Pictures from the past rolled by before his mind's eye: a boy,
reading books, shut away in the upstairs bedroom of a London slum .
. . a youth, pedaling a bicycle each morning through the narrow
streets of Cambridge. The people he had been were no more real than
the people he would become. All through his life he had been moving
on, never standing still, always in the process of changing from
something he had been to something he would be. And beyond every
new world, another beckoned. And always the faces around him were
unfamiliar ones-they drifted into his life like the transient
shadows of the rocks that now moved toward him from the mists
ahead. Like the rocks, for a while the people seemed to exist and
take on form and substance, before slipping by to dissolve into the
shrouds of the past behind him, as if they
had never been. Forsyth-Scott, Felix Borlan, and Rob Gray had
already ceased to exist. Would Caidwell, Danchekker, and the rest
soon fade away to join them? And what new figures would materialize
out of the unknown worlds lying hidden behind the veils of time
ahead?
He realized with some surprise that the mists around him were
getting brighter again; also, he could suddenly see farther. He was
climbing upward across an immense ice field, now smooth and devoid
of rocks. The light was an eerie glow, permeating evenly through
mists on every side as if the fog itself were luminous. He climbed
higher. With every step the horizon of his vision broadened
further, and the luminosity drained from the surrounding mist to
concentrate itself in a single patch that second by second grew
brighter above his head. And then he was looking out over the top
of the fog bank. It was just a pocket, trapped in the depression of
the vast basin in which the base had been built; it had no doubt
been sited there to shorten the length of the shaft needed to reach
the Ganymean ship. The slope above him finished in a long, rounded
ridge not fifty feet beyond where he stood. He changed direction
slightly to take the steeper incline that led directly to the
summit of the ridge. The last tenuous wisps of whiteness fell away.
At the top, the night was clear as crystal. He was standing on a
beach of ice that shelved down from his feet into a lake of cotton
wool. On the opposite shore of the lake rose the summits of the
rock buttresses and ice cliffs that stood beyond the base. For
miles around, ghostly white bergs of Ganymedean ice floated on an
ocean of cloud, shining against the blackness of the night.
But there was no Sun.
He raised his eyes, and gasped involuntarily. Above him, five times
larger than the Moon seen from Earth, was the full disk of Jupiter.
No photograph he had ever seen, or any image reproduced on a
display screen, could compare with the grandeur of that sight. It
filled the sky with its radiance. All the colors of the rainbow
were woven into its iridescent bands of light, stacked layer upon
layer outwards from its equator. They faded as they approached its
edge and merged into a hazy circle of pink that encircled the
planet. The pink turned to violet and finally to purple, ending in
a clear, sharp outline that traced an enormous circle against the
sky. Immutable, immovable, eternal. . . mightiest of
the gods-and tiny, puny, ephemeral man had crawled on a pilgrimage
of five hundred million miles to pay homage.
Maybe only seconds passed, maybe hours. H~tht could not tell. For a
fraction of eternity he stood unmoving, a speck lost among the
silent towers of rock and ice. Charlie too had stood upon the
surface of a barren waste and gazed up at a world wreathed in light
and color-but the colors had been those of death.
At that moment, the scenes that Charlie had seen came to Hunt more
vividly than at any time before. He saw cities consumed by
fireballs ten miles high; he saw gaping chasms, seared and
blackened ash that had once held oceans, and lakes of fire where
mountains had stood. He saw continents buckle and break asunder,
and drown beneath a fury of white heat that came exploding outward
from below. As clearly as if it were really happening, he saw the
huge globe above him swelling and bursting, grotesque with the
deceptive slowness of mighty events seen from great distances. Day
by day it would rush outward into space, consuming its moons one
after the other in an insatiable orgy of gluttony until its force
was spent. And then.
Hunt snapped back to reality with a jolt.
Suddenly the answer he had been seeking was there. It had come out
of nowhere. He tried to trace its root by backtracking through his
thoughts-but there was nothing. The pathways up from the deeper
levels of his mind had opened for a second, but now were closed.
The illusion was exposed. The paradox had gone. Of course nobody
had seen it before. Who would think to question a truth that was
self-evident, and older than the human race itself?
"Pithead Control calling Dr. V. Hunt. Dr. Hunt, come in, please."
The sudden voice in his helmet startled him. He pressed a button in
the control panel on his chest.
"Hunt answering," he acknowledged. "I hear you."
