James P. Hogan - Giants 3 - Giant's Star

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Giant's Star -- James P. Hogan
(Version 1.0 -- 12/08/2001)
Prologue
By the beginning of the fourth decade of the twenty-first century, it seemed that the
human race was finally beginning to learn to live together and that it was on its way to the
stars. Having abandoned the crippling arms race and disbanded the bulk of their strategic forces,
the superpowers were instead pouring their billions into a massive transfer of Western technology
and know-how to the nations of the Third World. With the increased wealth and living standards
that came universally with global industrializalion, and the security and variety that accompanied
more affluent life-styles, population became self-limiting, and hunger, poverty, along with most
of mankind's other traditional age-old scourges, at last looked as if they were on the brink of
being eradicated permanently. While the U.S. -- U.S.S.R. rivalry transformed itself into a war of
wits and diplomacy for economic and political influence among the stabilizing nation-states, Man's
adventure lust found its expression in a revitalized, multinational space program, which burst
outward across the solar system in a new wave of exploration and expansion coordinated under a
specially formed UN Space Arm. Lunar development and exploitation proceeded rapidly, permanent
bases appeared on Mars and in orbit above Venus, and a series of large-scale manned missions
reached the outer planets.
But probably the greatest revolution of the times was the upheaval in science that had
followed some of the discoveries made on the Moon and out at Jupiter in the course of these
explorations. In the space of just a few years, a series of astonishing discoveries had toppled
beliefs unquestioned since the beginnings of science, forced a complete rewriting of the history
of the solar system itself, and culminated in Man's first encounter with an advanced alien
species.
A hitherto unknown planet, christened Minerva by the investigators who unraveled its
story, had once occupied the position between Mars and Jupiter in the solar system as originally
formed,
and had been inhabited by an advanced race of eight-foot-tall aliens who came to be known
as the "Ganymeans" after the first evidence of their existence came to light on Ganymede, largest
of the Jovian moons. The Ganymean civilization, which flourished up until twenty-five million
years before the present, vanished abruptly. Some of Earth's scientists believed that
deteriorating environinental conditions on Minerva might have forced the "Giants" to migrate to
some other star system, but the matter had not been settled conclusively. Much later-some fifty
thousand years prior to the current period in Earth's history-Minerva was destroyed. The bulk of
its mass, thrown outward into an eccentric orbit on the edge of the solar system, became Pluto.
The remainder of the debris was dispersed by Jupiter's tidal effect and formed the Asteroid Belt.
While the pieces of this puzzle were still being fitted together, a starship from the
ancient Ganymean civilization returned. Having undergone a relativistic time dilation that was
compounded by a technical problem in the vessel's spacetime-distorting drive system, the net
result was that an elapsed time of twenty-odd years for the ship corresponded to the passing of
something on the order of a million times that number on Earth. The Shapieron had departed from
Minerva before the onset of whatever had befallen the rest of the Ganymean race, and its occupants
were therefore unable to either confirm or refute the theories of the terrestrial researchers
involved with the subject. The Giants stayed for six months, combining their efforts with those of
Earth's scientists in a search for more clues and mingling harmoniously into Earth's society.
Mankind had found a friend, and the remnants of the Ganymean race had, it was assumed, found a
home.
But it was not to be. Investigations uncovered a hint that the Ganymean civilization had
migrated to a star located near the constellation of Taurus-a star that came to be called the
"Giants' Star"; there was no guarantee, but there was hope. Shortly afterward the Shapieron
departed, leaving behind a sad, but in many ways wiser, world.
Radio observatories on lunar Farside beamed a signal toward the Giants' Star to forewarn
of the Shapieron's coming. Though the signal would take years to cover the distance, it would
still arrive well ahead of the ship. To the astonishment of the scientists who composed the
transmission, a reply purporting to have come
from the Giants' Star and confirming that it was indeed the new home of the Ganymeans was
received only hours after they first began sending. But by that time the Shapieron had already
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left, and news of the message could not be relayed to it because of the spacetime distortion
induced around the craft by its drive, which prevented electromagnetic signals from being received
coherently. There was nothing more that the scientists on Earth could do; the Shapieron had
vanished back into the void from whence it had come, and many more years of uncertainty would pass
before the Ganymeans aboard it would know whether or not their quest was in vain.
The transmitters on lunar Farside continued sending intermittently during the three months
that followed, but no further reply was evoked.
Chapter One
Dr. Victor Hunt finished combing his hair, buttoned on a clean shirt, and paused to
contemplate the somewhat sleepy-eyed but otherwise presentable image staring back at him from the
bathroom mirror. He detected a couple of gray strands here and there among his full head of dark
brown waves, but somebody would have had to be looking for them to notice them. His skin had an
acceptably healthy tone to it; the lines of his cheeks and jaw were solid and firm, and his belt
still rested loosely on his hips to serve its intended purpose of keeping his pants up and not to
keep his waistline in. All in all, he decided, he wasn't doing too badly for thirty-nine. The face
in the mirror frowned suddenly as the ritual reminded him of a typical specimen of middle-age male
wreckage in a TV commercial; all it wanted now was for the mentally defective, bottle-brandishing
wife to appear in the doorway behind to deliver the message on baldness cures, body deodorants,
remedies for bad breath, or whatever. Shuddering at the thought, he tossed the comb into the
medicine cabinet above the sink, closed the door, and ambled through into the apartment's kitchen.
