James P. Hogan - Giants 4 - Entoverse

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Entoverse -- James P. Hogan

(Version 2002.07.25 -- Done)

To Elenor Wood, whose idea it was -- and because a good agent deserves to be

mentioned in the final product.

PROLOGUE

It had taken until the fourth decade of the twenty-first century for humanity

to get its act together and learn to resolve or live with its differences, and

begin the migration outward as one species toward the stars. In the process,

many of the prejudices and irrationalities that had underlain the strife of

ages at last withered or were swept away. The core of beliefs that survived

would form a solid foundation for the continuing expansion of human knowledge

-- for surely with the wealth of modern observational data and the

sophistication of experimental method, the universe had little left to offer

in the way of further reserves of facts to seriously challenge them.

Or so, for a short, comforting while, it seemed.

And then a series of unforeseen and utterly unprecedented events not

only added a new dimension to the history of the Solar System, but forced a

complete rewriting of the origins of humankind itself.

When Man, under the thrust of the revitalized, international space

program that arose from redirection of defense industries after the fading of

the Soviet empire, finally reached the regions of the outer planets, he

discovered that others had been there before him and had surpassed all that he

had achieved. Twenty-five million years in the past, a civilization of eight-

foot-tall, benevolently disposed giants -- called the Ganymeans, after the

first traces of them came to light on Ganymede, largest of the Jovian moons --

had flourished on a planet Minerva, occupying the position between Mars and

Jupiter.

And more astonishing still, while generations of work by

anthropologists, geneticists, comparative anatomists, and others had correctly

reconstructed the abrupt transformation responsible for the emergence of Homo

sapiens from an arena of early-hominid contenders, it turned out that --

understandably, in the circumstances -- they had assigned the event to the

wrong place. Modern Man hadn't evolved on Earth at all!

Despite Minerva's greater distance from the Sun, an effective natural

greenhouse mechanism had maintained generally cool but Earth-like conditions

there. But by the time the Ganymean civilization reached its advanced stage,

the climate was altering in a direction that their constitution would have

been unable to tolerate. As was to be expected, their own voyages of discovery

across the early Solar System brought them to Earth, and from there they

transported back to Minerva numerous plant and animal forms representative of

life on late-Oligocene, early-Miocene Earth in connection with large-scale

bioengineering researches aimed at combating the problem. These efforts were

in vain, however, and the Ganymeans migrated to what later came to be called

the Giants' Star, some twenty light-years from Earth in the direction of the

constellation of Taurus.

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

eclipsed and replaced the native Minervan forms, which, owing to a peculiarity

of early Minervan biology that had precluded the emergence of land-dwelling

carnivores, had evolved no prey-predator adaptations and were unable to

compete. These terrestrial types included a population of genetically modified

primates as advanced as anything that existed on Earth at the time. Almost

twenty-five million years later, fifty thousand years before the present,

while the various hominid lines that had been developing on Earth were just

yielding the first crude beginnings of stone-using cultures, a second

advanced, spacegoing race had already developed on Minerva: the first version

of modern Man, subsequently given the name Lunarians when the first evidence

of their existence was found in the course of early twenty-first-century

exploration of Earth's moon.

At the time of the Lunarians' emergence, the Solar System was entering

the most recent ice age. Conditions on Minerva were deteriorating, and the

Lunarian sciences and industrial technologies developed rapidly as part of a

long-term stratagem to move their civilization to the warmer and more

hospitable world of Earth.

But such was not to be.

When the Lunarians were practically within reach of the goal toward

which they had been working constructively for generations, they embarked on a

course of ruinous military rivalries that culminated in a cataclysmic war

between two superpowers, Cerios and Lambia, in the course of which the planet

Minerva was destroyed.

The Ganymeans by that time had established a thriving interstellar

civilization centered on the planet Thurien of the Giants' Star system. They

had never felt comfortable with what they regarded as their abandonment of a

genetic mutant that they expected would have no chance of survival, and they

had followed the progress of the Lunarians with a mixture of increasing guilt

and awe. But when they saw it all end in catastrophe, the Ganymeans forgot

their previous policy of nonintervention and appeared in time to save the last

few survivors from the war. Gravitational upheavals caused by the emergency

methods used to transport the Ganymean rescue mission 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.

