Inherit the Stars g-1

by James P. Hogan

  Maddson pointed to another pile of papers on the corner of his desk. "This was the prime objective that the State was set up to achieve, and because the stakes were so high, everything was subordinated to that objective. Hence, from birth to death the individual was subordinated to the needs of the State. It was implied in everything they wrote and drummed into them from the time they were knee-high. Those papers are a translation of a kind of catechism they had to memorize at school; it reads like Nazi stuff from the nineteen thirties." He stopped at that point and looked at Hunt expectantly.

  Hunt looked puzzled. After a moment he said, "This doesn’t quite make sense. I mean-how could they be striving to develop space flight if they were colonists from Earth? They must have already developed it."

  Maddson gave an approving nod. "Thought you might say that."

  "But… it’s bloody silly."

  "I know. It implies they must have evolved on Minerva from scratch-unless they came from Earth, forgot everything they knew, and had to learn it all over. But that also sounds crazy to me."

  "Me, too." Hunt thought for a long time. At last he shook his head with a sigh. "Doesn’t make sense. Anyhow, what else is there?"

  "Well, we’ve got the general picture of a totally authoritarian State, demanding unquestioning obedience from the individual and controlling just about everything that moves. Everything needs a license; there are travel licenses, off-work licenses, sick-ration licenses-even procreation licenses. Everything is in short supply and rationed by permits-food, every kind of commodity, fuel, light, accommodation-you name it. And to keep everybody in line, the State operates a propaganda machine like you never dreamed of. To make things worse, the whole planet was desperately short of every kind of mineral. That slowed them down a lot. Despite their concentrated effort, their rate of technological progress was probably not as fast as you’d think. Maybe a hundred years didn’t give them as long as it sounds." Maddson turned some sheets, scanned the next one briefly, and then went on. "To make matters worse still, they also had a big political problem."

  "Go on."

  "Now, we’re assuming that as their civilization developed, it followed similar lines to ours-first tribes, then villages, towns, nations, and so on. Seems reasonable. So, somewhere along the way they started discovering the different sciences, same as we did. As you’d expect, the same ideas started occurring to different people in different places at around the same time-like, we’ve gotta get outa this place. As these ideas became accepted, the Lunarians seem to have figured also that there just weren’t sufficient resources for more than a few lucky ones to make it. No way were they going to get a whole planet full of people out."

  "So they fought about it," Hunt offered.

  "That’s right. The way I picture it, lots of nations grew up, all racing each other, as well as the ice, to get the technological edge. Every other one was a rival, so they fought it out. Another thing that made them fight was the mineral shortage, especially the shortage of metallic ores." Maddson pointed at a map of Minerva mounted above the table. "See those dots on the ice sheets? Most of them were a combination of fortress and mining town. They dug right down through the ice to get at the deposits, and the army was there to make sure they kept the stuff."

  "And that was the way life was. Mean people, eh?"

  "Yeah, for generation after generation." Maddson shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe if we were freezing over fast, we’d be forced in the same direction. Anyhow, the situation had complications. They had the problem of having to divide their efforts and resources between two different demands all the time: first, developing a technology that would support mass interplanetary travel and, second, armaments and the defense organization to protect it-and there weren’t a lot of resources to divide in the first place. Now, how would you solve a problem like that?"

  Hunt pondered for a while. "Cooperate?" he tried.

  "Forget it. They didn’t think that way."

  "Only one other strategy possible, then: Wipe out the opposition first and then concentrate everything on the main objective."

  Maddson nodded solidly. "That is exactly what they did. War, or near war, was pretty well a natural way of life all through their history. Gradually the smaller fish were eliminated until, by the time we get to Charlie, there are only two superpowers left, each dominating one of the two big equatorial continental land masses…" He pointed at the map again. "… Cerios and Lambia. From various references, we know Charlie was a Cerian."

  "All set for the big showdown, then."

