Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars

  impressed by the director's organizational ability and his ruthless

  efficiency when it came to annihilating opposition. There were

  other things, however, about which Hunt harbored mild personal

  doubts.

  "How's it all going, then?" he asked. His tone was neutral. It did

  not escape the girl's sharply tuned senses. Her eyes narrowed

  almost imperceptibly.

  "Well, you've seen most of the action so far. How do you think it's

  going?"

  He tried a sidestep to avoid her deliberate turning around of the

  question.

  "None of my business, really, is it? We're just the machine minders

  in all this."

  "No, really-I'm interested. What do you think?"

  Hunt made a great play of stubbing out his cigarette. He frowned

  and scratched his forehead.

  "You've got rights to opinions, too," she persisted. "Our

  Constitution says so. So, what's your opinion?"

  There was no way off the hook, or of evading those big brown eyes.

  "There's no shortage of information turning up," he conceded at

  last. "The infantry is doing a good job . . ." He let the rider

  hang.

  "But what . . . Hunt sighed.

  "But. . . the interpretation. There's something too dogmatic- too

  rigid-about the way the big names higher up are using the

  information. It's as if they can't think outside the ruts they've

  thought inside for years. Maybe they're overspecialized-won't admit

  any possibility that goes against what they've always believed."

  "For instance?"

  "Oh, I don't know. . . Well, take Danchekker, for one. He's always

  accepted orthodox evolutionary theory-all his life, I suppose;

  therefore, Charlie must be from Earth. Nothing else is possi

  ble. The accepted theory must be right, so that much is fixed; you

  have to work everything else to fit in with that."

  "You think he's wrong? That Charlie came from somewhere else?"

  "Hell, I don't know. He could be right. But it's not his conclusion

  that I don't like; it's his way of getting there. This problem's

  going to need more flexibility before it's cracked."

  Lyn nodded slowly to herself, as if Hunt had confirmed something.

  "I thought you might say something like that," she mused. "Gregg

  will be interested to hear it. He wondered the same thing, too."

  Hunt had the feeling that the questions had been more than just an

  accidental turn of conversation. He looked at her long and hard.

  "Why should Gregg be interested?"

  "Oh, you'd be surprised. Gregg knows a lot about you two.

  He's interested in anything anybody has to say. It's people, see-

  Gregg's a genius with people. He knows what makes them tick.

  It's the biggest part of his job."

  "Well, it's a people problem he's got," Hunt said. "Why doesn't he

  fix it?"

  Suddenly Lyn switched moods and seemed to make light of the whole

  subject, as if she had learned all she needed to for the time

  being.

  "Oh, he will-when he gets the feeling that the time's right. He's

  very good with timing, too." She decided to finish the matter

  entirely. "Anyhow, it's time for lunch." She stood up and slipped a

  hand through an arm on either side. "How about two crazy Limeys

  treating a poor girl from the Colonies to a drink?"

  chapter eight

  The progress meeting, in the main conference room of the Naycomms

  Headquarters building, had been in session for just over two hours.

  About two dozen persons were seated or sprawled around the large

  table that stood in the center of the room, by now reduced to a

  shambles of ifies, papers, overflowing ashtrays, and half-empty

  glasses.

  Nothing really exciting had emerged so far. Various speakers had

  reported the results of their latest tests, the sum total of their

  conclusions being that Charlie's circulatory, respiratory, nervous,

  endocrine, lymphatic, digestive, and every other system anybody

  could think of were as normal as those of anyone sitting around the

  table. His bones were the same, his body chemistry was the same,

  his blood was a familiar grouping. His brain capacity and

  development were within the normal range for Homo sapiens, and

  evidence suggested that he had been right-handed. The genetic codes

  carried in his reproductive cells had been analyzed; a computer

  simulation of combining them with codes donated by an average human

  female had confirmed that the offspring of such a union would have

  inherited a perfectly normal set of characteristics.

  Hunt tended to remain something of a passive observer of the

  proceedings, conscious of his status as an unofficial guest and

  wondering from time to time why he had been invited at all. The

  only reference made to him so far had been a tribute in Caldwell's

  opening remarks to the invaluable aid rendered by the

  Trimagniscope; apart from the murmur of agreement that had greeted

  this comment, no further mention had been made of either the

  instrument or its inventor. Lyn Garland had told him: "The

  meeting's on Monday, and Gregg wants you to be there to answer

  detailed questions on the scope." So here he was. Thus far, nobody

  had wanted to know anything detailed about the scope-only about the

  data it produced. Something gave him the uneasy feeling there was

  an ulterior motive lurking somewhere.

