities all over the world, the
Ganymeans unveiled the rudiments and fundamental concepts of the theoretical
basis of the extended science that had led to the emergence of their
technology of gravities. In this they did not provide blueprints for
constructing gadgets and devices whose principles would not be comprehended
and whose introduction would have been premature; they offered only general
guidance, declaring that Man would fill in the details in his own way, and
would do so when the time was right.
      The Ganymeans also painted bright and promising pictures of the future
by describing the unlimited abundance of resources that the universe had to
offer. All substances, they pointed out, were built from the same atoms and,
given the right knowledge and sufficient energy, anything required -- metals,
crystals, organic polymers, oils, sugars and proteins -- could be synthesized
from plentiful and freely available materials. Energy, as Man was beginning to
discover, was waiting to be trapped in undreamed of quantities. Of the total
amount of energy radiated out into space by the Sun, less than one thousandth
part of one billionth was actually intercepted by the disk of the Earth.
Nearly half of that was reflected away back into space, and of the remainder
that actually penetrated through to the surface, only a minute fraction was
harnessed to any useful purpose. Borrowing from the commercial jargon of
Earth, the Ganymeans described the tiny pockets of energy that happened to be
trapped in one form or another about the surface of his planet as representing
Man's starting capital. Future generations, they predicted, would look back at
Apollo as just the down payment on the best long-term investment Man ever
made.

      As the months passed by, the two cultures interlocked more closely and
adjusted to accommodate one another so well that it seemed to many that the
Giants had always been there. The Shapieron toured the globe and spent a day
or two at most of the world's major airports, attracting visitors by the tens
of thousands; on several occasions it took selected parties on one-hour rides
around the Moon and back! Anybody who had access to an Earthnet terminal and
who could get through the permanently jammed public exchange could speak to
ZORAC, and a number of high-priority channels were permanently reserved for
allocation to schools. Despite their ancestry, many of the young Ganymeans
developed a passion for baseball, soccer, and other such sports -- pastimes
the likes of which had been unknown to them in their previous shipbound
existence. Before long they had formed their own leagues to challenge their
terrestrial counterparts. At first their elders were a little disturbed by
this turn of events, but later they reasoned that the notion of competition
seemed to have brought Man a long way in a short time; perhaps the grafting,
in small doses, of the Earthman's will to win onto the Ganymean's analytical
ability to see just how to go about doing it, wouldn't be so bad after all.

      For six months the Ganymeans toured every nation of Earth learning its
ways, absorbing its culture, meeting its peoples -- the high, the low, the
rich, the poor, the ordinary and the famous. After a while they were no longer
the "aliens." They became simply a new factor in an environment that the
people of Earth were by now accustomed to accept as constantly changing. Hunt
noticed again, this time on a global scale, the same thing he had noticed at
Pithead in the week that the Ganymeans had gone to Pluto -- they seemed to
belong on Earth. Without them being constantly around or featured in the
headlines, Earth would not, somehow, have seemed normal.
      Then, one day, the news flashed around the globe that Garuth would
shortly appear on the Earthnet to make an important announcement to all the
people of Earth. No hint was given as to what this announcement would contain,
but there was something about the mood of the moment that forewarned of some
significant development. When the evening arrived on which Garuth was due to
speak, the world was watching and waiting at a billion viewscreens.
      Garuth spoke for a long time on the events that had taken place since
the time of the Ganymeans' arrival. He touched upon most of the sights that he
and his companions had seen, the places they had been to and the things that
they had learned. He expressed again the amazement that the Ganymeans had
experienced at the restlessness, vivacity and impatient frenzy for living that
they had found on every side in what he described as "this fantastic,
undreamed-of world of yours." And, speaking on behalf of all his kind, he
repeated their gratitude to the governments and people of the planet that had
shown them friendship, hospitality and generosity without limit, and offered
their home to share.
      But then his mood, which had been slightly solemn throughout, took on a
distinctly somber note. "As most of you, my friends, know, for a long time now
there has been speculation that long ago, sometime after our ship departed
from Minerva, our race abandoned that planet forever to seek a new home
elsewhere. There have been suggestions that the new home they found was a
planet of a distant star -- the one that has become known as The Giants' Star.
      "Both these notions must remain mere speculation. Our specialists and
yours have been working together for many months now, studying the Lunarian
records and following up every clue that might possibly add further credence
to these notions. I have to tell you that these efforts have thus far proved
fruitless. We cannot say for certain that The Giants' Star is indeed the new
home of our race. We cannot even say for certain that our race did in fact
migrate to a new home at all.
      "There is a chance, nevertheless, that these things could be true."
      The long face paused and stared hard at the camera for what seemed a
long time, almost as if it knew that the watchers at the screens all over the
world could sense suddenly what was coming next.
      "I must now inform you that I and my senior officers have discussed and
examined these questions at great length. We have decided that, slim though
the chances of success appear to be, we must make the attempt to find these
answers. The Solar System was once our home, but it is no longer our home. We
must take to the void again and seek our own kind."
      He paused again to allow time for his meaning to sink in.
      "This decision did not come easily. My people have spent a large part of
their natural lives wandering in the depths of space. Our children have never
known a home. A journey to The Giants' Star will, we know, take many years. In
many ways we are sad, -- naturally, but, like you, we must in the end obey our
instincts. Deep down we could never rest until the question of The Giants'
Star has been finally answered.
      "And so, my friends, I am bidding you farewell. We will carry with us
pleasant memories of the time that we knew here on the sunny blue and green
world of Earth. We will never forget the warmth and hospitality of the people
of this world, nor will we forget what they did for us. But, sadly, it must
end.
      "One week from today we will depart. Should we fail in our quest, we, or
our descendants, will return. This I promise."
      The Giant raised his arm in a final salute, and inclined his head
slightly.
      "Thank you -- all of you. And good-bye."
      He held the posture for a few more seconds. Then the broadcast cut out.

      A half-hour after the broadcast, Garuth emerged from the main door of
the conference center at Ganyville. He stopped for a while, savoring the first
hint of winter being carried down from the mountains on the night air. Around
him all was still apart from an occasional figure flitting through the pools
of warm orange light that flooded out of the windows into the alley between
the wooden walls of the chalets. The night was clear as crystal. He stood for
a long time staring up at the stars. Then he began walking slowly along the
path in front of him and turned into the broad throughway that led down,
between the rows of chalets, toward the immense floodlit tower of the
Shapieron.