"Are you through in the bathroom, Vie?" Lyn's voice called from the open door of the
bedroom. It sounded bright and cheerful, and should have been illegal at that time in the morning.
"Go ahead." Hunt tapped a code into the kitchen terminal to summon a breakfast menu onto
its screen, studied the display for a few seconds, then entered an order to the robochef for
scrambled eggs, bacon (crisp), toast with marmalade, and coffee, twice. Lyn appeared in the
hallway outside, Hunt's bathrobe hanging loosely on her shoulders and doing little to hide her
long, slim legs and golden-tanned body. She flashed him a smile, then vanished into the bathroom
in a swirl of the red hair that hung halfway down her back.
"It's coming up," Hunt called after her.
"The usual," her voice threw back from the doorway.
"You guessed?"
"The English are creatures of habit."
"Why make life complicated?"
The screen presented a list of grocery items that were getting low, and Hunt okayed the
computer to transmit an order to Albertson's for delivery later that day. The sound of the shower
being turned on greeted him as he emerged from the kitchen and walked through into the living
room, wondering how a world that accepted as normal the nightly spectacle of people discussing
their constipation, hemorrhoids, dandruff, and indigestion in front of an audience of a million
strangers could possibly find something obscene in the sight of pretty girls taking their clothes
off. "There's now't so strange as folk," his grandmother from Yorkshire would have said, he
thought to himself.
It wouldn't have needed a Sherlock Holmes to read the story of the night before from the
scene that confronted him in the living room. The half-fflled coffee cup, empty cigarette pack,
and the remains of a pepperoni pizza surrounded by scientific papers and notes strewn untidily in
front of the desk terminal told of an evening that had begun with the best and purest of
intentions to explore another approach to the Pluto problem. Lyn's shoulder bag on the table by
the door, her coat draped across one end of the couch, the empty Chablis bottle, and the white
cardboard box containing traces of a beef-curry dinner-to-go all added up to an interruption in
the form of an unexpected but not exactly unwelcome arrival. The crumpled cushions and the two
pairs of shoes lying where they had fallen between the couch and the coffee table said the rest.
Oh well, Hunt told himself, it wouldn't make much difference to the rest of the world if the
solution to how Pluto had wound up where it was had to wait an extra twenty-four hours.
He walked over to the desk and interrogated the terminal for any mail that might have come
in overnight. There was a draft of a paper being put together by Mike Barrow's team at Lawrence
Livermore Labs, suggesting that an aspect of Ganymean physics that they had been studying implied
the possibility of achieving fusion at low temperatures. Hunt scanned it briefly and rerouted it
to his office for closer reading there. A couple of bifis and statements of account...file away
and present again at the end of the month. Videorecording from Uncle William in Nigeria; Hunt
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entered a command for a replay and stood back to watch. Beyond
the closed door the shower noises stopped, then Lyn sauntered back into the bedroom.
William and the family had enjoyed having Vie over on vacation recently and had especially
liked hearing his personal account of his experiences at Jupiter and later back on Earth with the
Ganymeans...Cousin Jenny had gotten an admin job at the nuclear steelmaking complex that was just
going into operation outside Lagos...News from the family in London was that all were well, except
for Vie's older brother, George, who had been charged with threatening behavior after an argument
about politics at his local pub...The postgraduate students at Lagos University had been
enthralled by Hunt's lecture about the Shapieron and were sending on a list of questions that they
hoped he'd find time to reply to.
Just as the recording was finishing, Lyn came out of the bedroom wearing her chocolate
blouse and ivory crepe skirt from the night before, then disappeared again into the kitchen.
"Who's that?" she called, to the accompaniment of cupboard doors being opened and closed and
plates being set down on a working surface.
"Uncle Billy."
"The one in Africa that you visited a few weeks ago?"
"Uh huh."
"So how are they doing?"
"He looks~fine. Jenny's got herself fixed up at the new nuplex I told you about, and
brother George is in trouble again."
"Uh-oh. What flow?"
"Doing his pub lawyer act by the sound of it. Somebody didn't agree that the government
ought to guarantee paychecks to anybody on strike."
"What is he-some kind of nut?"
"Runs in the family."
"You said it, not me."
Hunt grinned. "So never say you weren't warned."
"I'll remember that...Food's ready."
Hunt flipped off the terminal and walked into the kitchen. Lyn, perched on a stool at the
breakfast bar that divided the room in two, had already started eating. Hunt sat down opposite
her, drank some coffee, then picked up his fork. "Why the rush?" he asked. "It's still early.
We're not pushed for time."
"I'm not coming straight in. I ought to go home first and change."
"You look okay to me-in fact, not a bad piece of womanry at all."
"Flattery will get you anywhere you like. No...Gregg's got some special visitors coming
down from Washington today. I don't want to look 'groped' and spoil the Navcomms image." She
smiled and mimicked an English accent. "One must maintain standards, you know."
