The Gentle Giants of Ganymede g-2

by James P. Hogan

  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 Boцtes 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 one 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?" H
unt 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 gravitics. 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 abifity 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 ha
d 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 scientists 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've 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."