      He passed by one of the ship's supporting legs and moved on into the
space spanned by its four enormous fin surfaces, suddenly dwarfed by the
sweeping lines of metal soaring high above him. As he approached the foot of
one of the ramps that led up into the lowered stern and stepped into the
surrounding circle of light, a half-dozen or so eight-foot figures
straightened up out of the shadows at the bottom of the ramp. He recognized
them immediately as members of his crew, no doubt relaxing and enjoying the
calm of the night. As he drew nearer, he sensed from the way they stood and
the way they looked at him that something had changed. Normally they would
have called out some jovial remark or made some enthusiastic sign of greeting,
but they did not. They just stood there, silent and withdrawn. As he reached
the ramps they stood aside to make way and raised their hands in
acknowledgment of his rank. Garuth returned the salutes and passed between
them. He found that he could not meet their eyes. No one spoke. He knew that
they had seen the broadcast, and he knew how they felt. There was nothing he
could say.
      He reached the top of the ramp, passed through the open airlock and
crossed the wide space beyond to enter the elevator that ZORAC had waiting. A
few seconds later he was being carried swiftly upward into the main body of
the Shapieron.
      He came out of the elevator over five hundred feet above ground level,
and followed a short corridor to a door which brought him into his private
quarters. Shilohin, Monchar and Jassilane were waiting there, sitting in a
variety of poses around the room. He sensed the same attitude that he had felt
a minute before at the ramp. He stood for a moment looking down at them while
the door slid silently shut behind him. Monchar and Jassilane were looking at
one another uneasily. Only Shilohin was holding his gaze, but she said
nothing. Garuth emitted a long-drawn-out sigh then moved slowly between them
to stand for a while contemplating a metallic tapestry that adorned the far
wall. Then he turned about to face them once more. Shilohin was still watching
him.
      "You're still not convinced that we have to go," he said at last. The
remark was unnecessary, but somebody had to say something. No reply was
necessary either.
      The scientist shifted her eyes away and said, as if addressing the low
table standing between her and the other two, "It's the way in which we're
going about it. They've trusted you unquestioningly all this time. All the way
from Iscaris...all those years...You..."
      "One second." Garuth moved across to a small control panel set into the
wall near the door. "I don't think this conversation should go on record." He
flipped a switch to cut off the room from all channels to ZORAC, and hence to
the ship's archival records.
      "You know that there's no Ganymean civilization waiting at The Giants'
Star or anywhere else," Shilohin resumed. Her voice was about as near an
accusation as a Ganymean could get. "We've been through the Lunarian records
time and again. It adds up to nothing. You are taking your people away to die
somewhere out there between the stars. There will be no coming back. But you -
- allow them to believe in fantasies so that they will follow where you lead
them. Surely those are the ways of Earthmen, not Ganymeans."
      "They offered us their world as home," Jassilane murmured, shaking his
head. "For twenty years your people have dreamed of nothing but coming home.
And now that they have found one, you would take them back out into the void
again. Minerva is gone; nothing we can do will change that. But by a quirk of
fate we have found a new home -- here. It will never happen a second time."
      Suddenly Garuth was very weary. He sank down into the reclining chair by
the door and regarded the three solemn faces staring back at him. There was
nothing that he could add to the things that had already been said. Yes, it
was true; the Earthmen had greeted his people as if they were long-lost
brothers. They had offered all they had. But in the six months that had gone
by, Garuth had looked deep below the surface. He had looked; he had listened;
he had watched; he had seen.
      "Today the Earthmen welcome us with open arms," he said. "But in many
ways, they are still children. They show us their world as a child would open
its toy cupboard to a new play-friend. But a play-friend who visits once in a
while is one thing; one who moves in to stay, with equal rights to ownership
to the toy cupboard, is another."
      Garuth could see that his listeners wanted to be convinced, to feel the
reassurance of thinking the way he thought, but could not -- no more than they
had been able to a dozen times before. Nevertheless he had no choice but to go
through it yet again.
      "The human race is still struggling to learn to live with itself. Today
we are just a handful of aliens -- a novelty; but one day we would grow to a
sizable population. Earth does not yet possess the stability and the maturity
to adapt to coexistence on that scale; they are just managing to coexist with
one another. Look at their history. One day, I'm sure, they will be capable,
but the time is not ripe yet.
      "You forget their pride and their innate instincts to compete in all
things. They could never accept passively a situation in which their instincts
would compel them, one day, to see themselves as inferiors and us as dominant
rivals. When that time came, we would be forced to go anyway, since we would
never impose ourselves or our ways on unwilling or resentful hosts, but that
would happen only after a lot of problems and eventual unpleasantness. It is
better this way."
      Shilohin heard his words, but still everything inside her recoiled from
the verdict that they spelled out.
      "So, for this you would deceive your own people," she whispered. "Just
to insure the stable evolution of this alien planet, you would sacrifice your
own kind -- the last few pathetic remnants of our civilization. What kind of
judgment is this?"
      "It is not my judgment, but the judgment of time and fate," Garuth
replied. "The Solar System was once the undisputed domain of our race, but
that time ended long ago. We are the intruders now -- an anachronism; a scrap
of flotsam thrown up out of the ocean of time. Now the Solar System has become
rightly the inheritance of Man. We do not belong here any longer. That is not
a judgment for us to make, but one that has already been made for us by
circumstances. It is merely ours to accept."
      "But your people..." Shilohin protested. "Shouldn't they know? Haven't
they the right...?" She threw her arms in the air in a gesture of
helplessness. Garuth remained silent for a moment, then shook his head slowly.
      "I will not reveal to them that the new home at The Giants' Star is a
myth," he declared firmly. "That is a burden that need be carried only by us,
who command and lead. They do not have to know...yet. It was their hope and
their belief in a purpose that nurtured them from Iscaris to Sol. So it can be
again for a while. If we are taking them away to their doom to perish unsung
and unmourned somewhere in the cold, uncharted depths of space, they deserve
at least that before the final truth has to become known. That is precious
little to ask."
      A grim silence reigned for a long time. A faraway look came over
Shilohin as she turned over again in her mind the things that Garuth had said.
And then the look changed gradually into a frown. Her eyes cleared and swung
slowly upward to meet Garuth's.
      "Garuth," she said. Her voice was curiously calm and composed. All
traces of the emotions she had felt previously were gone. "I've never said
this to you ever before, but...I don't believe you." Jassilane and Monchar
looked up abruptly. Garuth seemed strangely unsurprised, almost as if he had
been expecting her to say that. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated
the tapestry on the wall. Then he swung his eyes slowly back toward her.
      "What don't you believe, Shilohin?"
      "Your reasons...everything you've been saying for the last few weeks.