Hunt snorted derisively. "It needs more practice. Who are the visitors?"
"All I know is they're from the State Department. Some hush-hush stuff that Gregg's been
mixed up with lately...lots of calls coming in on secure channels, and couriers showing up with
for-your-eyes-only things in sealed bags. Don't ask me what it's about."
"He hasn't let you in on it?" Hunt sounded surprised.
She shook her head and shrugged. "Maybe it's because I associate with crazy, unreliable
foreigners."
"But you're his personal assistant," Hunt said. "I thought you knew about everything that
happens around Navcomms."
Lyn shrugged again. "Not this time...at least, not so far. I've got a feeling I might find
out today, though. Gregg's been dropping hints."
"Mmm...odd..." Hunt returned his attention to his plate and thought about the situation.
Gregg Caldwell, Executive Director of the Navigation and Communications Division of the UN Space
Arm, was Hunt's immediate chief. Through a combination of circumstances, under Caldwell's
direction Navcomms had played a leading role in piecing together the story of Minerva and the
Ganymeans, and Hunt had been intimately involved in the saga both before and during the Ganymeans'
stay on Earth. Since their departure, Hunt's main task at Navcomms had been to head up a group
that was coordinating the researches being conducted in various places into the volume of
scientific information bequeathed by the aliens to Earth. Although not all the findings and
speculations had been made public, the working atmosphere inside Navcomms was generally pretty
frank and open, so security precautions taken to the extreme that Lyn had described were virtually
unheard of. Something odd was going on, all right.
He leaned against the backrest of the bar chair to light a cigarette, and watched Lyn as
she poured two more coffees. There was something about the way her gray-green eyes never quite
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lost their mischievous twinkle and about the hint of a pout that was always dancing elusively
around her mouth that he found both amusing and exciting -- "cute," he supposed an American would
have said. He thought back over the three months that had elapsed since the Shapieron left, and
tried to pinpoint what had happened to turn somebody who had been just a smart-headed, good-
looking girl at the office into somebody he had breakfast with fairly regularly at one apartment
or the other. But there didn't seem to be any particular where or when; it was just something that
had happened somehow, somewhere along the line. He wasn't complaining.
She glanced up as she set the pot down and saw him looking at her. "See, I'm quite nice to
have around, really. Wouldn't the morning be dull with only the viscreen to stare at." She was at
it again...playfully, but only if he didn't want to take it seriously. One rent made more sense
than two, one set of utility bills was cheaper, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
"I'll pay the bills," Hunt said. He opened his hands appealingly. "You said it yourself
earlier-Englishmen are creatures of habit. Anyhow, I'm maintaining standards."
"You sound like an endangered species," she told him.
"I am-chauvinists. Somebody's got to make a last stand somewhere."
"You don't need me?"
"Of course not. Good Lord, what a thought!" He scowled across the bar while Lyn returned
an impish smile. Maybe the world could wait another forty-eight hours to find out about Pluto.
"What are you up to tonight-anything special?" he asked.
"I got invited to a dinner party over in Hanwell...that marketing guy I told you about and
his wife. They're having a big crowd of people in, and it sounded as if it could be fun. They told
me to bring a friend, but I didn't think you'd be all that interested."
Hunt wrinkled his nose and frowned. "Isn't that the ESP-andpyramid bunch?"
"Right. They're all excited because they've got a superpsychic going there tonight. He
predicted everything about Minerva and
the Ganymeans years ago. It has to be true-Amazing Supernature magazine said so."
Hunt knew she was teasing but couldn't suppress his irritation. "Oh for Christ's sake...I
thought there was supposed to be an educational system in this bloody country! Don't they have any
critical faculties at all?" He drained the last of his coffee and banged the mug down on the bar.
"If he predicted it years ago, why didn't anybody hear about it years ago? Why do we only hear
about it after science has told him what he was supposed to predict? Ask him what the Shapieron
will find when it gets to the Giants' Star and make him write it down. I bet that never gets into
Amazing Supernature magazine."
"That would be taking it too seriously," Lyn said lightly. "I only go there for the
laughs. There's no point in trying to explain Occam's Razor to people who believe that UFOs are
timeships from another century. Besides, apart from all that, they're nice people."
Hunt wondered how this kind of thing could still go on after the Ganymeans, who flew
starships, created life in laboratories, and built self-aware computers, had affirmed repeatedly
that they saw no reason to postulate the existence of any powers existing in the universe beyond
those revealed by science and rational thinking. But people still wasted their lives away with
daydreams.
He was becoming too serious, he decided, and dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand
and a grin. "Come on. We'd better do something about sending you on your way."
Lyn headed for the living room to collect her shoes, bag, and coat, then met him again at
the front door of the apartment. They kissed and squeezed each other. "I'll see you later, then,"
she whispered.
"See you later. Watch out for those crazies."
He waited until she had disappeared into the elevator, then closed the door and spent five
minutes clearing the kitchen and restoring some semblance of decency to the rest of the place.
