James P. Hogan - Giants 5 - Mission to Minerva

Mission to Minerva

When explorers on the Moon found a skeleton in a space suit of strange design,

a baffling mystery began. The skeleton was undeniably human, but carbon dating

showed it was older than the human race itself. The mystery deepened with the

discovery of a wrecked ship on a moon of Jupiter, showing that another race

had once inhabited the Solar System, originating on the now-shattered planet

whose remains form the asteroid belt. Then a ship manned by the humanoid

“giants” returned, bringing with it answers to the riddle of humanity’s

origins. But it brought great danger, as Earth found itself caught in a battle

between a benevolent alien empire, and another offshoot of the human race who

regarded the Earth as their property and were bent on taking it over.

That was in the recent past, and the future now looked bright for Earth, as

trade and knowledge flowed back and forth between Earth and Thuria, the world

the Giants colonized when they left the Solar System aeons ago. Then Dr.

Victor Hunt received a phone call—and the face in the phone’s video screen was

an older version of himself, calling from a parallel world. That was the first

step in bridging the gap between the parallel universes of the “multiverse.”

Unfortunately, it also meant that the enemies who had been decisively defeated

in one universe might still be alive and dangerous in another, and could

arrive in force at any time. And the possibility soon became a frightening

reality. . . .

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

ORDER Hardcover

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

First printing, May 2005

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-7434-9902-6

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

http://www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press

Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights

http://www.webwrights.com

For Sheryl, Lindsey, and Tara

Baen Books by JAMES P. HOGAN

Inherit the Stars

The Genesis Machine

The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

The Two Faces of Tomorrow

Thrice Upon a Time

Giants' Star

Voyage from Yesteryear

Code of the Lifemaker

The Proteus Operation

Endgame Enigma

The Mirror Maze

The Infinity Gambit

Entoverse

The Multiplex Man

Realtime Interrupt

Minds, Machines & Evolution

The Immortality Option

Paths to Otherwhere

Bug Park

Star Child

Rockets, Redheads & Revolution

Cradle of Saturn

The Legend That Was Earth

Martian Knightlife

The Anguished Dawn

Kicking the Sacred Cow (nonfiction)

Mission to Minerva

PROLOGUE

By the fourth decade of the twenty-first century, the nations of Earth had

finally resolved or learned to live with the differences that had made so much

of their history a story of exploitation and conflict. A major expression of

the new spirit of cooperation and optimism toward the future took the form of

a joint program of Solar System exploration carried out under the direction of

a Space Arm formed as part of the UN. With its redirection of the resources

and industries that had once served a bloated defense sector, the program was

seen as a triumph of the unifying power of technology and reason, and a

prelude to reaching outward toward the stars. As permanent bases appeared on

the Moon and Mars, and manned mission ships reached the outer planets, it was

confidently assumed that the sciences responsible for such spectacular success

were thereby shown to form a solidly based foundation for the continuing

expansion of human knowledge. The basic belief structure was secure. While the

universe undoubtedly had more revelations and surprises to deliver, the body

of fact that had been established was impregnable to any major need in the way

of revision.

Such moments of blissful self-assurance invariably come immediately before the

biggest tumbles. In just a few short years, a series of stupefying discoveries

not only added an entire new dimension to the history of the Solar System, but

uncovered a strange, totally unanticipated story of the origins of the human

race itself.

Twenty-five million years before the present time, a race of nonviolent,

eight-foot-tall giants had flourished across the Solar System and surpassed

everything that humankind had achieved. The "Ganymeans"—so-called when the

first indication of their existence was discovered in the form of a wrecked

spacecraft buried under the ice of Ganymede, largest of the Jovian moons—had

originated on a planet christened Minerva, that had once occupied the position

between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the Ganymean civilization reached an

advanced stage, climatic conditions on Minerva were deteriorating. As would be

expected, their voyages of discovery had brought them to Earth, from where

they transported large numbers of plant and animal forms from the late

Oligocene–early Miocene period back to their own world as part of a

large-scale bioengineering research project to combat the problem. Terran life

enjoyed a generally greater toxic resistance than that possessed by the

Ganymeans, and their hope was to incorporate the appropriate genetic

structures into their own makeup in order to render themselves tolerant to

altering Minerva's atmosphere in a way that would enhance its natural

greenhouse mechanism. These efforts failed, however, and the Ganymeans

migrated to what would later come to be called the Giants' Star, located

twenty light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Taurus.