It's just not...you. It's a rationalization of something else...something
deeper." Garuth said nothing, but continued to regard her steadfastly. "Earth
is maturing rapidly," she continued. "We've mixed with them and been accepted
by them in ways that far exceeded our wildest hopes. There's no evidence to
support the predictions you made. There's no evidence that we could never
coexist, even if our numbers did grow. You would never sacrifice your people
just on the off-chance that things might not work out. You'd try it
first...for a while at least. There has to be another reason. I won't be able
to support your decision until I know what that reason is. You talked about
the burden of us who command and lead. If we carry that burden, then surely
we've a right to know why."
      Garuth continued staring at her thoughtfully for a long time after she
had finished speaking. Then he transferred his gaze, still with the same
thoughtful expression, to Jassilane and Monchar. The look in their eyes echoed
Shilobin's words. Then, abruptly, he seemed to make up his mind.
      Without speaking, he rose from the chair, walked over to the control
panel, and operated the switch to restore normal communications facilities to
the room.
      "ZORAC," he called.
      "Yes, Commander?"
      "You recall the discussion that we had about a month ago concerning the
data that the human scientists have collected on the genetics of the Oligocene
species discovered in the ship at Pithead?"
      "Yes."
      "I'd like you to present the results of your analysis of that data to
us. This information is not to be made accessible to anyone other than myself
and the three people who are in this room at present."


Chapter Twenty-two

      The crowds that came to Ganyville to see the Shapieron depart were as
large as those that had greeted its arrival, but their mood was a very
different one. This time there was no jubilation or wild excitement. The
people of Earth would miss the gentle Giants that they had come to know so
well, and it showed.
      The governments of Earth had again sent their ambassadors and, on the
concrete apron below the towering ship, two groups of Earthmen and aliens
faced each other for the last time. After the final formalities had been
exchanged and the last farewell speeches had been uttered, the spokesman for
each of the two races presented his parting gift.
      The Chairman of the United Nations, acting on behalf of all of the
peoples and nations of Earth, handed over two ornamental metal caskets,
heavily inscribed on their outside faces and decorated with precious stones.
The first contained a selection of seeds of many terrestrial trees, shrubs and
flowering plants. The second, somewhat larger, contained the national flag of
every one of the world's states. The seeds, he said, were to be planted at a
selected place when the Giants arrived at their new home; the plants that grew
from them would symbolize all of terrestrial life and provide a lasting
reminder that henceforth both worlds would always be a home to Man and
Ganymean equally. The flags were to be flown above that place on some as yet
unknown future day when the first ship from Earth reached The Giants' Star.
Thus, when Man came at last to launch himself into the void between the stars,
he would find a small part of Earth waiting to greet him on the other side.
      Garuth's gift to Earth was knowledge. He presented a large chest filled
with books, tables, charts and diagrams which, he stated, provided a
comprehensive introduction to the Ganymean genetic sciences. In presenting
this knowledge to Earth, the Ganymeans were attempting to atone in the only
way that they could for the species of Oligocene animals that had been made
extinct during the ugly extermination experiments of long ago. By techniques
that were explained in these texts, Garuth said, the DNA codes that existed in
any preserved cell from any part of an animal organism could be extracted and
used to control the artificially induced growth of a duplicate, living
organism. Given a sliver of bone, a trace of tissue or a clipping of horn, a
new embryo could be synthesized and from it the complete animal would grow.
Thus, provided that some remnant remained, all of the extinct species that had
once roamed the surface of the Earth could be resurrected. In this way, the
Ganymeans hoped, the species that had met with sudden and untimely ends as a
result of their actions would be allowed to live and run free again.
      And then the last group of Ganymeans stood for a while to return the
silent wavings of the multitudes on the surrounding hills before filing slowly
up into the ship. With them went a small party of Earthmen destined for
Ganymede, where the Shapieron was scheduled to make a short call to allow the
Ganymeans to bid farewell to their UNSA friends there.
      ZORAC spoke over the communications network of Earth to deliver a final
message from the Ganymeans and then the link was broken. The Shapieron
retracted its stern section into its flight position and for a while the huge
ship stood alone while the world watched. And then it began to rise, slowly
and majestically, before soaring up and away to rejoin its element. Only the
sea of upturned faces, the lines of tiny figures arrayed around the empty
space in the center of the concrete apron, and the rows of outsize deserted
wooden chalets remained to show that it had ever been.
      The mood inside the Shapieron was solemn too. In the command center,
Garuth stood in the area of open floor below the dais surrounded by a group of
senior officers and watched in silence as the mottled pattern of blue and
white on the main screen shrank and became the globe of Earth. Shilohin was
standing beside him, also silent and absorbed in thoughts of her own.
      Then ZORAC spoke, his voice seemingly issuing from the surrounding
walls. "Launch characteristics normal. All systems checked and normal. Request
confirmation of orders."
      "Existing orders confirmed," Garuth replied quietly. "Destination
Ganymede."
      "Setting course for Ganymede," the machine reported. "Arrival will be as
scheduled."
      "Hold off main drives for a while," Garuth said suddenly. "I'd like to
see Earth for a little longer."
      "Maintaining auxiliaries," came the response. "Main drives being held on
standby pending further orders."
      As the minutes ticked by the globe on the screen contracted slowly. The
Ganymeans continued to watch in silence.
      At last Shilohin turned to Garuth. "And to think, we called it the
Nightmare Planet."
      Garuth smiled faintly. His thoughts were still far away.
      "They've woken up from the nightmare now," he said. "What an
extraordinary race they are. Surely they must be unique in the Galaxy."
      "I still can't bring myself to believe that everything we have seen can
have evolved from such origins," she replied. "Don't forget I was brought up
in a school that taught me to believe that this could never happen. All our
theories and our models predicted that intelligence was unlikely to develop at
all in any ecology like that, and that any form of civilization would be
absolutely impossible. And yet..." she made a gesture of helplessness, "look
at them. They've barely learned to fly and already they talk about the stars.
Two hundred years ago they knew nothing of electricity; today they generate it
by fusion power. Where will they stop?"
      "I don't think they ever will," Garuth said slowly. "They can't. They
must fight all the time, just as their ancestors did. Their ancestors fought
each other; they fight the challenges that the universe throws at them
instead. Take away their challenges and they would waste away."
      Shilohin thought again about the incredible race that had struggled to
claw its way upward through every difficulty and obstacle imaginable, not the
least of which was its own perversity, and which now reigned unchallenged and
triumphant in the Solar System that the Ganymeans had once owned.
      "Their history is still abhorrent in many ways," she said. "But at the
same time there is something strangely magnificent and proud about them. They
can live with danger where we could not, because they know that they can
conquer danger. They have proved things to themselves that we will never know,
and it is that knowledge that will carry them onward where we would hesitate.
If Earthmen had inhabited the Minerva of twenty-five million years ago, I'm
sure that things would have turned out differently.
      They wouldn't have given up after Iscaris; they would have found a way
to win."