Finally he put on a jacket, stuffed some items from the desk into his briefcase, and left in an
elevator heading for the roof. Minutes later his airmobile was at two thousand feet and climbing
to merge into an eastbound traffic corridor with the rainbow towers of Houston gleaming in the
sunlight on the skyline ahead.
Chapter Two
Ginny, Hunt's slightly plump, middle-aged meticulous secretary, was already busy when he
sauntered into the reception area of his office, high in the skyscraper of Navcomms Headquarters
in the center of Houston. She had three sons, all in their late teens, and she hurled herself into
her work with a dedication that Hunt sometimes thought might represent a gesture of atonement for
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having inflicted them on society. Women like Ginny always did a good job, he had found. Long-
legged blondes were all very nice, but when it came to getting things done properly and on time,
he'd settle for the older mommas any day.
"Good morning, Dr. Hunt," she greeted him. One thing he had never been able to persuade
her to accept fully was that Englishmen didn't expect, or really want, to be addressed formally
all the time.
"Hi, Ginny. How are you today?"
"Oh, just fine, I guess."
"Any news about the dog?"
"Good n~ws. The vet called last night and said its pelvis isn't fractured after all. A few
weeks of rest and it should be fine."
"That's good. So what's new this morning? Anything panicky?"
"Not really. Professor Speehan from MIT called a few minutes ago and would like you to
call back before lunch. I'm just finishing going through the mail now. There are a couple of
things I think you'll be interested in. The draft paper from Livermore, I guess you've already
seen."
They spent the next half-hour checking the mail and organizing the day's schedule. By that
time the offices that formed Hunt's see-lion of Navcomms were filling up, and he left to update
himself on a couple of the projects in progress.
Duncan Watt, Hunt's deputy, a theoretical physicist who had transferred from UNSA's
Materials and Structures Division a year and a half earlier, was collecting results on the Pluto
problem from a number of research groups around the country. Compari
Sons of the current solar system with records from the Shapieron of how it had looked
twenty-five million years before established beyond doubt that most of what had been Minerva had
ended up as Pluto. Earth had been formed originally without a sateffite, and Luna had orbited as
the single moon of Minerva. When Minerva broke up, its moon fell inward, toward the Sun, and by a
freak chance was captured by Earth, about which it had orbited stably ever since. The problem was
that so far no mathematical model of the dynamics involved had been able to explain how Pluto
could have acquired enough energy to be lifted against solar gravitation to the position it now
occupied. Astronomers and specialists in celestial mechanics from all over the world had tried all
manner of approaches to the problem but without success, which was not all that surprising since
the Ganymeans themselves had been unable to produce a satisfactory solution.
"The only way you can get it to work is by postulating a threebody reaction," Duncan said,
tossing up his hands in exasperation. "Maybe the war had nothing to do with it. Maybe what broke
Minerva up was something else passing through the solar system."
Thirty minutes later and a few doors farther along the corridor, Hunt found Marie, Jeff,
and two of the students on loan from Princeton, excitedly discussing the set of partial-
differential tensor functions being displayed on a large mural graphics screen.
"It's the latest from Mike Barrow's team at Livermore," Marie told him.
"I've already seen it," Hunt said. "Haven't had a chance to go through it yet, though.
Something about cold fusion, isn't it?"
"What it seems to be saying is that the Ganymeans didn't have to generate high thermal
energies to overcome proton-proton repulsion," Jeff chipped in.
"How'd they do it then?" Hunt asked.
"Sneakily. They started off with the particles being neutrons so there wasn't any
repulsion. Then, when the particles were inside the range of the strong force, they increased the
energy gradient at the particle surfaces sufficiently to initiate pair production. The neutrons
absorbed the positrons to become protons, and the electrons were drawn off. So there you've got it-
two protons strongly coupled. Pow! Fusion."
Hunt was impressed, although he had seen too much of Gany
mean physics by that time to be astounded. "And they could control events like that down
at that level?" he asked.
"That's what Mike's people reckon."
Shortly afterward, an argument developed over one of the details, and Hunt left the group
as they were in the process of placing a call to Livermore for clarification.
It seemed as if the information left by the Ganymeans was all starting to bear fruit at
once, causing something new to break out every day. Caidwell's idea of using Hunt's section as an
international clearinghouse for the research into Ganymean sciences was starting to produce
results. When the first clues concerning Minerva and the Ganymeans were coming to light, Caidwell
had set up Hunt's original pilot group to do exactly this kind of thing. The organization had
proved well suited to the task, and now it formed a ready-made group for tackling the latest
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studies.
Hunt's last call was on Paul Shelling, whose people occupied a group of offices and a
computer room on the floor below. One of the most challenging aspects of Ganymean technology was
their "gravities," which enabled them to deform spacetime artificially without requiring large
concentrations of mass. The Shapieron's drive system had utilized this capability by creating a
"hole" ahead of the ship into which it "fell" continuously to propel itself through space; the
"gravity" inside the vessel was also manufactured, not simulated. Shelling, a gravitational
physicist on a sabbatical from Rockwell International, headed up a mathematical group which had
been delving into Ganymean field equations and energy-metric transforms for six months. Hunt found
him staring at a display of isochrons and distorted spacetime geodesics, and looking very
thoughtful.
