Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars

by Inherit the Stars [lit]

  being whisked smoothly through the tube toward E section of the

  ship.

  The permanently open self-service restaurant was about half full.

  The usual clatter of cutlery and dishes poured from the kitchens

  behind the counter at one end, where a trio of UNSA cooks were

  dishing out generous helpings of assorted culinary offerings

  ranging from UNSA eggs and UNSA beans to UNSA chicken legs and UNSA

  steaks. Automatic food dispensers with do-it-yourself microwave

  cookers had been tried on Jupiter Four but hadn't proved popular

  with the crew. So the designers of Jupiter Five had gone back to

  the good old-fashioned methods.

  Carrying their trays, Hunt and Danchekker threaded their way

  between diners, card players, and vociferous debating groups and

  found an empty table against the far wall. They sat down and began

  transferring their plates to the table.

  "So, you've been entertaining some thoughts concerning our Ganymean

  friends," Danchekker commented as he began to butter a roll.

  "Them and the Lunarians," Hunt replied. "In particular, I like your

  idea that the Lunarians evolved on Minerva from terrestrial animal

  species that the Ganymeans imported. It's the only thing that

  accounts acceptably for no traces of any civilization showing up on

  Earth. All these attempts people are making to show it might be

  different don't convince me much at all."

  "I'm very gratified to hear you say so," Danchekker declared. "The

  problem, however, is proving it."

  "Well, that's what I've been thinking about. Maybe we shouldn't

  have to."

  Danchekker looked up and peered inquisitively over his spectacles.

  He looked intrigued. "Really? How, might I ask?"

  "We've got a big problem trying to figure out anything about what

  happened on Minerva because we're fairly sure it doesn't exist any

  more except as a million chunks of geology strewn around the Solar

  System. But the Lunarians didn't have that prob

  lem. They had it in one piece, right under their feet. Also, they

  had progressed to an advanced state of scientific knowledge. Now,

  what must their work have turned up-at least to some extent?"

  A light of comprehension dawned in Danchekker's eyes.

  "Ah!" he exclaimed at once. "I see. If the Ganymean dviiization had

  flourished on Minerva first, then Lunarian scientists would surely

  have deduced as much." He paused, frowned, then added: "But that

  does not get you very far, Dr. Hunt. You are no more able to

  interrogate Lunarian scientific archives than you are to reassemble

  the planet."

  "No, you're right," Hunt agreed. "We don't have any detailed

  Lunarian scientific records-but we do have the microdot library.

  The texts it contains are pretty general in nature, but I couldn't

  help thinking that if the Lunarians discovered an advanced race had

  been there before them, it would be big and exciting news,

  something everybody would know about; you've only got to look at

  the fuss that Charlie has caused on Earth. Perhaps there were

  references through all of their writings that pointed to such a

  knowledge-if we knew how to read them." He paused to swallow a

  mouthful of sausage. "So, one of the things I've been doing over

  the last few weeks is going through everything we've got with a

  fine-tooth comb to see if anything could point to something like

  that. I didn't expect to find firm proof of anything much-just

  enough for us to be able to say with a bit more confidence that we

  think we know what planet we're talking about."

  "And did you find very much?" Danchekker seemed interested.

  "Several things," Hunt replied. "For a start, there are stock

  phrases scattered all through their language that refer to the

  Giants. Phrases like 'As old as the Giants' or 'Back to the year of

  the Giants' . . . like we'd say maybe, 'Back to the year one.' In

  another place there's a passage that begins 'A long time ago, even

  before the time of the Giants' . . . There are lots of things like

  that. When you look at them from this angle, they all suddenly tie

  together." Hunt paused for a second to allow the professor time to

  reflect on these points, then resumed: "Also, there are references

  to the Giants in another context, one that suggests superpowers or

  great knowledge-for example, 'Gifted with the wisdom of the

  Giants.' You see what I mean-these phrases indicate the Lunarians

  felt a race of giant beings-and probably one that was advanced

  technologically-had existed in the distant past."

  Danchekker chewed his food in silence for a while.

  "I don't want to sound overskeptical," he said at last, "but all

  this seems rather speculative. Such references could well be to

  nothing more than mythical creations-similar to our own heroes of

  folklore."

  "That occurred to me, too," Hunt conceded. "But thinking about it,

  I'm not so sure. The Lunarians were the last word in

  pragmatism-they had no time for romanticism, religion, matters of

  the spirit, or anything like that. In the situation they were in,

  the only people who could help them were themselves, and they knew

  it. They couldn't afford the luxury and the delusion of in-venting

  gods, heroes, and Father Christmases to work their problems out for

  them." He shook his head. "I don't believe the Lunarians made up

  any legends about these Giants. That would have been too much out

  of character."