In the millions of years that followed, the imported terrestrial animals left

on Minerva replaced most of the native Minervan forms, which owing to a

peculiarity of early Minervan biology that precluded the emergence of

land-dwelling carnivores, were unable to compete effectively. The terrestrial

forms included a population of primates as advanced as anything existing on

Earth at the time, which in addition had undergone genetic modification in the

course of the Ganymean experimental program. Fifty thousand years before the

present time, while the various hominid lines developing on Earth were still

at stone-using stages of culture, a second advanced, spacegoing race had

already appeared on Minerva as the first version of modern Man. They were

given the name "Lunarians," after evidence of their existence came to light in

the course of twenty-first century lunar exploration. (See Inherit the Stars.)

At the time of the emergence of the Lunarians, varying solar conditions were

bringing the onset of the most recent ice age on Earth, while the even greater

effect on Minerva threatened to render the planet uninhabitable. The Lunarians

responded with a concerted effort to develop their space and industrial

technologies to a level that would permit mass migration to the more

hospitable climate of Earth. But, as with the Ganymeans before them, the

ambitious plan came to nothing. When the Lunarians were practically within

reach of their goal, the cooperative spirit in which they had worked for

generations broke down with the polarization of their civilization into two

superpowers, Cerios and Lambia. Resources that could have been concentrated on

saving the race were squandered instead on a ruinous military rivalry. The

result was a cataclysmic planetwide war, in the course of which Minerva was

destroyed.

The Ganymean culture, in the meantime, had entered a long period of stagnation

brought about by the unanticipated effects of advancing biological science to

the point of prolonging life practically indefinitely. When the consequences

became clear, they took a decision to revert to their natural condition and

accept mortality as the price of experiencing a life enriched by motivation

and change. By the time of the events on Minerva, they had established a

thriving interstellar civilization centered on the planet Thurien of the

Giants' Star system. The Thuriens were never comfortable with what they

regarded their ancestors' abandonment of a genetically mutated sapient species

left to take its chances in the survival arena of Minerva, and followed the

subsequent emergence of the Lunarians with a mixture of guilt and increasing

awe. But when it all ended in catastrophe, the Thuriens relaxed the policy of

nonintervention that they had been observing and sent a rescue mission to save

the survivors. Gravitational upheavals caused by the emergency methods used to

transport the Thurien ships threw what remained of Minerva into an eccentric

outer orbit to become Pluto, while the smaller debris dispersed under

Jupiter's tidal effects as the Asteroids. Minerva's orphaned moon fell inward

toward the Sun and was later captured by Earth, which until then had existed

as a solitary body.

Even after all their experiences and the loss of their world, hostility

between the Cerians and the Lambians persisted, making them incapable of

uniting to rebuild their culture. The Lambians went back with the Thuriens and

were installed on a planet called Jevlen, where they grew to become a fully

human element of the Thurien civilization. The Cerians, at their own request,

were returned to the world of their origins, Earth, only to be almost

overwhelmed by the climatic and tidal devastation caused by the arrival of

Minerva's moon. Their remnants fell back into barbarism, struggling for

millennia on the verge of extinction. Apart from myths handed down from

antiquity, the meanings of which were forgotten, all memory of their origins

was lost. Only in modern times, when they at last mastered space again and

ventured outward to find the traces of what had gone before, were they able to

piece parts of the story together. The rest was added when a freak occurrence

reestablished contact between the human inhabitants of modern Earth and the

ancient Ganymean race that had created them in the form of their Lunarian

ancestors. (See The Gentle Giants of Ganymede.)

The Jevlenese never ceased regarding themselves as Lambians, and the Terrans

as ongoing rivals who would challenge them again if the opportunity arose. As

part of a plan to eliminate the perceived threat, they inaugurated a campaign

to retard the progress of Earth toward rediscovery of the sciences, while they

themselves absorbed Thurien technology and gained autonomy over their own

affairs. Fully human in form, they obstructed Earth's development by

infiltrating agents throughout history to spread irrational beliefs and found

cults of unreason, diverting energies from the path to reacquiring true

knowledge.

As the confidence and arrogance of the Jevlenese leaders grew, so did their

resentment of the restraint to their ambitions posed by the Thuriens.

Exploiting the innate inability of the Ganymean psyche to suspect motives,

they gained control of the surveillance operation that the Thuriens had set up

to keep a watch over Earth after the catastrophe that had befallen Minerva.