"It's all there," Sheffing said, keeping his eyes fixed on the softly glowing colored
curves and speaking in a faraway voice. "Artificial black holes...just switch 'em on and off to
order."
The information did not come as a big surprise to Hunt. The Ganymeans had confirmed that
the Shapieron's drive had in fact achieved this, and Hunt and Shelling had talked about its
theoretical basis on many occasions. "You've figured it out?" Hunt asked, slipping into a vacant
chair and studying the display.
"We're on our way, anyhow."
"Does it get us any nearer instant point-to-point transfers?" That was something the
Ganymeans had not achieved, although
the possibility was implicit in their theoretical constructs. Black holes distantly
separated in normal space seemed to link up via a hyperrealm within which unfamiliar physical
principles operated, and the ordinary concepts and restrictions of the relativistic universe
simply didn't apply. As the Ganymeans had agreed, the promises implied by this were staggering,
but nobody knew how to turn them into realities yet.
"It's in there," Shelling answered. "The possibility is in there, but there's another side
to it that bothers me, and it's impossible to separate Out."
"What's that?" Hunt asked.
"Time transfers," Shelling told him. Hunt frowned. Had he been talking to anybody else, he
would have allowed his skepticism to show openly. Shelling spread his hands and gestured toward
the screen. "You can't get away from it. If the solutions admit point-to-point transfers through
normal space, they admit transfers through time too. If you could find a way of exploiting one,
you'd automatically have a way of exploiting the other as well. Those matrix integrals are
symmetric."
Hunt waited for a moment to avoid appearing derisive. "That's too much, Paul," he said.
"What happens to causality? You'd never be able to unscramble the mess."
"I know...I know the theory sounds screwy, but there it is. Either we're up a dead end and
none of it works, or we're stuck with both solutions."
They spent the next hour working through Sheffing's equations again but ended up none the
wiser. Groups at Cal Tech, Cambridge, the Ministry of Space Sciences in Moscow, and the University
of Sydney, Australia, had found the same thing. Obviously Hunt and Shelling were not about to
crack the problem there and then, and Hunt eventually left in a very curious and thoughtful mood.
Back in his own office, he called Speehan at MIT, who turned out to have some interesting
results from a simulation model of the climatic upheavals caused fifty thousand years earlier by
the process of lunar capture. Hunt then took care of a couple of other urgent items that had come
in that morning, and was just settling down to study the Livermore paper when Lyn called from
Caldwell's suite at the top of the building. Her face was unusually serious.
"Gregg wants you in on the meeting up here," she told him without preamble. "Can you get
up right away?"
Hunt sensed that she was pushed for time. "Give me two minutes." He cut the connection
without further ado, consigned Livermore to the uncharted depths of the Navcomms databank, told
Ginny to consult Duncan if anything desperate developed during the rest of the day, and left the
office at a brisk pace.
Chapter Three
From the web of communications links interconnecting UNSA's manned and unmanned space
vehicles with orbiting and surface bases all over the solar system, to the engineering and
research establishments at places such as Houston, responsibility for the whole gamut of Navcomms
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activities ultimately resided in Caldwell's office at the top of the Headquarters Building. It was
a spacious and opulently furnished room with one wall completely of glass, looking down over the
lesser skyscrapers of the city and the ant colony of the pedestrian precincts far below. The wall
opposite Caldwell's huge curved desk, which faced inward from a corner by the window, was composed
almost totally of a battery of display screens that gave the place more the appearance of a
control room than of an office. The remaining walls carried a display of color pictures showing
some of the more spectacular UNSA projects of recent years, including a seven-mile-long photon-
drive star probe being designed in California and an electromagnetic catapult being constructed
across twenty miles of Tranquilitatis to hurl lunar-manufactured structural components into orbit
for spacecraft assembly.
Caidwell was behind his desk and two other people were sitting with Lyn at the table set
at a T to the desk's front edge when a secretary ushered Hunt in from the outer office. One of
them was a woman in her mid- to late forties, wearing a high-necked navy dress that hinted of a
firm and well-preserved figure, and over it a wide-collared jacket of white-and-navy check. Her
hair was a carefully styled frozen sea of auburn that stopped short of her shoulders, and the
lines of her face, which was not unattractive in a natural kind of way beneath her sparse makeup,
were clear and assertive. She was sitting erect and seemed composed and fully in command of
herself. Hunt had the feeling that he had seen her somewhere before.
Her companion, a man, was smartly attired in a charcoal threepiece suit with a white shirt
and two-tone gray tie. He had a fresh,
clean-shaven look about him and jet-black hair cut short and brushed flat in college-boy
fashion, although Hunt put him at not far off his own age. His eyes, dark and constantly mobile,
gave the impression of serving an alert and quick-thinking mind.
Lyn flashed Hunt a quick smile from the side of the table opposite the two visitors. She
had changed into a crisp two-piece edged with pale orange and was wearing her hair high. She
looked distinctly un -- "groped."