      "Yes," Garuth agreed. "Things would certainly have turned out very
differently. But before long, I feel, we will see what would have happened if
that had been true. Very soon now the Earthmen will explode outward all over
the Galaxy. Somehow, I don't think it will ever be quite the same again after
that happens."
      The conversation lapsed once more as the two Ganymeans shifted their
eyes again to take in a last view of the planet that had defied all their
theories, laws, principles and expectations. In the years to come they would
no doubt gaze many times at this image, retrieved from the ship's data banks,
but it would never again have the impact of this moment.
      After a long time, Garuth called out aloud, "ZORAC."
      "Commander?"
      "It's time we were on our way. Activate main drives."
      "Switching over from standby. Commencing run-up to full power now."
      The disk of Earth dissolved into a wash of colors that ran across the
screen and began to fade. After a few minutes the colors had merged into a
sheet of drab, uniform, grayish fog. The screen would show nothing more until
they reached Ganymede.
      "Monchar," Garuth called. "I have things to attend to. Will you take
over here for a while?"
      "Aye-aye, sir."
      "Very good. I will be in my room if I am needed for anything." Garuth
excused himself from the company, acknowledged the salutations around him, and
left the command center. He walked slowly through the corridors that led to
his private quarters, fully preoccupied with the thoughts inside his head and
largely oblivious to his surroundings. When he had closed the door behind him,
he stared at himself in the wall mirror in his stateroom for a long time, as
if looking for visible changes in his appearance that might have been brought
about by what he had done. Then he sank into one of the reclining armchairs
and stared unseeingly at the ceiling until he lost track of time.
      Eventually he activated the wall screen in the stateroom and called up a
star chart that showed the part of the sky that included the constellation of
Taurus. For a long time he sat staring at the faint point that would grow
progressively brighter in the course of the long voyage ahead. There was a
hope that they could all be wrong. There was always a chance. If the Ganymeans
had migrated there, what kind of civilization would they have developed over
the millions of years that had passed by since the Shapieron departed from
Minerva? What kind of science would they possess? What wonders would they
accept as commonplace that even he could never conceive? As his mind went out
toward the faint spot on the star chart, he felt a sudden surge of hope
welling up inside him. He began to picture the world that was there waiting to
greet them and he grew restless and impatient at the thought of the years that
would have to pass by before they could know.
      He knew that the optimism of the human scientists knew no bounds.
Already the huge disks of the radio-observatory situated on Lunar Farside were
beaming a high-power transmission in Ganymean communications code out toward
The Giants' Star to forewarn of the Shapieron's coming -- a message that would
take years to cover the distance, but which would still arrive well ahead of
the ship.
      Then he slumped back in the chair, despairing and dispirited. He knew,
as his few trusted companions knew, that there would be nobody there to
receive it. Nothing in the Lunarian records had proved anything. It was all
Earthmen's wishful thinking.
      His thoughts went back to the incredible Earthmen -- the race that had
struggled and fought for millennia to overcome such horrendous difficulties,
and who now, at last, were emerging from their past to a prospect of lasting
prosperity and wisdom...if they could only be left alone for a little longer
to complete the things they had so valiantly strived to achieve. They had
built their world out of chaos, against all the theories and predictions of
all the sages and scientists of Minerva. They deserved to be left alone to
enjoy their world without interference.
      For Garuth knew, as now only Shilohin, Jassilane and Monchar knew, that
the Ganymeans had created the human race.
      The Ganymeans had been the direct cause of all the defects, handicaps
and problems that should by rights have left Man with all the odds piled
hopelessly against him. But Man had triumphed over all of them. Justice
demanded now that Man be left alone to perfect his world in his own way and
without further interference from the Ganymeans.
      The Ganymeans had already interfered enough.


Chapter Twenty-three

      In Danchekker's office, high in the main building of the Westwood
Biological Institute on the outskirts of Houston, the professor and Hunt were
watching the view of the Shapieron being sent down from a telescopic camera
tracking from a satellite high above the Earth. The image grew gradually
smaller and then suddenly enlarged again as the magnification was stepped up.
Then it began to shrink once more.
      "It's just coasting," Hunt commented from an armchair set over to one
side of the room. "Seems as if they want to get one last look at us."
Danchekker said nothing but just nodded absently as he watched from behind his
desk. The commentary coming over on audio confirmed Hunt's observation.
      "Radar indicates that the ship is still traveling quite slowly compared
to the performance that we have seen before. It doesn't seem to be going into
orbit...just continuing to move steadily away from Earth. This is the last
time you'll have a chance to see this fantastic vessel live, so make the most
of the moment. We are looking at the closing page of what has surely been the
most astounding chapter ever written in the history of the human race. How can
things ever be the same again?" A short pause. "Hello, something's happening
I'm told. -- The ship's starting to accelerate now. It's really streaking away
from us now, building up speed faster all the time..." The image on the screen
began to perform a crazy dance of growing and shrinking again at a bewildering
rate.
      "They're on main drive," Hunt said, as the commentator continued.
      "The image is starting to break up...The stress field's becoming
noticeable now...It's going...getting fainter...That's it. Well I guess that
just about -- " The voice and picture died together as Danchekker flipped a
switch behind his desk to cut off the display.
      "So, there they go to meet whatever destiny awaits them," he said. "I
wish them well." A short silence ensued while Hunt fished in his pockets for
his lighter and cigarette case. As he leaned back in his chair again he said,
"You know, Chris, when you think about it, these last couple of years have
been pretty remarkable."
      "To say the least."
      "Charlie, the Lunarians, the ship at Pithead, the Ganymeans and now
this." He gestured toward the blank screen. "What better time could we have
picked to be alive? It makes every other period of history seem a bit dull,
doesn't it?"
      "It does indeed...very dull indeed." Danchekker seemed to be answering
automatically, as if part of his mind were still hurtling out into space with
the Shapieron.
      "It's a bit of a pity, though, in some ways," Hunt said after a while.
      "What is?"
      "The Ganymeans. We never really got to the bottom of some of the
interesting questions, did we? It's a pity they couldn't have stayed around
just a little longer -- until we'd managed to figure out a few more of the
answers. Actually I'm a bit surprised they didn't. At one stage they seemed
even more curious about some things than we were."
      Danchekker seemed to turn the proposition over in his mind for a long
time. Then he looked up and across to where Hunt was sitting and eyed him in a
strange way. When he spoke his voice was curiously challenging.
      "Oh really? Answers to questions such as what, might I ask?" Hunt
frowned at him for a second, then shrugged as he exhaled a stream of smoke.