  "Check. The whole planet was one big fortress-factory. Every inch of surface was covered by hostile missiles; the sky was full of orbiting bombs that could be dropped anywhere. We get the impression that relative to the pattern of our own civilization, their armaments programs had taken a bigger share than space research and had progressed faster." Maddson shrugged again. "The rest you can guess."

  Hunt nodded slowly and thoughtfully. "It all fits," he mused. "It must have been a huge con, though. I mean, even from whichever side won, only a handful would have been able to get away in the end; I suppose they’d have been the ruling clique and its minions. Christ! No wonder they needed good propaganda; they-"

  Hunt stopped in midsentence and looked at Maddson with a curious expression. "Just a minute-there’s something else in all this that doesn’t add up." He paused to collect his thoughts. "They had already developed interplanetary travel-how else did they get to our Moon?"

  "We wondered that," Maddson said. "The only thing we could think of was that maybe they’d already figured on making for Earth eventually-that had to be the obvious choice. Maybe they were capable of sending a scouting group to stake the place out, but didn’t have full-scale mass-transportation capacity yet. Probably they weren’t too far away from their goal when they blew it. Perhaps if they’d pooled their marbles at that point instead of starting a crazy war over it, things might have been different."

  "Sounds plausible," Hunt agreed. "So Charlie could have been part of a reconnaissance mission sent on ahead, only the opposition had the same idea and they bumped into each other. Then they started blowing holes in our Moon. Disgraceful."

  A short silence ensued.

  "There’s another thing I don’t get, either," Hunt said, rubbing his chin.

  "What’s that?"

  "Well, the opposition-the Lambians. Everybody in Navcomms is going around saying that the war that clobbered Minerva was fought between colonists from Earth-that must be Charlie’s lot, the Cerians-and an alien race that belonged to Minerva-the Ganymeans, who, from what you said, would be the Lambians. We said a moment ago that this idea of the Cerians being from Earth doesn’t make sense, because if they had originated there, they wouldn’t be trying to develop space flight. We can’t be one hundred percent certain of that because something unusual could have happened, such as the colony being cut off for a few thousand years for some reason. But you can’t say that about the Lambians; they couldn’t have been neck-and-neck rivals trying to develop space flight."

  "They already had it, for sure," Maddson completed for him. "We sure as hell found them on Ganymede."

  "Quite. And that ship was no beginner’s first attempt, either. You know, I’m beginning to think that whoever the Lambians were, they weren’t Ganymeans."

  "I think you’re right," Maddson confirmed. "The Ganymeans were a totally different biological species. Wouldn’t you expect that if they were the opposition in Lambia, somehow it would show up in the Lunarian writings? But it doesn’t. Everything we’ve examined suggests that the Cerians and the Lambians were simply different nations of the same race. For example, we’ve found extracts from what appear to be Cerian newspapers, which included political cartoons showing Lambian figures; the figures are drawn as human forms. That wouldn’t be so if the Lambians looked anything like the Ganymeans must have looked."

  "So it appears the Ganymeans had nothing to do with the war," Hunt concluded.

  "Right."
/>   "So where do they fit in?"

  Maddson showed his empty palms. "That’s the funny thing. They don’t seem to fit anywhere-at least, we haven’t even found anything that looks like a reference to them."

  "Maybe they’re just a big red herring, then. I mean, we’ve only supposed that they came from Minerva; nothing actually demonstrates that they did. Perhaps they never had anything to do with the place at all."

  "Could well be. But I can’t help feeling that…"

  The chime on Maddson’s desk display console interrupted the discussion. He excused himself and touched a button to accept the call.

  "Hi, Don," said the face of Hunt’s assistant, upstairs in Group L’s offices. "Is Vic there?" He sounded excited. Maddson swiveled the unit around to point in Hunt’s direction.

  "It’s for you," he said needlessly.