"Vie," Caldwell announced in his gravelly bass-baritone voice, "I'd like you to meet Karen
Heller from the State Department in Washington, and Norman Pacey, who's a presidential advisor on
foreign relations." He made a resigned gesture in Hunt's direction. "This is Dr. Vie Hunt. We send
him to Jupiter to look into a few relics of some extinct aliens, and he comes back with a shipful
of live ones."
They exchanged formalities. Both visitors knew about Hunt's exploits, which had been well
publicized. In fact Vie had met Karen Heller once very briefly at a reception given for some
Ganymeans in Zurich about six months earlier. Of course! Hadn't she been the U.S. Ambassador to-
France, wasn't it, at the time? Yes. She was representing the U.S. at the UN now, though. Norman
Pacey had met some Ganymeans too, it turned out-in Washington
-- but Hunt hadn't been present on that occasion.
Hunt took the empty chair at the end of the table, facing along the length of it toward
Caldwell's desk, and watched the head of wiry, gray, crose-cropped hair while Caldwell frowned
down at his hands for a few seconds and drummed the top of his desk with his fingers. Then he
raised his craggy, heavily browed face to look directly at Hunt, who knew better than to expect
much in the way of preliminaries. "Something's happened that I wanted to tell you about earlier
but couldn't," Caldwell said. "Signals from the Giants' Star started coming in again about three
weeks ago."
Even though he should have known about such a development if anyone did, Hunt was too
taken aback for the moment to wonder about it. As months passed after the sole reply to the first
message transmitted from Giordano Bruno at the time of the S/iapieron's departure, he had grown
increasingly suspicious that the whole thing had been a hoax-that somebody with access to the UNSA
communications net had somehow arranged a message to be relayed back from some piece of UNSA
hardware located out
in space in the right direction. He was open-minded enough to admit that with an advanced
alien civilization anything could be possible, but a hoax had seemed the most likely explanation
for the fourteen-hour turn-around time. If Caldwell were right, it made so much nonsense of that
conviction.
"You're certain they're genuine?" he asked dubiously when he had recovered from the
initial shock. "It couldn't all be a sick joke by a freak somewhere?"
CaIdwell shook his head. "We have enough data now to pinpoint the source
interferometrically. It's way out past Pluto, and UNSA does not have anything anywhere near it.
Besides, we've checked every bit of traffic through all our hardware, and it's clean. The signals
are genuine."
Hunt raised his eyebrows and exhaled a long breath. Okay, so he'd been wrong on that one.
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He shifted his gaze from Caldwell to the notes and papers lying along the middle of the table in
front of him, and frowned as another thought occurred to him. Like the original message from
Farside, the reply from the Giants' Star had been composed in the ancient Ganymean language and
communications codes from the time of the Shapieron. After the ship's departure, the reply had
been translated by Don Maddson, head of the Linguistics section lower down in the building, who
had made a study of Ganymean during the aliens' stay. That had required considerable effort, short
though the reply had been, and Hunt knew of no one else anywhere who could have handled the more
recent signals that Caldwell was talking about. As a rule Hunt didn't have much time for protocol
and formality, but if Maddson was in on this, he sure-as-hell should have known about it too. "So
who did the translating?" he asked suspiciously. "Linguistics?"
"There wasn't any need," Lyn said simply. "The signals are coming through in standard
datacomm codes. They're in English."
Hunt slumped back in his chair and just stared. Ironically that said definitely that it
was no hoax; who in their right mind would forge messages from aliens in English? And then it came
to him. "Of course!" he exclaimed. "They must have intercepted the S/iapieron somehow. Well,
that's good to -- " He broke off in surprise as he saw Caidwell shaking his head.
"From the content of the dialogue over the last few weeks, we're pretty certain that's not
the case," Caldwell said. He looked
at Hunt gravely. "So if they haven't talked to the Ganymeans who were here, and they know
our communications codes and our language, what does that say to you?"
Hunt looked around and saw that the others were watching him expectantly. So he thought
about it. And after a few seconds his eyes widened slowly, and his mouth fell open in undisguised
disbelief. "Je-sus!" he breathed softly.
"That's right," Norman Pacey said. "This whole planet must be under some kind of
surveillance...and has been for a long time." For the moment Hunt was too flabbergasted to offer
any reply. Little wonder the whole business had been hushed up.
"That supposition was backed up by the first of the new signals that came in at Bruno,"
Caidwell resumed. "It said in no uncertain terms that nothing whatsoever relating to the contact
was to be communicated via lasers, comsats, datalinks, or any kind of electronic media. The
scientists up at Bruno who received the message went along with that directive, and told me about
it by sending a courier down from Luna. I passed the word up through Navcomms to UNSA Corporate in
the same way and told the Bruno guys to carry on handling things locally until somebody got back
to them."
"What it means is that at least part of the surveillance is in the form of tapping into
our communications network," Pacey said. "And whoever is sending the signals, and whoever is
running the surveillance, are not the same...'people,' or whatever. And the ones who are talking
to us don't want the other ones knowing about it." Hunt nodded, having figured that much out
already.
"I'll let Karen take it from there," Caldwell said and nodded in her direction.