      "You know what questions. What happened on Minerva after the Shapieron
left? Why did they ship all those terrestrial animals there? What bumped off
all the Minervan animals? That kind of thing...It would be nice to know, even
if it is a bit academic now, if only to tidy all the loose ends up."
      "Oh, those." Danchekker's air of studied nonchalance was masterly. "I
think I can supply you with whatever answers you require to those questions."
The matter-of-factness in Danchekker's voice left Hunt at a loss for words.
The professor cocked his head to one side and regarded him quizzically but
could not contain a slight admission of the amusement that he felt.
      "Well...Good God, what are they then?" Hunt managed at last. He realized
that in his astonishment he had let his cigarette slip from his fingers and
made hasty efforts to retrieve it from the side of his chair.
      Danchekker watched the pantomime in silence, then replied. "Let me see
now, to answer directly the questions that you have just asked would not
really convey very much, since they all interrelate. Most of them follow from
the work I have been doing here ever since we got back from Ganymede, which
covers quite a lot of ground. Perhaps it would be simpler if I just start at
the beginning and follow it through from there." Hunt waited while Danchekker
leaned back and interlaced his fingers in front of his chin and contemplated
the far wall to collect his thoughts.
      At last Danchekker resumed. "Do you recall the piece of research from
Utrecht that you brought to my attention soon after we got back -- concerning
the way in which animals manufacture small amounts of toxins and contaminants
to exercise their defensive systems?"
      "The self-immunization process. Yes, I remember. ZORAC picked that one
up. Animals possess it but human beings don't. What about it?"
      "I found the subject rather intriguing and spent some time after our
discussion following it up, which included holding some very long and detailed
conversations with a Professor Tatham from Cambridge, an old friend of mine
who specializes in that kind of thing. In particular, I wanted to know more
about the genetic codes that are responsible for this self-immunization
mechanism forming in the developing embryo. It seemed to me that if we were
going to try to pinpoint the causes for this radical difference between us and
the beasts, this was the level at which we should look for it."
      "And...
      "And, the results were extremely interesting...in fact, remarkable."
Danchekker's voice fell almost to a whisper that seemed to accentuate every
syllable. "As ZORAC discovered, in virtually all of today's terrestrial
animals, the genetic coding that determines their self-immunization mechanism
is closely related to the coding responsible for another process; you might
say that both processes are subsets of the same program. The other process
regulates carbon-dioxide absorption and rejection."
      "I see..." Hunt nodded slowly. He didn't yet see exactly where
Danchekker was leading, but he was beginning to sense something important.
      "You're always telling me you don't like coincidences," Danchekker went
on. "I don't either. There was far too much of a coincidence about this, so
Tatham and I started delving a bit deeper. When we investigated the
experiments performed at Pithead and on board Jupiter Five, we came across a
second rather remarkable thing, that tied in with what I have just been
talking about -- concerning the Oligocene animals found in the ship there. The
Oligocene animals all contain the same genetic coding elements, but in their
case there is a difference. The subprograms that control the two processes I
mentioned have somehow been separated out; they exist as discrete groupings
that lie side by side on the same DNA chain. Now that is very remarkable,
wouldn't you say?"
      Hunt considered the question for a few seconds.
      "You mean that in today's animals both processes are there, but all
scrambled up together, but in the Oligocene species they're separated out."
      "Yes."
      "All the Oligocene species?" Hunt asked after a moment's further
reflection. Danchekker nodded in satisfaction at seeing that Hunt was on the
right track.
      "Precisely, Vic. All of them."
      "That doesn't really make sense. I mean, the first thing you'd think
would be that some kind of mutation had occurred to change one form into the
other -- the scrambled-up form and the separated-out form. That could have
happened either way around. In one case the scrambled form could be the
'natural' terrestrial pattern that became mutated on Minerva; that would
explain why the animals from there have it and the descendants of the ones
that were left here don't. Alternatively, you could suppose that twenty-five
million years ago the separated-out form was standard, which explains of
course why the animals from that time exhibit it, but that in subsequent
evolution here on Earth it changed itself into the scrambled form." He looked
across at Danchekker and threw his arms out wide. "But there's one basic flaw
in both those arguments -- it happened in lots of different species, all at
the same time."
      "Quite." Danchekker nodded. "And, by all the principles of selection and
evolution that we accept, that would appear to rule out the possibility of any
kind of mutation -- natural mutation, anyway. It would be inconceivable for
the same chance event to occur spontaneously and simultaneously in many
distinct and unrelated lines...utterly inconceivable."
      "Natural mutation?" Hunt looked puzzled. "What are you saying then?"
      "It's perfectly simple. We've just agreed that the difference couldn't
be due to ordinary natural mutation, but nevertheless it's there. The only
other explanation possible then is that it was not natural."
      Impossible thoughts flashed through Hunt's mind. Danchekker read the
expression on his face and voiced them for him.
      "In other words they didn't just happen; they were made to happen. The
genetic codings were deliberately rearranged. We are talking about an
artificial mutation."
      For a moment Hunt was stunned. The word deliberate denoted conscious
volition, which in turn implied an intelligence.
      Danchekker nodded again to confirm his thoughts. "If I may rephrase your
question of a minute ago, what we are really asking is, did the animals that
were shipped to Minerva change, or did the animals that were left on Earth
change after the others were shipped? Now add to the equation the further fact
that we have established -- that somebody deliberately caused the change to
happen -- and we are left with only one choice."
      Hunt completed the argument for him. "There hasn't been anybody around
on Earth during the last twenty-five million years that could have done it, so
it must have been done on Minerva. That can only mean..." His voice trailed
off as the full implication became clear.
      "The Ganymeans!" Danchekker said. He allowed some time for this to sink
in and then continued. "The Ganymeans altered the genetic coding of the
terrestrial animals that they took back to their own planet. I am fairly
certain that the samples that were recovered from the ship at Pithead were
descendants of a strain that had been mutated in this way and had faithfully
carried on the mutation in themselves. This is the only logical conclusion
that can be drawn from the evidence we have reviewed. Also, it is strongly
supported by another interesting piece of evidence."
      By now Hunt was ready for anything.
      "Oh?" he replied. "What?"
      "That strange enzyme that turned up in all of the Oligocene species,"
Danchekker said. "We know now what it did." The look on Hunt's face asked all
the questions for him. Danchekker continued: "That enzyme was constructed for
one specific task. It cleaved the DNA chain at precisely the point where those
two coding groups were joined -- in species where they were separated out, of
course. In other words, it isolated the genetic code that defined the CO2-
tolerance characteristics."
      "Okay," Hunt said slowly, but still not following the argument fully.