  "Vic," said the face without preamble. "I’ve just had a look at the reports of the latest tests that came in from Jupiter Four two hours ago. That ship under the ice and the big guys inside it-they’ve completed the dating tests." He drew a deep breath. "It looks like maybe we can forget the Ganymeans in all this Charlie business. Vic, if all the figures are right, that ship has been sitting there for something like twenty-five million years!"

  Chapter Fifteen

  Caldwell moved a step closer to inspect more carefully the nine-foot-high plastic model standing in the middle of one of the laboratories of the Westwood Biological Institute. Danchekker gave him plenty of time to take in the details before continuing.

  "A full-size replica of a Ganymean skeleton," he said. "Built on the strength of the data beamed back from Jupiter. The first indisputable form of intelligent alien life ever to be studied by man." Caldwell looked up at the towering frame, pursed his lips in a silent whistle, and walked in a slow circle around and back to where the professor was standing. Hunt simply stood and swept his eyes up and down the full length of the model in wordless fascination.

  "That structure is in no way related to that of any animal ever studied on Earth, living or extinct," Danchekker informed them. He gestured toward it. "It is based on a bony internal skeleton, walks upright as a biped, and has a head on top-as you can see; but apart from such superficial similarities, it has clearly evolved from completely unfamiliar origins. Take the head as an obvious example. The arrangement of the skull cannot be reconciled in any way with that of known vertebrates. The face has not receded back into the lower skull, but remains a long, down-pointing snout that widens at the top to provide a broad spacing for the eyes and ears. Also, the back of the skull has enlarged to accommodate a developing brain, as in the case of man, but instead of assuming a rounded contour, it bulges back above the neck to counterbalance the protruding face and jaw. And look at the opening through the skull in the center of the forehead; I believe that this could have housed a sense organ that we do not possess-possibly an infrared detector inherited from a nocturnal, carnivorous ancestor."

  Hunt moved forward to stand next to Caldwell and peered intently at the shoulders. "These are unlike anything I’ve ever come across, too," he commented. "They’re made up of… kind of overlapping plates of bone. Nothing like ours at all."

  "Quite," Danchekker confirmed. "Probably adapted from the remains of ancestral armor. And the rest of the trunk is also quite alien. There is a dorsal spine with an arrangement of ribs below the shoulder plates, as you can see, but the lowermost rib-immediately above the body cavity-has developed into a massive hoop of bone with a diametral strut stretching forward from an enlarged spinal vertebra. Now, notice the two systems of smaller linked bones at the sides of the hoop…" He pointed them out. "They were probably used to assist with breathing by helping to expand the diaphragm. To me, they look suspiciously like the degenerate remnants of a paired-limb structure. In other words, although this creature, like us, had two arms and walked on two legs, somewhere in his earlier ancestry were animals with three pairs of appendages, not two. That in itself is enough to immediately rule out any kinship with every vertebrate of this planet."

  Caldwell stooped to examine the pelvis, which comprised just an arrangement of thick bars and struts to contain the thigh sockets. There was no suggestion of the splayed dish form of the lower human torso.

  "Must’ve had peculiar guts, too," he offered.

  "It could be that the internal organs were carried more by suspension from the hoop above than by support from underneath," Danchekker suggested. He stepped back and indicated the arms and legs. "And last, observe the limbs. Both lower limbs have two bones as do ours, but the upper arm and thigh are different-they have a double-bone arrangement as well. This would have resulted in vastly improved flexibility and the ability to perform a whole range of movements that could never be duplicated by a human being. And the hand has six digits, two of them opposing; thus its owner effectively enjoyed the advantages of having two thumbs. He would have been able to tie his shoes easily with one hand."

  Danchekker waited until Caldwell and Hunt had fully studied every detail of the skeleton to their satisfaction. When they looked toward him again, he resumed: "Ever since the age of the Ganymeans was verified, there has been a tendency for everybody to discount them as merely a coincidental discovery and having no direct bearing on the Lunarian question. I believe, gentlemen, that I am now in a position to demonstrate that they had a very real bearing indeed on the question."