Karen Heller leaned forward to rest her arms lightly along the edge of the table. "The
scientists at Bruno established fairly early on that they were indeed in contact with a Ganymean
civilization descended from migrants from Minerva," she said, speaking in carefully modulated
tones that rose and fell naturally and made listening easy. "They inhabit a planet called Thurien,
in the planetary system of the Giants' Star, or 'Gistar,' to use the contraction that seems to
have been adopted. While this was going on, UNSA in Washington referred the matter to the UN." She
paused to look over at Hunt, but he had no questions at that point. She went on, "A special
working party reporting to the Secretary General was
formed to debate the issue, and the ruling finally came out that a contact of this nature
was first and foremost a political and diplomatic affair. A decision was made that further
exchanges would be handled secretly by a small delegation of selected representatives of the
permanent-member nations of the Security Council. To preserve secrecy, no outsiders would be
informed or involved for the time being."
"I had to hold things right there when that ruling came down the line," Caldwell
interjected, looking at Hunt. "That was why I couldn't tell you about any of this before." Hunt
nodded. Now that it had been explained, at least he felt a little better on that score.
He was still far from completely happy, however. It sounded as if there had been a typical
bureaucratic overreaction to the whole thing. Playing safe was all very well up to a point, but
surely this supersecrecy was taking things too far. The thought of the UN keeping everybody out of
it apart from a handful of select individuals who had probably had few, if any, dealings with
Ganymeans was infuriating.
"They didn't want anybody else included?" he asked dubiously. "Not even a scientist or two-
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somebody who knows Ganymeans?"
"Especially not scientists," Caldwell said, but volunteered nothing further. The whole
thing was beginning to sound nonsensical.
"As a permanent member of the Council, the U.S.A. was informed from high up in the UN and
applied sufficient pressure to be represented on the delegation," Heller continued. "Norman and
myself were assigned that duty, and for most of the time since then we've been at Giordano Bruno,
participating in the exchange of signals that has been continuing with the Thuriens."
"You mean everything is being handled locally from there?" Hunt asked.
"Yes. The ban on communicating anything to do with it electronically is being strictly
adhered to. The people up there who know what's going on are all security-cleared and reliable."
"I see." Hunt sat back and braced his arms along the table in front of him. So far there
was a mystery and some reason for being uncomfortable, but nothing that had been said so far
explained what Heller and Pacey were doing in Houston. "So what's been going on?" he asked. "What
have you been talking to Thurien about?"
Heller motioned with her head to indicate a lockable document folder lying by her elbow.
"Complete transcripts of everything received and sent are in there," she told him. "Gregg has a
full set of copies, and since you'll no doubt be involved from now on, you'll be able to read them
for yourself shortly. To sum up, the first messages from Thurien asked for information about the
Shapieron-its condition, the well-being of its occupants, their experiences on Earth, and that
kind of thing. Whoever was sending the messages seemed concerned...as if they considered us a
threat to it for some reason." Heller paused, seeing the look of non-comprehension that was
spreading across Hunt's face.
"Are you saying they didn't know about the ship before we beamed that first signal out
from Farside?" he asked.
"So it would appear," Heller replied.
Hunt thought for a moment. "So again, whoever is handling the surveillance isn't talking
to whoever is sending these messages," he said.
"Exactly," Pacey agreed, nodding. "The ones handling the surveillance could hardly have
not known about the Shapieron while it was here if they have any access to our communications
network. There were enough headlines about it."
"And that's not the only strange thing," Heller went on. "The Thuriens that we have been
in contact with seem to have formed a completely distorted picture of Earth's recent history. They
think we're all set for World War III only this time interplanetary, with orbiting bomfs
everywhere, radiation and particle-beam weapons commanding the surface from the Moon...you name
it."
Hunt had been growing even more bemused as he listened. He could see now why it looked as
if the Shapieron couldn't have been intercepted-at least not by the Thuriens who were talking to
Earth; the Ganymeans from the ship would have cleared up any misunderstandings like that straight
away. But even if the Thuriens who were doing the talking hadn't intercepted the Shapieron, they
had an impression of Earth nonetheless, which meant that they could only have obtained it from the
Thuriens who were handling the surveillance. The impression they had obtained was wrong.
Therefore, either the surveillance wasn't very effective, or the story being passed on was being
distorted. But if the messages had been coming in composed in English, the surveillance methods
had to be pretty effective, which therefore implied that
the Thuriens passing on the story weren't passing it on straight. But that didn't make a
lot of sense, either. Ganymeans didn't
play Machiaveffian games of intrigue or deceive one another knowingly. Their minds didn't
work that way; they were far too rational...unless the Ganymeans who now existed on Thurien had
changed significantly in the course of the twenty-five million years that separated them from
their ancestors aboard the S/iapieron. That was a thought. A lot of changes could have taken place
in that time. He couldn't arrive at any definite conclusions now, he decided, so the information
was simply filed away for retrieval and analysis later.
"It sounds strange, all right," Hunt agreed after he had sorted that much out in his head.
"They must be pretty confused by now.',
"They were already," Caldwell said. "The reason they reopened the dialogue is that they
want to come to Earth physically- I guess to straighten out the whole mess. That's what they've
been trying to get the UN people to arrange."