"I'll take your word for that...But how does that support what you just said
about the Ganymeans? I'm not quite -- "
      "That enzyme was not a result of any natural process! It was something
that had been manufactured and introduced artificially. That was where the
radioactive decay products came from; the enzyme was manufactured artificially
and included radioactive tracer elements to allow its progress through the
body to be tracked and measured. We use the same technique widely in medical
and physiological research ourselves."
      Hunt held up a hand to stop Danchekker going any further for the time
being. He sat forward in his chair and closed his eyes for a second as he
mentally stepped through the reasoning that the professor had summarized.
      "Yes...okay...You've pointed out all along that chemical processes can't
distinguish a radioisotope from a normal one. So, how could the enzyme have
selected radioisotopes to build into itself? Answer: It couldn't; somebody
must have selected them and therefore the enzyme must have been manufactured
artificially. Why use radioisotopes? Answer: Tracers." Hunt again looked
across at the professor, who was following and nodding encouragement. "But the
enzyme does a specialized job on the modified DNA chain, and you've already
established that the DNA was modified artificially in the animals that were
shipped to Minerva...Ah, I see...I can see how the two tie in together. What
you're saying is that the Ganymeans altered the DNA coding of the terrestrial
animals, and then manufactured a specific enzyme to operate on the altered
DNA."
      "Exactly."
      "And what was the purpose of it all?" Hunt was becoming visibly excited.
"Any ideas on that?"
      "Yes," Danchekker replied. "I think we have. In fact the things that we
have just considered tell us all that we need to know to guess at what they
were up to." He sat back and interlaced his fingers again. "With the enzyme
performing in the way that I have just described, the object of the exercise
becomes clear. At least I think it does...If the animals that possessed the
already altered DNA were implanted with the enzymes, the chromosomes in their
reproductive cells would have been modified. This would have made it possible
for a strain of offspring to be bred from them who possessed the CO2 coding in
the form of an isolated, compact unit that could be manipulated and 'got at'
with comparative ease. If you like, it enabled this particular characteristic
to be separated out, perhaps with a view to its becoming the focal point of
further experiments with later generations..." Danchekker's voice took on a
curious note as he uttered the last few words, as if he were hinting that the
main implication of his dissertation was about to emerge.
      "I can see what you're saying," Hunt told him. "But not quite why. What
were they up to then?"
      "That was how they sought to solve their environmental problem after all
else had failed," Danchekker said. "It must have been something that was
thought of during the later period of Ganymean history on Minerva -- sometime
after the Shapieron went to Iscaris, otherwise Shilohin and the others would
have known about it."
      "What was how they sought to solve it? Sorry, Chris, I'm afraid I'm not
with you all the way yet."
      "Let us recapitulate for a moment on their situation," Danchekker
suggested. "They knew that the CO2 level on Minerva had begun to rise, and
that one day it would reach a point that they would be unable to withstand;
the other Minervan native species would be unaffected, but the Ganymeans would
be vulnerable as a consequence of their breeding their original tolerance out
of themselves as part of the trade-off for better accident-resistance. They
lost it when they took the decision to dispense permanently with their
secondary circulation systems. They declined climatic engineering as a
solution and tried migration to Earth and the Iscaris experiment but both
failed. Later on, it appears, they must have tried something else."
      Hunt was all ears. He made a gesture of total capitulation and said
simply, "Go on."
      "One thing that they did discover on Earth, however, was a family of
life that had evolved from origins in a warmer environment than that of
Minerva, and which had not had to contend with the load-sharing problem that
had caused the double-circulatory-system architecture to become standard on
their own planet. Of particular interest, terrestrial life had evolved a
completely different mechanism for dealing with carbon dioxide -- one that did
not depend on any secondary circulation system."
      Hunt looked incredulous. He stared at Danchekker for a second while the
professor waited for the response.
      "You're not trying to say...they didn't try and pinch it?"
      Danchekker nodded. "If my suspicions are anything to go by, that is
exactly what they tried to do. The animals from Earth were transported back to
Minerva for the purpose of large-scale genetic experiments. The object of
those experiments, I believe, was threefold: first, to modify the DNA coding
in such a way that the CO2-tolerance portion became separated out from the
scrambled form -- as you put it -- that had evolved naturally on Earth;
second, to perfect a means -- the enzyme -- of isolating that block of code
and passing it on in an intact and workable unit to later strains; third, but
this is a guess, to implant those codes into Minervan animals in an attempt to
find out if a Minervan life form could be modified into developing a mechanism
for dealing with carbon dioxide that did not depend on its secondary system.
We have evidence that they achieved the first two of these objectives; the
third must necessarily remain speculative, at least for the time being."
      "And if they did succeed in the third, then the next step would be..."
Hunt's voice trailed off again. The sheer ingenuity of the Ganymean scheme
made it difficult for him to accept it unquestioningly.
      "If it worked, and if there were no undesirable side effects, the
intention was no doubt to engineer the same codes into themselves," Danchekker
confirmed. "Thus they would enjoy an in-built tolerance that would happily
continue to perpetuate itself through succeeding generations, while at the
same time preserving all the advantages that they had already gained by doing
away with their secondary systems. A fascinating example of what intelligence
can do to improve on Nature when natural evolution throws up a solution that
leaves much to be desired, don't you think?"
      Hunt rose from his chair and began pacing slowly from one side of the
office to the other as he marveled at the sheer audacity of even conceiving
such a scheme. The Ganymeans had expressed wonder at Man's readiness to meet
Nature head-on in every challenge, but here was something, surely, that Man
would have balked at. The basic instincts of the Ganymeans steered them away
from physical danger, conflict and the like, but their thirst for intellectual
adventure and combat, it appeared, was unquenchable; that was the spur that
had driven them to the stars. Danchekker watched in silence, waiting for the
question that he knew would come next. At length Hunt stopped and wheeled to
face the desk.
      "Yes, it was neat, all right," he agreed. "But it didn't work, did it,
Chris?"
      "Regrettably, no," Danchekker conceded. "But not for reasons for which,
I feel, they were really to blame. We might have some catching up to do with
them technically, but nevertheless I believe that we are in a position to see
where they went wrong." He didn't wait for the obvious question at that point
but went on. "We have the advantage of knowing far more than they possibly
could have about life on our own planet. We have access to the work of
thousands of scientists who have studied the subject for centuries, but the
Ganymeans who came here twenty-five million years ago did not. In particular,
they could not have known what Professor Tatham and his team at Cambridge have
only just discovered."
      "The scrambling together of the self-immunization and the CO2-tolerance
codings?"