  ~rter aweiiing on Charlie's computerized, mathematical sex life,

  the chair considered a suggestion, put forward by a Texas

  planetologist sitting opposite Hunt, that perhaps the Lunarians

  came from Mars. Mars had reached a later phase of planetary

  evolution than Earth and possibly had evolved inteffigent life

  earlier, too. Then the arguments started. Martian exploration went

  right back to the 1970s; UNSA had been surveying the surface from

  satellites and manned bases for years. How come no sign of any

  Lunarian civilization had showed up? Answer: We've been on the Moon

  a hell of a lot longer than that and the first traces have only

  just shown up there. So you could expect discovery to occur later

  on Mars. Objection: If they came from Mars, then their civilization

  developed on Mars. Signs of a whole civilization should be far more

  obvious than signs of visits to a place like Earth's Moon-

  therefore the Lunarians should have been detected a lot sooner on

  Mars. Answer: Think about the rate of erosion on the Martian

  surface. The signs could be largely wiped out or buried. At least

  that could account for there not being any signs on Earth. Somebody

  then pointed out that this did not solve the problem-all it did was

  shift it to another place. If the Lunarians came from Mars,

  evolutionary theory was still in just as big a mess as ever.

  So the discussion went on.

  Hunt wondered how Rob Gray was getting on back at Westwood. They

  now had a training schedule to fit in on top of their normal daily

  data-collection routine. A week or so before, Caldwell had informed

  them that he wanted four engineers from Naycomms fully trained as

  Trimagniscope operators. His explanation, that this would allo
w

  round-the-clock operation of the scope and hence better

  productivity from it, had not left Hunt convinced; neither had his

  further assertion that Navcomms was going to buy itself some of the

  instruments but needed to get some in-house expertise while they

  had the opportunity.

  Maybe Caldwell intended setting up Navcomms as an independent and

  self-sufficient scope-operating facility. Why would he do that? Was

  Forsyth-Scott or somebody else exerting pressure to get Hunt back

  to England? If this was a prelude to shipping him back, the scope

  would obviously stay in Houston. That meant that the first thing

  he'd be pressed into when he got back would be a panic to get the

  second prototype working. Big deal!

  The meeting eventually accepted that the Martian-origin theory

  created more problems than it solved and, anyway, was pure

  speculation. Last rites in the form of "No substantiating evidence

  offered" were pronounced, and the corpse was quietly laid to rest

  under the epitaph In Abeyance, penned in the "Action" columns of

  the memoranda sheets around the table.

  A cryptologist then delivered a long rambling account of the

  patterns of character groupings that occurred in Charlie's personal

  documents. They had already completed preliminary processing of all

  the individual papers, the contents of the wallet, and one of the

  books; they were about half way through the second. There were many

  tables, but nobody knew yet what they meant; some structured lines

  of symbols suggested mathematical formulas; certain page and

  section headings matched entries in the text. Some character

  strings appeared with high frequency, some with less; some were

  concentrated on a few pages, while others were evenly spread

  throughout. There were lots of figures and statistics. Despite the

  enthusiasm of the speaker, the mood of the room grew heavy and the

  questions fewer. They knew he was a bright guy; they wished he'd

  stop telling them.

  At length, Danchekker, who had been noticeably silent through most

  of the proceedings and appeared to be growing increasingly

  impatient as they continued, obtained leave from the chair to

  address the meeting. He rose to his feet, clasped his lapels, and

  cleared his throat. "We have devoted as much time as can be excused

  to exploring improbable and far-flung suggestions which, as we have

  seen, turn out to be fallacious." He spoke confidently, taking in

  the length of the table with side-to-side swings of his body. "The

  time has surely come, gentlemen, for us to daily no longer, but to

  concentrate our efforts on what must be the only viable line of

  reasoning open to us. I state, quite categorically, that the race

  of beings to whom we have come to refer as the Lunarians originated

  here, on Earth, as did the rest of us. Forget all your fantasies of

  visitors from other worlds, interstellar travelers, and the like.

  The Lunarians were simply products of a civilization that developed

  here on our own planet and died out for reasons we have yet to

  determine. What, after all, is so strange about that? Civilizations

  have grown and passed away in the brief span of our more orthodox

  history, and no doubt others will continue the pattern. This

  conclusion follows from comprehensive and consistent evidence and

  from the proven principles of the various natural sci

  ences. It requires no invention, fabrication, or supposition, but

  derives directly from unquestionable facts and the straightforward

  application of established methods of inference!' He paused and

  cast his eyes around the table to invite comment.

  Nobody commented. They already knew his arguments. Danchekker,

  however, seemed about to go through it all again. Evidently he had

  concluded that attempts to make them see the obvious by appealing

  to their powers of reason alone were not enough; his only resort

  then was insistent repetition until they either concurred or went

  insane.