  "Very well," Danchekker agreed, returning to his meal. "The

  Lunarians were aware of the prior existence of the Ganymeans. I

  suspect, however, that you had more than that in mind when you

  called."

  "You're right," Hunt said. "While I was going through the texts, I

  pulled together some other bits and pieces that are more in your

  line."

  "Go on."

  "Well, supposing for the moment that the Ganymeans did ship a whole

  zoo out to Minerva, the Lunarian biologists later on would have had

  a hell of a problem making any sense out of what they found all

  around them, wouldn't they? I mean, with two different groups of

  animals loose about the place, totally unrelated

  -and bearing in mind that they couldn't have known what we know

  about terrestrial species. ."

  "Worse than that, even," Danchekker supplied. "They would have been

  able to trace the native Minervan species all the way back to their

  origins; the imported types, however, would extend back through

  only twenty-five million years or so. Before that, there would have

  been no record of any ancestors from which they could have

  descended."

  "That's precisely one of the things I wanted to ask you," Hunt

  said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.

  "Suppose you were a Lunarian biologist and knew only the facts he

  would have known. What sort of picture would it have added up to?"

  Danchekker stopped chewing and thought for a long time, his eyes

  staring far beyond where Hunt was sitting. At length he shook his

  head slowly.

  "That is a very diflicult question to ans
wer. In that situation one

  might, I suppose, speculate that the Ganymeans had introduced alien

  species. But on the other hand, that is what a biologist from Earth

  would think; he would be conditioned to expect a continuous fossil

  record stretching back over hundreds of millions of years. A

  Lunarian, without any such conditioning, might not regard the

  absence of a complete record as in any way abnormal. If that was

  part of the accepted way of things in the world in which he had

  grown up. . ."

  Danchekker's voice faded away for a few seconds. "If I were a

  Lunarian," he said suddenly, his voice decisive, "I would explain

  what I saw thus: Life began in the distant past on Minerva, evolved

  through the accepted process of mutation and selection, and

  branched into many diverse forms. About twenty-five million years

  ago, a particularly violent series of mutations occurred in a short

  time, out of which emerged a new family of forms, radically

  different in structure from anything before. This family branched

  to produce its own divergency of species, living alongside the

  older models, and culminating in the emergence of the Lunarians

  themselves. Yes, I would explain the new appearances in that way.

  It's similar to the appearance of insects on Earth-a whole family

  in itself, structurally dissimilar to anything else." He thought it

  over again for a second and then nodded firmly. "Certainly,

  compared to an explanation of that nature, suggestions of forced

  interplanetary migrations would appear very farfetched indeed."

  "I was hoping you'd say something like that." Hunt nodded,

  satisfied. "In fact, that's very much what they appear to have

  believed. It's not specifically stated in anything I've read, but

  odds and ends from different places add up to that. But there's

  something odd about it as well."

  "Oh?"

  "There's a funny word that crops up in a number of places that

  doesn't have a direct English equivalent; it means something

  between 'manlike' and 'man-related.' They used it to describe many

  animal types."

  "Probably the animals descended from the imported types and related

  to themselves," Danchekker suggested.

  "Yes, exactly. But they also used the saute word in a totally

  different context-to mean 'ashore,' 'on land'. . . anything to do

  with dry land. Now, why should a word become synonymous with two

  such different meanings?"

  Danchekker stopped eating again and furrowed his brow.

  "I really can't imagine. Is it important?"

  "Neither could I, and I think it is. I've done a lot of

  cross-checking with Linguistics on this, and it all adds up to a

  very peculiar thing: 'Manlike' and 'dry-land' became synonymous on

  Minerva because they did in fact mean the same thing. All the land

  animals on Minerva were new models. We coined the word terrestoid

  to describe them in English."

  "A ii of them? You mean that by Charlie's time there were none of

  the original Minervan species left at all?" Danchekker sounded

  amazed.

  "That's what we think-not on land, anyway. There was a full fossil

  record of plenty of types all the way up to, and including the

  Ganymeans, but nothing after that-just terrestoids."

  "And in the sea?"

  "That was different. The old Minervan types continued right

  through-hence your fish."

  Danchekker gazed at Hunt with an expression that almost betrayed

  open disbelief.

  "How extraordinary!" he exclaimed.

  The professor's arm had suddenly become paralyzed and was holding a

  fork in midair with half a roast potato impaled on the end. "You

  mean that all the native Minervan land life disappeared

  -just like that?"