The Jevlenese fed falsified accounts to the Thuriens of a militarized Earth

poised to burst out from the Solar System, and by playing on the implications,

induced the Thuriens to devise countermeasures to isolate and contain the

threat. But the Jevlenese intent was to seize control of the countermeasures

themselves and contain the Thuriens, settle the score with their Cerian rivals

of old, and then take control of the system of Thurien-administered worlds

themselves. And the plan would have been fulfilled but for the reappearance of

a lost starship from the time of ancient Ganymean Minerva.

The scientific mission ship Shapieron was sent to conduct experiments on

altering the radiation dynamics of a distant star to assess the feasibility of

changing the Sun's output as an alternative solution to Minerva's problem if

the attempt based on atmospheric reengineering coupled with biological

modification failed. But the star went unstable, forcing the Shapieron to make

an emergency departure when partway through overhauling its drive system,

which operated by creating a local distortion of spacetime. The result was

that the ship experienced an artificially compounded time-dilation in which

twenty-five million years passed by before it was able to reintegrate with the

local solar reference frame, compared to only twenty years of ship's time.

Hence, it returned to find the configuration of the Solar System changed,

Minerva gone, and a new race of terrestrial humans spacefaring among the

planets.

The "Giants" came to Earth, where they were cordially received, and remained

for six months. But the most significant outcome of their presence was the

opening of the first direct contact between Earth and the Thuriens, bypassing

the Jevelenese intermediaries established by longstanding precedent. The story

of how the Jevlenese had schemed to retard Earth's development and

misrepresent its modern-day situation was finally exposed. In the ensuing

confrontation the Jevelenese, who had been secretly making military

preparations of their own, proclaimed their independence, staged a

demonstration of strength, and demanded submission from the Thuriens. But

their hand had been forced; the bid was premature and collapsed when the

Terrans and Thuriens working together turned the Jevlenese's own stratagem of

deception against them by inventing a fictitious Terran battle force

manufactured entirely within the supercomputing entity VISAR, which supported

the Thuriens' interstellar civilization. (See Giants' Star.)

The Jevelense leaders believed the deception and capitulated, after which the

world of Jevlen was placed under Ganymean and Terran administration while a

reformed system of government was being worked out. Because of the autonomy

and privacy to run their own affairs that the Jevlenese had always insisted

on, this was the first opportunity for outsiders to look closely into what had

been going on there. What they found was even stranger than anything that had

gone before.

Obsession for conquest and fixation on the irrational ideas that had been

imported to Earth was not a general trait common to all Jevelenese. They

stemmed from a small, disaffected but influential group within the race that

had appeared suddenly. Something about their deeper psychology seemed to set

them apart from the majority of Jevlenese. They were the source of the beliefs

in magic and supernatural powers that defied all experience and had never

arisen among the Ganymeans or Lunarians, yet sprang from inner convictions

that were unshakable. It was as if their instincts about the nature of the

world and the forces operating in it had been shaped by a different reality.

And it turned out that this was indeed exactly the case. For the "Ents"—from

"Entoverse," or "Universe Within," as the unique realm where they originated

came to be named—were not products of the familiar world of space, time,

matter, and physics at all. In setting up their own planetary administration,

the Jevlenese had created an independent computing complex, JEVEX, to serve a

comparable purpose to that of the Thuriens' VISAR. In a peculiar concurrence

of circumstances, information quanta took on a role analogous to that of

material particles, interacting and combining to form structures in the

dataspace continuum that corresponded to molecules and more complex

configurations in physical space. A complete phenomenological "universe"

resulted, eventually producing self-organizing entities that were sufficiently

complex to become aware of their own existence and perceive themselves as

inhabitants of a world. But the "forces" that guided the unfolding of events

in that world derived not from the physics of the universe outside, but from

the underlying internal rules imposed by the system programmers.

Following Thurien practice, the primary method for interfacing with JEVEX was

by direct neural coupling to the mental processes of the user. Some of the

Ents discovered that they could interact with the data streams flowing through

their world, and from them they extracted perceptions of a "higher space"

beyond the one that they existed in, where superior beings lived and

impossible things happened. Adepts among the Ents learned to project their

psyches into these "currents" and transfer themselves into this world

"beyond," where they became occupiers of hosts who had literally been

possessed. So the aberrant element among the Jevlenese were not deviants who

had acquired their aggressions, insecurities, and strange notions of causality

in the same world of experience that had molded the minds of Ganymeans,

Lunarians, and Terrans; they were victims of a form of alien invasion more

weird than science fiction had ever conceived. (See Entoverse.)