  Hunt leaned back in his chair, took a cigarette from a box lying

  nearby on the table, and tossed his pen down on his pad. He still

  had reservations about the professor's dogmatic attitude, but at

  the same time he was aware that Danchekker's record of academic

  distinction was matched by those of few people alive at the time.

  Besides, this wasn't Hunt's field. His main objection was something

  else, a truth he accepted for what it was and made no attempt to

  fool himself by rationalizing: Everything about Danchekker

  irritated him. Danchekker was too thin; his clothes were too

  old-fashioned-he carried them as if they had been hung on to dry.

  His anachronistic gold-rimmed spectacles were ridiculous. His

  speech was too formal. He had probably never laughed in his life. A

  skull vacuum-packed in skin, Hunt thought to himself.

  "Allow me to recapitulate," Danchekker continued. "Homo

  sapiens-modern man-belongs to the phylum Vertebrata. So, also, do

  all the mammals, fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles that have

  ever walked, crawled, flown, slithered, or swum in every corner of

  the Earth. All vertebrates share a common pattern of basic

  architecture, which has remained unchanged over millions of years

  despite the superficial, specialized adaptations that on first

  consideration might seem to divide the countless species we see

  around us.

  "The basic vertebrate pattern is as follows: an internal skeleton

  of bone or cartilage and a vertebral colunm. The vertebrate has two

  pairs of appendages, which may be highly developed or degenerate,

  likewise a tail. It has a ventrally located heart, divided into two

  or more chambers, and a closed circulatory system of blood made up

  of red cells containing hemoglobin. It has a dorsal nerve cord

  which bulges at one end into a five-part brain contained in a head.

  It also has a body cavity that contains most of its

  vital organs and its digestive system. All vertebrates conform to

  these rules and are thereby related."

  The professor paused and looked around as if the conclusion were

  too obvious to require summarizing. "In other words, Charlie's

  whole structure shows him to be directly related to a million and

  one terrestrial animal species, extinct, alive, or yet to come.

  Furthermore, all terrestrial vertebrates, including ourselves and

  Charlie, can be traced back through an unbroken succession of

  intermediate fossils as having inherited their common pattern from

  the earliest recorded ancestors of the vertebrate

  line"-Danchekker's voice rose to a crescendo-"from the first boned

  fish that appeared in the oceans of the Devonian period of the

  Paleozoic era, over four hundred million years ago!" He paused for

  this last to take hold and then continued. "Charlie is as human as

  you or i in every respect. Can there be any doubt, then, that he

  shares our vertebrate heritage and therefore our ancestry? And if

  he shares our ancestry, then there is no doubt that he also shares

  our place of origin. Charlie is a native of planet Earth."

&nb
sp; Danchekker sat down and poured himself a glass of water. A hubbub

  of mixed murmurings and mutterings ensued, punctuated by the

  rustling of papers and the clink of water glasses. Here and there,

  chairs creaked as cramped limbs eased themselves into more

  comfortable positions. A metallurgist at one end of the table was

  gesturing to the man seated next to her. The man shrugged, showed

  his empty palms, and nodded his head in Danchekker's direction. She

  turned and called to the professor. "Professor Danchekker . . .

  Professor . . ." Her voice made itself heard. The background noise

  died away. Danchekker looked up. "We've been having a little

  argument here-maybe you'd like to comment Why couldn't Charlie have

  come from a parallel line of evolution somewhere else?"

  "I was wondering that, too," came another voice. Danchekker frowned

  for a moment before replying.

  "No. The point you are overlooking here, I think, is that the

  evolutionary process is fundamentally made up of random events.

  Every living organism that exists today is the product of a chain

  of successive mutations that has continued over millions of years.

  The most important fact to grasp is that each discrete mutation is

  in itself a purely random event, brought about by aberrations in

  genetic coding and the mixing of the sex cells from different par-

  ents. The environment into which the mutant is born dictates

  whether it will survive to reproduce its kind or whether it will

  die out. Thus, some new characteristics are selected for further

  miprovement, while others are promptly eradicated and still others

  are diluted away by interbreeding.

  "There are still people who find this principle difficult to accept

  -primarily, I suspect, because they are incapable of visualizing

  the implications of numbers and time scales beyond the ranges that

  occur in everyday life. Remember we are talking about billions of

  billions of combinations coming together over millions of years. "A

  game of chess begins with only twenty playable moves to choose

  from. At every move the choice available to the player is

  restricted, and yet, the number of legitimate positions that the

  board could assume after only ten moves is astronomical. Imagine,

  then, the number of permutations that could arise when the game

  continues for a billion moves and at each move the player has a