"Routine check. You're five minutes overdue to report. Is
everything okay?"
"Sorry, didn't notice the time. Yes, everything's okay. . . very
okay. I'm coming back now."
"Thank you." The voice cut off with a click.
Had he been gone that long? He realized that he was cold. The icy
fingers of the Ganymedean night were beginning to feel their way
inside his suit. He wound his heating control up a turn and
flexed his arms. Before he turned, he looked up once more for a
final glimpse of the giant planet. For some strange reason it
seemed to be smiling.
"Thanks, pal," he murmured with a wink. "Maybe P11 be able to do
something for you someday."
With that he began moving down from the ridge, and rapidly faded
into the sea of cloud.
chapter twenty-three
A group of about thirty people, mainly scientists, engineers, and
UNSA executives, filed into the conference theater in the Naycomms
Headquarters building. The room was arranged in ascending tiers of
seats that faced a large blank screen at the far end from the
double doors. Caldwell was standing on a raised platform in front
of the screen, watching as the various groups and individuals found
seats. Soon everybody was settled and an usher at the rear signaled
that the corridor outside was empty. Caidwell nodded in
acknowledgment, raised his hand for silence, and stepped a pace
forward to the microphone in front of him.
"Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen . . . Could we have
quiet, please . . ." The baritone voice boomed out of the
loudspeakers around the walls. The murmurs subsided.
"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," he resumed. "All
of you have been engaged for some time now in some aspect or other
of the Lun
arian problem. Ever since this thing first started, there
have been more than a few arguments and differences of opinion, as
you all know. Taking all things into consideration, however, we
haven't done too badly. We started out with a body and a few scraps
of paper, and from them we reconstructed a whole world. But there
are still some fundamental questions that have remained unanswered
right up to this day. I'm sure there's no need for me to recap them
for the benefit of anyone here." He paused. "At last, it appears,
we may have answers to those questions. The new developments that
cause me to say this are so unexpected that I feel it appropriate
to call you all together to let you see for yourselves what I saw
for the first time only a few hours ago." He waited again and
allowed the mood of the gathering to move from one suited to
preliminary remarks to something more in tune with the serious
business about to begin.
"As you all know, a group of scientists left us many months ago
with the Jupiter Five Mission to investigate the discoveries on
Ganymede. Among that group was Vic Hunt. This morning we re
ceived his latest report on what's going on. We are about to replay
the recording for you now. I think you will find it interesting."
Caldwell glanced toward the projection window at the back of the
room and raised his hand. The lights began to fade. He stepped down
from the platform and took his seat in the front row. Darkness
reigned briefly. Then the screen illuminated to show a file header
and reference frame in standard UNSA format. The header persisted
for a few seconds, then disappeared to be replaced by the image of
Hunt, facing the camera across a desktop.
"Navcomms Special Investigation to Ganymede, V. Hunt reporting, 20
November 2029, Earth Standard Time," he announced. "Subject of
transmission: A Hypothesis Concerning Lunarian Origins. What
follows is not claimed to be rigorously proven theory at this
stage. The object is to present an account of a possible sequence
of events which, for the first time, explains adequately the
origins of the Lunarians, and is also consistent with all the facts
currently in our possession." Hunt paused to consult some notes on
the desk before him. In the conference theater the silence was
absolute.
Hunt looked back up and out of the screen. "Up until now I've
tended not to accent any particular one of the ideas in circulation
in preference to the rest, primarily because I haven't been
sufficiently convinced that any of them, as stated, accounted
adequately for everything that we had reason to believe was true.
That situation has changed. I have now come to believe that one
explanation exists which is capable of supporting all the evidence.
That explanation is as follows:
"The Solar System was formed originally with nine planets, which
included Minerva and extended out as far as Neptune. Akin to the
inner planets and located beyond Mars, Minerva resembled Earth in
many ways. It was similar in size and density and was composed of a
mix of similar elements. It cooled and developed an atmosphere, a
hydrosphere, and a surface composition." Hunt paused for a second.