Such "possessed" Jevelenese—taken over by Ent personalities—seemed also have

been at the root of the schism that subverted the Lunarian enterprise when it

had almost succeeded—fifty thousand years before JEVEX even existed! How could

this possibly be?

Following from the earlier Ganymean spacecraft propulsion technology, the

Thurien interstellar transportation and communications web exploited

artificial manipulations of spacetime to bypass the restrictions of ordinary

space. The mathematics of the physics involved also admitted solutions that

implied the possibility of transfer through time. Since the Thuriens had never

been able to put a physical interpretation to this, they regarded it as no

more than a theoretical curiosity. But then, in the final stage of the

"Pseudowar" in which the Jevlenese believed themselves about to be assailed by

VISAR's imaginary Terran invasion fleet, their leadership attempted an escape

to a distant planet that they had secretly made into a fortress. When JEVEX

initiated creation of a transfer port to transport their ships, VISAR

intervened in a countermove to neutralize it. Nobody ever knew quite what

happened as the two supercomputers grappled across light-years for control of

the same knot of spacetime—except that the fleeing Jevlenese craft were swept

into the convulsions. Afterward, all sign of them had vanished. Everywhere.

But the last images to be received from a surveillance probe that had clung in

pursuit showed they had rematerialized somewhere. There was a background of

stars. And there was a world. The world was Minerva, intact, as it had been.

The starfield showed the time to have been the late period of the Lunarians.

In fact, it was at just before the time when the Lambians adopted their

militant and uncompromising policy toward Cerios. This was surely too much to

have been a coincidence.

With Jevlen pacified and on probation while its population adjusted to life

undisturbed by the influence of the Ents, the scientists of Thurien and Earth

were free to turn their attention to the latest, and perhaps the most baffling

mystery of all. (See also the "Giants Chronology" compiled by Dr. Attila

Torkos, page 403.)

PART ONE: The Multiverse

CHAPTER ONE

The object appeared out of nowhere on the Earth-ward side of the Sun, roughly

halfway between the mean orbits of Earth and Mars. Its bulk ejected the flux

of solar-wind particles and cosmic-ray photons that happened to be occupying

the volume that it materialized in, and generated a mild gravitational ripple

fitting for its mass of several tens of thousand tons equivalent. But

otherwise, its arrival was as unremarkable as its appearance.

It was about the size of a domestic washing machine and vaguely cubical in

form, although any clear lines were lost in the profusion of antennas and

sensor appendages cluttered untidily on all its sides. For a while it hung in

space, sampling and processing information from its surroundings and sending

its findings back to the realm from whence it had come. Then, as suddenly as

it had arrived, it vanished again.

Its corrected position put it inside the Moon's orbit, approximately

twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth's surface in the belt used by

synchronous communications satellites. One more relocation, and it was in

place to intercept the beam from the comnet ground station in Maine, which

handled one of the primary trunk routes into the USA. The alien device

connected into the system using standard Terran communications protocols and

transmitted the phone number of the UN Space Arm's Advanced Sciences Division

at the Goddard Center in Maryland, one of the homes of what had been NASA in

years gone by.

* * *

In a neighborhood bar called Happy Days, a few miles from Goddard, Dr. Victor

Hunt leaned back in a corner booth by the window and took in the scene. It was

a sunny Saturday morning in June. People were making the best of the fine

weekend. Across the aisle, three men who had pulled up earlier in a pickup

loaded with timber were downing some preventative thirst medicine on what

looked like their way to a home remodeling project. Some younger people at the

far end were working up enthusiasm in advance for the Baltimore Orioles versus

Atlanta Braves game due to be played later. A couple sat holding hands across

one of the tables, blissfully unaware of anything else.

For Hunt, the snatched moment of relaxation was a rare luxury. His position as

Deputy Director for Physics of UNSA Advanced Sciences put him at the center of

the effort to assimilate Thurien scientific knowledge without disrupting

Earth's social and economic structure. Already, some of the most cherished

notions once believed to be permanently beyond questioning had been consigned

to oblivion. The whole system of values that most had considered as

constituting the inescapable underpinnings of commerce and production was

having to be rethought in the light of the Thurien existence, proof that

deeper, less adversarial ways of motivating creativity and cooperation were

possible. Nobody knew what the next ten or twenty years might bring.

Paradoxically, for the majority of people this all added up to carrying on

more or less as normal. The gigantic forces now in motion that would change

all their lives irreversibly were beyond any ability of theirs to control.