      "Yes, exactly that. The thing that the Ganymean genetic engineers would
never have realized was that in isolating the latter, in order to make their
proposed later experiments simpler, they were losing the former. Because of
the method they adopted, the descendant strains that they bred would have been
ideal subjects for further CO2-tolerance research, but they would also have
lost their self-immunization capabilities. In other words the Ganymeans
created and raised a whole range of mixed terrestrial animal species that
possessed no trace of the age-old mechanism for stimulating their own
defensive processes by flooding the body with mild doses of pollutants -- a
mechanism which we still see today in the descendants of the animals that
remained on Earth to continue evolving naturally, of course."
      Hunt had stopped pacing and was now looking down at Danchekker with a
slow frown spreading across his face, as if another thought had just struck
him.
      "But there's something else, isn't there?" he said. "The self-
immunization process has something to do with higher brain functions...Are you
saying what I think you're saying?"
      "I suspect so. As you know, the toxins introduced into the body by the
self-immunization process in today's animals has the effect of inhibiting the
development of the higher brain centers. And another thing -- Tatham's latest
work indicates that, because of the way terrestrial life happens to have
evolved, the capacity for violence and aggression is closely related to the
development of those centers too. Thus, the Ganymeans would have found
themselves unable to produce variants of the type they wanted without also
removing the inhibition on the development of higher brain functions, and in
addition producing an enhanced tendency toward aggression. That being the case
and the Ganymeans being the way they were, I can't really see them taking the
experiment any further. They would never have risked introducing anything like
that into themselves, whatever the urgency of the situation. Never."
      "So they gave the whole thing up as a bad job in the end and went off to
pastures new," Hunt completed.
      "Maybe, and again maybe not. We have no way of telling for sure. I
certainly hope so for the sake of Garuth and his friends." Danchekker leaned
forward on the desk and at once his mood became more serious. "But whatever
the answer to that is, at least we have a definite answer to another of the
questions that you asked at the beginning."
      "Which one?"
      "Well, consider the situation that must have existed on Minerva when the
Ganymeans came to the point of accepting that their ambitious genetic
engineering solution was running into trouble. They could go away to another
star or stay on their own world and perish. Either way, the days of the
Ganymean presence on Minerva were numbered. Now take them out of the equation,
and what is left? Answer -- two populations of animals both of which are well
adapted to handling the environmental conditions. First there are the native
Minervan types, and second the artificially mutated descendants of the
imported terrestrial types, free to roam the planet after the departure of the
Ganymeans. Now return to the equation one further factor that I have
established through long interrogation of ZORAC's archives -- the native
Minervan species would not have been poisonous to terrestrial carnivores --
and what do you conclude?"
      Hunt gazed back with eyes that were suddenly aghast.
      "Christ!" he breathed. "It would have been a bloody slaughter."
      "Yes, indeed. Consider a planet inhabited only by those ridiculous
Technicolored cartoon animals that we found drawn on the walls of that ship at
Pithead -- animals that had never evolved any specializations for defense,
concealment or escape, and which had no need for fight-or-flight instincts at
all. Now throw in among them a typical mix of predators from Earth -- every
one a selected product of millions of years of improvement of the arts of
ferocity, stealth and cunning...added to which they were evolving higher
levels of intelligence that had previously been inhibited and their already
fearsome aggressiveness was being further reinforced. Now what picture do you
see?"
      Hunt just continued to stare in horrified silence as the picture
unfolded before his mind's eye.
      "That's what wiped them all out," he said at last. "That poor bloody
Minervan zoo wouldn't have had a chance. No wonder it didn't last for more
than a few generations after the Ganymeans disappeared from the scene."
      "With another consequence as well," Danchekker came in. "The terrestrial
carnivores concentrated on the most readily available prey -- the native
species -- and so gave the terrestrial herbivores a breathing space to
increase their numbers and become firmly established. By the time the Minervan
natives had been wiped out the carnivores would have been forced to revert to
their old habits, but by that time the situation would have stabilized. A
mixed and balanced terrestrial animal ecology had been given time to establish
itself across Minerva..." The professor's voice took on a soft and curious
tone. "And that is the way things must have remained...right on through until
the time of the Lunarians."
      "Charlie..." Hunt sensed that Danchekker was at last hinting at
something he had been building up to all along. "Charlie," Hunt repeated. "You
found that same enzyme in him too, didn't you?"
      "We did, but in a somewhat degenerate form...as if it were in the last
phases of fading away completely. It did fade away of course, since Man no
longer possesses it...But the interesting point, as you say, is that Charlie
had it and so, presumably, did the rest of the Lunarians."
      "And there was only one place for it to come from..."
      "Precisely."
      Hunt raised a hand to his brow as the full import of these revelations
hit him. He turned slowly to meet Danchekker's solemn gaze and then slowly,
his features knotted into a mask of disbelief that strove to reject the things
that reason now stripped bare, sank weakly down onto an arm of the nearest
chair. Danchekker said nothing, waiting for Hunt to put the pieces together
for himself.
      "The population on Minerva included samples of the latest Oligocene
primates," Hunt said after a while. "They were almost certainly as advanced as
anything that Earth had produced at the time, and with the greatest potential
for advancing further. The Ganymeans had unwittingly removed the inhibition on
further brain development..." He looked up and met Danchekker's imperturbable
stare again. "They'd have raced ahead from there. There was nothing to stop
them. And with their aggressive streak unleashed as well...a whole race of
runaway mutants...psychological Frankenstein monsters..."
      "Which is, of course, where the Lunarians came from," Danchekker said.
His voice was grave. "By rights they shouldn't have survived. All the theories
and models of the Ganymean scientists said that they would inevitably destroy
themselves. They almost did. They turned a whole planet into one vast fortress
and by the time they had developed technology their lives revolved around
unceasing warfare and the ruthless, uncompromising determination to
exterminate all other rival states. They were capable of conceiving no other
formula to solve their problems. In the end they did indeed destroy themselves
and Minerva along with them at least, they destroyed their civilization, if
that is the correct term for it. They should have destroyed themselves
totally, but, by a million-to-one chance, it did not quite happen..."
Danchekker looked up and left Hunt to fill in the rest.
      But Hunt just sat and stared, overwhelmed. After the nuclear holocaust
between the opposing forces of the two remaining Lunarian superstates had
altered permanently the face of Minerva's moon and Minerva had disintegrated,
the moon fell inward toward the Sun to be captured by Earth. The tiny band of
survivors carried with it had possessed the resources to set off one last,
desperate journey -- to the surface of the new world that now hung in the sky
above their heads. For forty thousand years the descendants of those survivors
had merged into the survival struggle of Earth, but eventually they had spread
all over the planet and emerged as an adversary as formidable as their
ancestors had been on Minerva.