"Secretly," Pacey explained in answer to Hunt's questioning look. "No public spectacles or
anything like that. What it seems to add up to is that they're hoping to do some quiet checking up
without the outfit that's running the surveillance knowing about it."
Hunt nodded. The plan made sense. But there was a note in Pacey's voice that hinted of
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things not having gone so smoothly. "So what's the problem?" he asked, shifting his eyes to glance
at both Pacey and Heller.
"The problem is the policy that's been handed down from the top levels inside the UN,"
Heller replied. "To put it in a nutshell, they're scared of what it might mean if this planet
simply opens up to a civilization that's millions of years ahead of us...our whole culture could
be torn up by the roots; our civilization would come apart at the seams; we'd be avalanched with
technology that we're not ready to absorb...that kind of thing."
"But that's ridiculous!" Hunt protested. "They haven't said they want to take this place
over. They just want to come here and talk." He made an impatient throwing-away motion in the air.
"Okay, I'll accept that we'd have to play it soffly and exercise some caution and common sense,
but what you're describing sounds more like a neurosis."
"It is," Heller said. "The UN's being irrational-there's no other word for it. And the
Farside delegation is following that p01-icy to the letter and operating in go-slow, stall-stall-
stall mode." She waved toward the fOlder she had indicated earlier. "You'll see for yourself.
Their responses are evasive and ambiguous, and do nothing to correct the wrong impressions that
the Thuriens have got. Norman and I have tried to fight it, but we get outvoted."
Hunt caught Lyn's eye as he sent a despairing look around the room. She sent back a faint
half-smile and a barely perceptible shrug that said she knew how he felt. A faction inside the UN
had fought hard and for the same reasons to prevent the Farside transmissions being continued
after the first, unexpected reply had come in, he remembered, but had been overruled after a
deafening outcry from the world's scientific community. That same faction seemed to be active
again.
"The worst part is what we suspect might be behind it," Heller continued. "Our brief from
the State Department was to help move things smoothly toward broadening Earth's communications
with Thurien as fast as developments allowed, at the same time protecting this country's interests
where appropriate. The Department didn't really agree with the policy of excluding outsiders, but
had to go along with it because of UN protocols. In other words, the U.S. has been trying to play
it straight so far, but under protest."
"I can see the picture," Hunt said as she paused. "But that just says that you're becoming
frustrated by the slow progress. You sounded as if there's more to it than that."
"There is," Heller confirmed. "The Soviets also have a representative on the delegation-a
man called Sobroskin. Given the world situation-with us and the Soviets competing everywhere for
things like the South Atlantic fusion deal, industrial-training franchises in Africa, scientific-
aid programs, and so on-the advantage that either side could get from access to Ganymean know-how
would be enormous. So you'd expect the Soviets to be just as impatient to kick some life into this
damn delegation as we are. But they aren't. Sobroskin goes along with the official UN line and
doesn't bitch about it. In fact he spends half his time throwing in complications that slow things
down even further. Now when those facts are laid down side by side, what do they seem to say?"
Hunt thought over the question for a while, then tossed out his hands with a shrug. "I
don't know," he said candidly. "I'm not a political animal. You tell me."
"It could mean that the Soviets are planning to set up their own private channel to fix a
landing in Siberia or somewhere so that they get exclusive rights," Pacey answered. "If that's so,
then the UN line would suit them fine. If the official channel stays clogged up, and the U.S.
plays straight and sticks with the official channel, then guess who walks off with the bonanza.
Think of the difference it would make to the power balance if a few heads of select governments
around the world were quietly tipped off that the Soviets had access to lots of know-how that we
didn't. You see
-- it all fits with the way Sobroskin is acting."
"And an even more sobering thought is the way in which the UN's policy fits in with that
so conveniently," Heller added. "It could mean that the Soviets have ways that we don't even know
about of pulling all kinds of strings and levers right inside the top levels of the UN itself. If
that's true, the global implications for the U.S. are serious indeed."
The facts were certainly beginning to add up, Hunt admitted to himself. The Soviets could
easily set up another long-range communications facility in Siberia, up in orbit, out near Luna
maybe, and operate their own link to whatever was intercepting Farside's signals out beyond the
edge of the solar system. Any reply coming back would probably be in the form of a fairly wide
beam by the time it got to Earth, which meant that anybody could receive it and know that somebody
somewhere other than the UN was cheating. But if the replies were in a prearranged code, nobody
would be able to interpret them or know for whom they were in-tended. The Soviets might be
accused, in which case they would deny the charge vehemently...and that would be about as much as
anybody would be able to do about it.
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file:///F|/rah/James%20P.%20Hogan/Hogan,%20James%20P%20-%20Giant's%20Sta\r.txtGiant'sStar--JamesP.Hogan(Version1.0--12/08/2001)PrologueBythebeginningofthefourthdecadeofthetwenty-firstcentur\y,itseemedthatthehumanracewasfinallybeginningtolearntolivetogetherandthatitw\asonitswaytothestars.Havingabando...

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