A swarthy figure sporting a shaggy mustache and wearing a bright scarlet shirt

and shorts turned from the bar and came over, bearing two pint glasses of

black, creamy-headed Guinness. Jerry Santello was Hunt's neighbor from the

adjacent apartment unit in a landscaped residential development on the edge of

town. They had come out for some refreshment after a morning workout at the

complex's gym. Jerry deposited the glasses on the table, pushed one across,

and sat back down on the seat opposite.

"Cheers," Hunt acknowledged, raising his in salutation as he picked it up.

Jerry took a draft and licked his lips. "I'd never have believed it. I'm

actually taking to this stuff."

"About time, too. Beats that fizzy yellow concoction. Too sweet. I'm not sure

I like the connotations of Clydesdales, either."

"The bartender asked me if I wanted them mixed with ale. Is that normal in

England too?"

"Black and tan," Hunt replied, nodding.

"Oh, really?"

"Half and half. That's what they call it. It was the name of the auxiliary

military units the English used in Ireland back it the time of the Troubles .

. . around 1920, or whenever it was. They had uniforms that were half police

and half army."

"Wasn't it two different countries there until not long ago?"

"Right. The North originally stayed with the UK—when the rest became the

Republic."

"What was all that shit about? I never could figure it."

Hunt shrugged. "Usual thing, Jerry. Too many Catholics. Too many Protestants.

No Christians." He looked away while he took another sip. A girl called Julie,

who worked in one of the administration sections at ASD, had come in with two

others that he didn't recognize. Jerry carried on.

"Anyway, Vic, as I was saying, this scheme that the guys are buying into. . .

. People are working less, retiring sooner, and when the family's grown and

gone and they move to a smaller house that's paid for." He made an open-handed

gesture. "They've got money. The spendable income isn't with the kids anymore.

By the time they leave school half of them are maxed out on credit already."

Jerry was a former employee of the intelligence agencies. The spy business had

contracted markedly as the world gradually resolved a legacy of

twentieth-century political absurdities by allowing people to live among those

they chose to. Having banked a lump severance payment, and finding himself

less than enamored by the thought of returning to the corporate style of

workplace, he was constantly on the lookout for investment opportunities to

provide the wherewithal for preserving the ease and freedoms that a period of

enforced paid leave had led him to grow accustomed to. The latest was a plan

for a chain of theater-restaurants with lounge bars and dance floors to cater

to the more mature clientele. It was an interesting thought, Hunt had to

agree. There were probably thousands of such couples, or singles wanting to be

half a couple, hidden away in the suburbs with nowhere to go that suited their

taste. At just over forty himself, Hunt could go for it.

"I've always wanted to own a nightclub," he said. "I like the image. It must

be from seeing Casablanca years ago. You know, Bogart in the white tuxedo with

the carnation in the lapel. Piano bar and all that stuff. . . . You don't see

that kind of style these days. Do you reckon we could bring it back, Jerry?"

Jerry tossed up a hand. "Who knows? Anything's possible. Does that mean you're

in?"

"How much are we talking about?"

"The other guys are coming in for ten grand."

"Um . . . I'd need to think a bit more. How soon do you need to know?"

"The option on the deal closes at the end of next week."

"Okay, I'll let you know one way or another by then."

"You can't lose, Vic. Lot's of people have been waiting for something like

this, who don't take to the bar scene. Some place to go out and meet your

friends, have a meal, see a show. . . . Music that you don't have to be some

kind of spastic epileptic or something to dance to . . ."

"Dr. Hunt?" Hunt looked up. Julie had come over to the booth with her two

friends. She was tallish and slim, with fair hair, a scattering of freckles

around her nose, and just at that moment, a nervously uncertain smile. "I saw

you over here and just wanted to stop by and say hi. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Glad you did." Hunt looked at her quizzically for a moment.

"Julie, from the main admin section, right?"

"That's right!" Julie seemed impressed.

Hunt glanced at the other two girls, who were hovering behind. "So what are we

doing—starting a party?"

"Oh. This is Becky, who's visiting from Virginia . . . and Dana."

Hunt gestured across the booth. "Jerry, my neighbor."

"You live near here?"

"Redfern Canyons—on the west side from here."

"I think I know it. Where they have all the valleys and ridges cut into the

hills so it looks like somewhere in California. With a creek and ponds down

the middle."

"That's it."