"This has been one source of difficulty- reconciling surface
conditions at this distance from the Sun with the existence of life
as we know it. For proof that these factors can indeed be
reconciled, refer to Professor Fuller's work at London University
during the last few months." A caption appeared on the lower
portion of the screen, giving details of the titles and access
codes of Fuller's papers on the subject
"Briefly, Fuller has produced a model of the equilibrium states of
various atmospheric gases and volcanically introduced water vapor,
that is consistent with known data. To s'ustain the levels of free
atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor, and the existence of
large amounts of water in a liquid state, the model requires a very
high level of volcanic activity on the planet, at least in its
earlier history. That this requirement was evidently met could
suggest that relative to its size, the crust of Minerva was
exceptionally thin, and the structure of this crust unstable. This
is significant, as becomes clear later. Fuller's model also ties in
with the latest information from the Asteroid surveys. The thin
crust could be the result of relatively rapid surface cooling
caused by the vast distance from the Sun, but with the internal
molten condition being prolonged by heat sources below the surface.
The Asteroid missions report many samples being tested that are
rich in radioactive heat-producing substances.
"So, Minerva cooled to a mean surface temperature somewhat colder
than Earth's but not as cold as you might think. With cooling came
the formation of increasingly more complex molecules, and
eventually life emerged. With life came diversification, followed
by competition, followed by selection-in other words, evolution.
After many millions of years, evolution culminated in a race of
intelligent beings who became dominant on the planet These were the
beings we have christened the Ganymeans.
"The Ganymeans developed an advanced technological civilization.
Then, approximately twenty-five million years ago, they had reached
a stage which we estimate to be about a hundred years ahead of our
own. This estimate is based on the design of the Ganymean ship
we've been looking at here, and the equipment found inside it.
"Some time around this period, a major crisis developed on Minerva.
Something upset the delicate mechanism controlling the balance
between the amount of carbon dioxide locked up in the rocks and
that in the free state; the amount in the atmosphere began to rise.
The reasons for this are speculative. One possibility is that
something triggered the tendency toward high volcanic activity
inherent in Minerva's structure-maybe natural causes, maybe
something the Ganymeans did. Another possibility is that the
Ganymeans were attempting an ambitious program of climate control
and the whole thing went wrong in a big way. At present we
really don't have a good answer to this part. However, our
investigations of the Ganymeans have hardly begun yet. There are
still years of work to be done on the contents of the ship alone,
and I'm pretty certain that there's a lot more waiting to be
discovered down under the ice here.
"Anyhow, the main point for the present is that something happened.
Chris Danchekker has shown . . ." Another file reference appeared
on the bottom of the screen. ". . . that all the higher,
air-breathing Minervan life forms would almost certainly have
possessed a very low tolerance to increases in carbon-dioxide
concentration. This derives from the fundamental system of
microchemistry inherited from the earliest ancestors of the line.
This implies, of course, that the changing surface conditions on
Minerva posed a threat to the very existence of most forms of
land
life, including the Ganymeans. If we accept this situation, we also
have a plausible reason for supposing that the Ganymeans went
through a phase of importing on a vast scale a mixed balance of
plant and animal life from Earth. Perhaps, stuck out where it was,
Minerva had nothing to compare with the quantity and variety of
life teeming on the much warmer planet Earth.
"Evidently, the experiment didn't work. Although the imported stock
found conditions favorable enough to flourish in, they failed to
produce the desired result. From various bits of information, we
believe the Ganymeans gave the whole thing up as a bad job and
moved out to find a new home somewhere outside the Solar System.
Whether or not they succeeded we don't know; maybe further study of
what's in the ship will throw more light on that question."
Hunt stopped to pick up a case from the desk and went through the
motions of lighting a cigarette. The break seemed to be timed to
give the viewers a chance to digest this part of his narrative. A
subdued chorus of mutterings broke out around the room. Here and
there a light flared as individuals succumbed to the suggestion
from the screen. Hunt continued:
"The native Minervan land species left on the planet soon died out.
But the immigrant types from Earth enjoyed a better adaptability
and survived. Not only that, they were free to roam unchecked and
unhindered across the length and breadth of Minerva, where any
native competition rapidly ceased to exist. The new arrivals were
thus free to continue the process of evolutionary
development that had begun millions of years before in the oceans
of Earth. But at the same time, of course, the same process was
also continuing on Earth itself. Two groups of animal species,
possessing the same genetic inheritance from common ancestors and
equipped with the same evolutionary potential, were developing in
isolation on two different worlds.
"Now, for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, allow me
to introduce Cyril." The picture of Hunt vanished and a view of the
man-ape retrieved from the Ganymean ship appeared.
Hunt's voice carried on with the commentary: "Chris's team has made
a thorough examination of this character in the Jupiter Four
laboraties. Chris's own summary of their results was, quote:
Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars Page 23