      At last, Danchekker resumed quietly. "We have speculated for some time
now that the Lunarians, and hence Man, originated from an unprecedented
mutation that must have occurred somewhere along the primate line that was
isolated on Minerva. Also, we have noted that somewhere along his line of
ancestry, Man has somehow abandoned the self-immunization process that other
animals have in common. Now we see not only proof that these things were true,
but also how they came about. In fact many species went along that same path,
but all bar one were destroyed when Minerva was destroyed. Only one -- Man in
the form of the Lunarians -- came back again." Danchekker paused and took a
long breath. "An unprecedented mutation did indeed occur on Minerva, but it
was not a natural mutation. Modern Man exhibits fewer of the extremes that
drove the Lunarians to their doom, thankfully, but all the same the legacy of
our ancestry is written through the pages of our history. Homo sapiens is the
end-product of an unsuccessful series of Ganymean genetic experiments!
      "The Ganymeans believe that Man is slowly but surely recovering from the
instability and compulsive violence that destroyed the Lunarians. Let us hope
they are right."
      Neither man said anything more for a long time. It was ironic, Hunt
thought, that after all the Ganymeans had said, their own kind should turn out
to be the prime cause of all the things that had come to pass over the last
twenty-five million years. And throughout all that time, while primates
evolved into sapient beings on Minerva, and the Lunarian civilization came and
went, and fifty thousand years of human history were being acted out on Earth,
the Shapieron had been out there in the void, preserved by the mysterious
workings of the laws that distort time and space.
      "An unsuccessful series of Ganymean genetic experiments,"
      Hunt echoed Danchekker. "They started the whole thing. They came back to
find us flying spaceships and building fusion plants, and they thought our
rate of progress was miraculous. And all the time they'd started the whole
thing off in their own labs, twenty-five million years ago...and given it up
as a bad job! It's funny when you think about it, Chris. It's damned funny.
And now they've gone for good. I wonder what they would have said if they'd
only known what we know now."
      Danchekker did not reply at once, but stared thoughtfully at the top of
his desk for a while, as if weighing whether or not to say what was going
through his head. In the end he stretched an arm forward and began toying idly
with a pen. When he spoke he did not engage Hunt's eyes directly but continued
to watch the pen tumbling over and over between his fingers.
      "You know, Vic, in the last months before they went, the Ganymeans
became very interested in all aspects of terrestrial biochemistry, including
all our available data on Charlie, Man and the Oligocene animals from Pithead.
For a long time they were bubbling over with curiosity and ZORAC couldn't find
enough questions to ask about such matters. And then, about a month ago, they
suddenly became very quiet about it all. They haven't even mentioned it
since."
      The professor looked up and confronted Hunt with a direct and candid
stare.
      "I think I know why," he said, very softly. "You see, Vic. they knew all
right. They knew. They knew that they had brought a pathetically deformed
creature into a hostile universe and left it to fend for itself against odds
that were hopeless, and they returned and saw what that creature had become --
a proud and triumphant conqueror that laughs its defiance at anything the
universe cares to throw at it. That is why they are gone. They believe that
they owe it to Man to leave him free to perfect the world that he has built
for himself in whatever way he chooses. They know what we were and they see
what we have made of ourselves since. They feel that we have suffered enough
interference in the past and have shown ourselves to be the better managers of
our own destiny."
      Danchekker tossed the pen aside, gazed up and concluded:
      "And somehow, Vic, I don't think that we will let them down. The worst
is over now."


Epilogue

      The signal transmitted by the huge radio dish at the observatory on
Lunar Farside streaked outward from the fringe of the Solar System and into
the vast gulfs of empty space beyond. Its whisper brushed the sensors of a
sentinel that had been maintaining an unbroken vigil for a long, long time.
The circuits inside the robot understood and responded to the Ganymean code
that had been used to assemble the signal.
      Other equipment inside the robot transformed the signal into vibrations
of forces and fields that obeyed laws of physics unknown to Man, and
dispatched it into a realm of existence of which the universe of space and
time were mere shadowy projections. In another part of the shadow universe, on
a warm, bright planet that orbited a cheerful star, other machines received
and interpreted the message.
      The builders of the machines were informed and were at once filled with
wonder at the things that were reported to them.
      The sentinel extracted their reply from the superstructure of space,
transformed it back into electromagnetic waves, and beamed it back toward the
satellite of the third planet from the Sun.
      The astronomers at the Lunar Farside observatory were completely at a
loss to explain the information coming from the instruments connected to their
receivers; there was nothing within light-years of them from which a reply
could have been evoked, but a reply was coming in hours after they had
commenced transmitting. The officials at UNSA were equally bemused and time
went by while scientists used the information that had been transferred from
ZORAC's data banks to translate the message from Ganymean communications code
into the Ganymean language. But still it meant nothing to anybody.
      Then somebody thought of involving Dr. Victor Hunt of Navcomms Division.
Hunt immediately remembered Don Maddson's study of the Ganymean language and
sent the text down to Linguistics to see what they could make of it. Forty-
eight hours passed by while Maddson and his assistant worked. The task was not
one that they had practiced and, without ZORAC on tap to guide them, not one
that could be accomplished readily. But the message was concise and eventually
a red-eyed but triumphant Maddson presented Hunt with a single sheet of paper
on which was typed:

      The story of those who went to Iscaris long ago has been told through
the generations since our ancestors came from Minerva. However you got there
and however you found us, come home. There is a new Minerva now. We, your sons
and daughters, are waiting to welcome you.

      There were also some numbers and mathematical symbols that others in
Navcomms had decoded, and which identified The Giants' Star as the source of
the message by confirming its spectral type and its geometric position with
respect to readily locatable pulsars in the neighboring regions of the Galaxy.
      What physical processes might have been instrumental was something that
Hunt could not even begin to guess at, but there was no time for academic
speculation on such matters. The Ganymeans had to be told about what had
happened and the Shapieron could not be contacted by ordinary means while it
was in flight and under main drive. The only chance was to catch it at
Ganymede.
      The message from The Giants' Star was hastily transmitted to UNSA
Operational Command Headquarters at Galveston, beamed up to an orbiting
communications station and relayed out over the laser link to Jupiter Five.
Hours passed while Hunt, Danchekker, Maddson, Caldwell and everyone else at
Houston waited anxiously for something to come in through the open channel to
Galveston. At last the screen came to life. The message on it read:

      Shapieron left here seventeen minutes before your transmission came in.
Last seen accelerating flat-out for deepspace. All contact now broken. Sorry.

      There was nothing more that anybody could do.
      "At least," Hunt said as he turned wearily from the screen toward the
circle of dejected faces in Caldwell's office, "it's nice to know that it will
all have been worth it when they get there. At least they won't have any nasty
surprises waiting at the end of this voyage." He turned back and gazed
wistfully at the screen once more, then added: "I suppose it would have been
even nicer if they knew it too."