Becky, who was looking mildly awed, found her voice finally. "This is really

the Dr. Hunt . . . who was there at Ganymede when the aliens came back, and

then discovered that whole world inside the computer on Jevlen?" She shook her

head. "I always think of people you see on shows and read about in magazines

as flying everywhere in limousines and living in places with security gates

and fences. But here you are, just a regular guy in the local bar."

"I hope we weren't interrupting something," Dana said.

"We're quaffing away all the benefit from a couple of hours of healthy working

out this morning," Hunt replied. "But I've always had this theory that too

much health is bad for you."

"So that tastes really good, I bet." Julie indicated their drinks.

"The first one didn't touch the sides going down," Jerry said.

"Actually, Jerry was trying to sell me on a business proposition. Restaurant

nightclubs for older fossils like us to get out to and creak around in. What

do you think?"

Julie looked perplexed. "I'm not sure what to say. You don't exactly look over

the hill or anything like that, Dr. Hunt."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Hunt told her cheerfully. "People have the wrong

attitude. What's wrong with getting over a hill? Think what happens on a

bicycle. All the hard work's over. You just leave everything to gravity, sit

back, enjoy the view, and pick up speed. Life's the same. That's why everyone

says time goes so much faster. You know—" The call tone from the seefone in

the holder on his belt interrupted. "Excuse me." He took it out, flipped it

open, and thumbed the Accept button. The head and shoulders of a young man in

a white shirt greeted him on the screen. A caption below gave the sending code

and advised that the call was from the UNSA Goddard Center. "Hello. Vic Hunt

here."

"Dr. Hunt, this is ASD. We have an incoming off-planet call on hold. The

caller is asking for you."

Off-planet? Hunt wasn't especially expecting anything of that nature. UNSA

communications from distances farther than about the Moon usually came in as

recordings because of the propagation delays. Ironically, an interactive call

was more likely to be from the Thuriens' interstellar net, which communicated

virtually instantaneously via spinning microscopic black-hole toroids, and

linked to the Terran system via Earth-orbiting relay satellites. "Who is it?"

he asked, at the same time conveying an apology with his eyes to the others

around him. But the face on the screen hesitated, seeming not to know how to

answer. "It doesn't matter," Hunt said. "Just put it through." A moment later,

he was staring incredulously in total befuddlement.

The face looking back at him was of a man around forty, with tanned,

lean-lined features giving him an alert and active look, and wavy brown hair

starting to show touches of gray just discernible on the matchbook-size

screen. He seemed amused, even impudently so, waiting several seconds as if

savoring the effect to the utmost. Finally, he said, "I suppose this must come

as a bit of a shock."

Which perhaps qualified as one of the greatest understatements in all Hunt's

years of experience. For the face was his own. He was talking to some bizarre

version—existing in some other where, and for all he knew, some other

"when"—of himself. He could do nothing but sit there, stupefied, unable to

muster a coherent response. The three girls exchanged mystified looks. Then

Jerry said, "Are you all right, Vic?"

The words jolted Hunt sufficiently to make him look up, though for the moment

still only marginally aware of his surroundings. Finally, with an effort, he

forced his faculties back to something resembling working order. "Er, I'm

sorry," he said, standing up. "If you'll excuse me, I need to take this

privately." He crossed to the exit and left.

"What was it, a ghost?" Jerry muttered to the others.

Outside in the parking lot, Hunt climbed into his car and closed the door. The

face of his other self was still there, waiting on the screen of the seefone.

"Okay, I give up," he told it. "So . . . just what in hell is going on?"

"I'll try to be brief, because there may not be a lot of time," the image

answered. "First, the Thuriens are trying the wrong approach. It isn't an

extension of the h-space physics the way they've assumed. That only applies

within particular wave solutions evolving vertically and manifesting internal

space and time separation. Horizontal movement involves a different concept.

Think of the dynamics of the data structures that we found in JEVEX's

computing matrix. . . . As I said, there may not be a lot of time. This is an

early test run. We haven't learned how to sustain coherence for extended

periods yet. I've got a compressed file here that will give you what we've

managed to figure out so far. The main thing you need to know about is the

convergences. But codes can be different, even between nearby regions. Can you

send me something to scan for any transmission corrections we might need to

make?"

"What . . . ?" Hunt was still numbed by the shock.

"A file out of your system there. Anything. We need to know the codes you're

using so the one here can be set to match."

"Oh. . . . Right. . . ." Hunt shook himself into action sufficiently to bring

James P. Hogan - Giants 5 - Mission to Minerva

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