Despite their experience, the surviving Lunarians remained hostile and

immiscible. The Lambians went back with the Ganymeans and were installed on a

world called Jevlen, eventually to become a fully integrated, human component

of the Thurien civilization. The Cerians were returned, at their own request,

to the world of their origins: Earth, where they were almost overwhelmed

shortly afterward by climatic and tidal upheavals caused by the arrival of

Minerva's moon. For thousands of years they reverted to barbarism, struggling

on the edge of extinction, and the knowledge of their origins was lost. Only

in modern times, when they at last climbed outward once more toward the stars

and found the traces of what had gone before, were they able to piece the

story together.

The Jevlenese never ceased regarding the people of Earth as Cerians. As

part of a plan for one day settling the score with their ancient rivals, they

inaugurated a campaign to retard Earth's progress toward rediscovery of the

sciences and advanced civilization, while they themselves absorbed Thurien

technology and gained autonomy over their own affairs. From its beginnings,

they altered the course of Earth's history by infiltrating agents, fully human

in form, to spread beliefs in magic and superstition, and to found irrational

mass movements that would keep Earth impotent by diverting its energies away

from the path by which real knowledge is acquired.

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

their resentment of the restraint to their ambitions posed by the Ganymeans,

whose nonviolent ways merely aroused their contempt. Taking advantage of the

innate Ganymean inability to suspect motives, the Jevlenese gained control of

the surveillance operation set up to keep a watch over Earth's development;

while preserving outward appearances of being model protégés of the Ganymeans,

they fed the Ganymeans falsified accounts of a militarized Earth about to

burst out from the Solar System, and used this as a pretext for inducing the

Ganymeans to prepare countermeasures. What the Jevlenese planned to do was

seize control of the countermeasures themselves, eliminate their Terran rivals

and repossess the Solar System, and then sweep outward in a wave of

acquisition and conquest across the galaxy, unchecked and unopposed.

But the reappearance of a lost starship from the ancient Ganymean

civilization on Minerva changed everything.

The Ganymean scientific mission ship Shapieron, returning after a

twenty-five-million-year time dilation compounded by a fault in the vessel's

space-time-distorting drive method, came back to the Solar System to find

Minerva gone and a new, terrestrial race spacefaring among the planets. The

"Giants" remained on Earth for six months and mingled harmoniously. But the

most significant outcome of the pooling of the Terran proclivity for intrigue

with alien technical ability was the establishing of the first direct contact

between Earth and Thurien, bypassing the Jevlenese and the millennia-old

surveillance system. The affiance led to a confrontation in which the deceit

and scheming of the Jevlenese was exposed, revealing the network of

infiltrators by which they had endeavored to subvert modern-day Earth after

the attempts to block its technological advancement failed.

The encounter that followed came to be known as the Pseudowar. In it,

the supercomputing entity JEVEX, which managed all of the communications,

information handling, and other vital functions of the Jevlenese worlds, was

penetrated and defeated by a fictional interstellar attack force consisting

entirely of computer-generated imagination. The just-proclaimed "Federation,"

by which the Jevlenese proposed bringing their plans to fruition, collapsed,

JEVEX was shut down, and Jevlen put on a period of probation. The Ganymeans of

the Shapieron, displaced from their own home and time and needing an interval

of respite to adapt to their new circumstances, were installed on Jevlen to

take charge of the rehabilitation. Earth, rid of the corrupt element

responsible for practically all of the more sordid side of its turbulent

history, looked forward to assuming its rightful place in the interstellar

community.

So, once again, after a few more old beliefs had been toppled, what

remained was surely fact, resting on solid foundations. The future could be

faced with assurance.

Nothing more could go wrong, now...