  Hunt and Caldwell looked at him expectantly. Danchekker walked over to a display console by the wall of the lab, tapped in a code, and watched as the screen came to life to reveal a picture of the skeleton of a fish. Satisfied, he turned to face them.

  "What do you notice about that?" he asked.

  Caldwell stared obediently at the screen for a few seconds while Hunt watched in silence.

  "It’s a funny fish," Caldwell said at last. "Okay-you tell me."

  "It is not obvious at first sight," Danchekker replied, "but by detailed comparison it is possible to relate the structure of that fish, bone for bone, to that of the Ganymean skeleton. They’re both from the same evolutionary line."

  "That fish is one of those that were found on the Lunarian base on Farside," Hunt said suddenly.

  "Precisely, Dr. Hunt. The fish dates from some fifty thousand years ago, and the Ganymean skeleton from twenty-five million or so. It is evident from anatomical considerations that they are related and come from lines that branched apart from a common ancestral life form somewhere in the very remote past. It follows that they share a place of origin. We already know that the fish evolved in the oceans of Minerva; therefore, the Ganymeans also came from Minerva. We thus have proof of something that has been merely speculation for some time. All that was wrong with the earlier assumption was our failure to appreciate the gap in time between the presence of the Ganymeans on Minerva, and that of the Lunarians."

  "Okay," Caldwell accepted. "The Ganymeans came from Minerva, but a lot earlier than we thought. What’s the big message and why did you call us over here?"

  "In itself, this conclusion is interesting but no more," Danchekker answered. "But it looks pale by comparison with what comes next. In fact"-he shot a glance at Hunt-"the rest tells us all we need to know to resolve the whole question once and for all."

  The two regarded him intently.

  The professor moistened his lips, then went on: "The Ganymean ship has been opened up fully, and we now have an extremely comprehensive inventory of practically everything it contained. The ship was constructed for large freight-carrying capacity and was loaded when it met with whatever fate befell it on Ganymede. The cargo that it was carrying, in my opinion, constitutes the most sensational discovery ever to be made in the history of paleontology and biology. You see, that ship was carrying, among other things, a large consignment of botanical and zoological specimens, some alive and in cages, the rest preserved in canisters. Presumably the stock was part of an ambitious scientific expedition or something of that nature, but that really doesn’t matter for now. Wh
at does matter is that we now have in our possession a collection of animal and plant trophies the like of which has never before been seen by human eyes: a comprehensive cross section of many forms of life that existed on Earth around the late Oligocene and early Miocene periods, twenty-five million years ago!"

  Hunt and Caldwell stared at him incredulously. Danchekker folded his arms and waited.

  "Earth!" Caldwell managed, with difficulty, to form the word. "Are you telling me that the ship had been to Earth?"

  "I can see no alternative explanation," Danchekker returned. "Without doubt, the ship was carrying a variety of animal forms that have every appearance of being identical to species that have been well-known for centuries as a result of the terrestrial fossil record. The biologists on the Jupiter Four Mission are quite positive of their conclusions, and from the information they have sent back, I see no reason to doubt their opinions." Danchekker moved his hand back to the keyboard. "I will show you some examples of the kind of thing I mean," he said.

  The picture of the fish skeleton vanished and was replaced by one of a massive, hornless, rhinoceroslike creature. In the background stood an enormous opened canister from which the animal had presumably been removed. The canister was lying in front of what looked like a wall of ice, surrounded by cables, chains, and parts of a latticework built of metal struts.

  "The Baluchitherium, gentlemen," Danchekker informed them, "or something so like it that the difference escapes me. This animal stood eighteen feet high at the shoulder and attained a bulk in excess of that of the elephant. It is a good example of the titanotheres, or titanic beasts, that were abundant in the Americas during the Oligocene but which died out fairly rapidly soon afterward."

  "Are you saying that baby was alive when the ship ditched?" Caldwell asked in a tone of disbelief.