  "Well, during a fairly short time, anyway. We've been asking for a

  long time what happened to the Ganymeans. Now it looks more as if

  the question should be phrased in even broader terms:

  What happened to the Ganymeans and all their land-dwelling

  relatives?"

  chapter twenty-one

  For weeks the two scientists debated the mystery of the abrupt

  disappearance of the native Minervan land dwellers. They ruled out

  physical catastrophe on the assumption that anything of that kind

  would have destroyed the terrestoid types as well. The same

  conclusion applied to climatic cataclysm.

  For a while they considered the possibility of an epidemic caused

  by microorganisms imported with the immigrant animals, one against

  which the native species enjoyed no inherited, in-built immunity.

  In the end they dismissed this idea as unlikely on two counts;

  first, an epidemic sufficiently virulent in its effects to wipe out

  each and every species of what must have numbered millions, was

  hard to imagine; second, all information received so far from

  Ganymede suggested that the Ganymeans had been considerably farther

  ahead in technical knowledge than either the Lunarians or

  mankind-surely they could never have made such a blunder.

  A variation on this theme supposed that germ warfare had broken

  out, escalated, and got out of control. Both the previous

  objections carried less weight when viewed in this context; in the

  end, this explanation was accepted as possible. That left only one

  other possibility: some kind of chemical change in the Minervan

  atmosphere to which the native species hadn't been capable of

  adapting but the terrestoids had. But what?

  While the pros and cons of these alternatives were still being

  evaluated on Jupiter Five, the laser link to Earth brought details

  of a new row that had broken out in Navcomms. A faction of Pure

  Earthists had produced calculations showing that the Lunarians

  could never have survived on Minerva at all, let alone flourished

  there; at that distance from the Sun it would simply have been too

  cold. They also insisted that water could never have existed on the

  surface in a liquid state and held this fact as proof that wherever

  the world shown on Charlie's maps had been, it couldn't have been

  anywhere near the Asteroids.

  Against this attack the various camps of Minerva-ists concluded

  a hasty alliance and opened counterfire with calculations of their

  own, which invoked the greenhouse effect of atmospheric carbon

  dioxide to show that a substantially higher temperature could have

  been sustained. They demonstrated further that the percentage of

  carbon dioxide required to produce the mean temperature that they

  had already estimated by other means, was precisely the figure

  arrived at by Professor Schorn in his deduction of the composition

  of the Minervan atmosphere from an analysis of Charlie's cell

  metabolism and respiratory system. The land mine that finally

  demolished the Pure Earthist position was Schom's later

  pronouncement that Charlie exhibited several physiological signs

  implying adaptation to an abnormally high level of carbon dioxide.

  Their curiosity stimulated by all this sudden interest in the

  amount of carbon dioxide in the Minervan atmosphere, Hunt and

>   Danchekker devised a separate experiment of their own. Combining

  Hunt's mathematical skill with Danchekker's knowledge of

  quantitative molecular biology, they developed a computer model of

  generalized Minervan microchemical behavior potentials, based on

  data derived from the native fish. It took them over three months

  to perfect. Then they applied to the model a series of mathematical

  operators that simulated the effects of different chemical agents

  in the environment. When he viewed the results on the screen in one

  of the console rooms Danchekker's conclusion was quite definite:

  "Any air-breathing life form that evolved from the same primitive

  ancestors as this fish and inherited the same fundamental system of

  microchemistry, would be extremely susceptible to a family of

  toxins that includes carbon dioxide-far more so than the majority

  of terrestrial species."

  For once, everything added up. About twenty-five million years ago,

  the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Minerva

  apparently increased suddenly, possibly through some natural cause

  that had liberated the gas from chemical combination in rocks, or

  possibly as a result of something the Ganymeans had done. This

  could also explain why the Ganymeans had brought in all the

  animals. Perhaps their prime objective had been to redress the

  balance by covering the planet with carbon-dioxideabsorbing,

  oxygen-producing terrestrial green plants; the animals had been

  included simply to preserve a balanced ecology in which the plants

  could survive. The attempt failed. The native life succumbed, and

  the more highly resistant immigrants flourished and

  spread out over a whole new world denuded of alien competition.

  Nobody knew for sure that it had been so on Minerva. Possibly

  nobody ever would.

  And nobody knew what had become of the Ganymeans. Perhaps they had

  perished along with their cousins. Perhaps, when their efforts

  proved futile, they had abandoned Minerva to its new inhabitants

  and left the Solar System completely to find a new home elsewhere.

  Hunt hoped so. For some strange reason he had developed an

  inexplicable affection for this mysterious race. In one of the

  Lunarian texts he had come across a verse that began: "Far away

  among the stars, where the Giants of old now live. . ." He hoped it