CHAPTER ONE

Nieru, the god of darkness, was descending in the west after his nightly

domination of the sky, his cloak wrapped about him in a glowing purple spiral.

Overhead, Cassona, the goddess who created weather, had become the dawn star.

The three lesser stars of her daughters, the Cassoneids, which oscillated

about her -- Peria, Isthucis, and Dometer, the spirits of wind, rain, and

cloud -- were very close, almost in alignment, which meant that it was early

summer. Compared to the splendor that the night sky had once been, the stars

were few and feeble.

Cassona had once been capricious and vindictive, liable to cleave

mountains with a lightning bolt or send storms to devastate an entire

countryside on a whim. Today, however, she was placid. The morning was clear,

and the first light revealed that the peaks at the far end of the valley

outside Orenash had receded unusually far during the night, with the rooftops

within the city walls and the patches of woodland on the slopes beyond

noticeably lengthened in proportion. During the night, Gralth, the gods'

baker, who kneaded the world as if it were dough, stretched all dimensions in

the east-west direction; he would compress them back to their evening minima

as the day wore on. But so visible an extension at daybreak presaged an

uneventful day ahead.

From an upper window of his uncle's house below the rock upon which

stood the temple of Zos, Thrax brooded to himself, confused and afraid with

the bemusement of a youth whose world was running down just as he was

approaching manhood and thought he had made sense of it.

But these days, everyone was confused and afraid. The old ways were

ceasing to work, and the old wisdom had no answers. Priests prayed, seers

beseeched, and people redoubled their sacrifices. But the force-currents

waned, and life-power ebbed. No signs came; the oracles remained mute. And as

the gods died, their stars were going out.

Some thought that a great war had been waged in the sky, that new gods

had defeated the old, and different laws were coming into being to rule the

world. Mystics spoke of having seen a higher realm that they called Hyperia,

beyond the everyday plane of existence, where perpetual serenity reigned and

impossible happenings were commonplace.

Perhaps, a few of the more hopeful reasoned, the breaking down of the

old laws portended a transition of their world into a phase that would be

governed by the new kinds of laws glimpsed in the world beyond. They

experimented in unheard-of ways to prepare themselves, striving to grasp

strange notions and unfamiliar concepts.

"Hold it, Thrax. I think it needs a bit more play here." Thrax's uncle,

Dalgren, poked inside the contraption standing on the stone slab in his

basement workshop and adjusted a clamp. "And probably this one opposite, too."

It consisted essentially of two pairs of legs, each pair set one behind

the other in an arrangement of vertical slides that allowed either pair to

protrude below the other. In addition, whichever pair was raised could move

lengthwise along a horizontal guide and descend at varying displacements with

respect to the lower. Each leg had a foot in the form of a rocker that was

tipped at one end by the metal mobilium, which was "apathetic" to most kinds

of rock and slid easily over them, and at the other by frictite crystal, which

bound when in contact. It was a fact of nature that all materials possessed an

affinity for each other to a greater or lesser degree, determining how

strongly they were attracted or repelled; thus, depending on the position of

the rocker, the foot would either grip the surface or be repulsed. The whole

thing was an attempt at artificially mimicking the sliding-planting-lifting-

sliding of the leg movements of an animal, such as a drodhz.

Nobody had ever conceived such an idea before -- carts and other

vehicles had always been hauled along on skids of mobilium or something

similar. The mystics who had seen Hyperia told of indescribable, magical

devices capable of performing motions of complexities that defied imagination.

They even spoke of constructions that spun.

"There. Try it now, Thrax," Dalgren said, stepping back.

Thrax pushed one of the operating rods projecting from the assembly.

While one pair of legs remained anchored to the bench, the other lifted, slid

forward one half of a leg-pitch, and then descended in a new position. Then

the rocker mechanism operated, locking the legs that had advanced, and

releasing the pair that had remained stationary. As Thrax pulled the

activating rod back again, the rearmost pair of legs moved past the others in

turn, and reanchored themselves to complete the cycle.

"Yes, that did the trick!" Dalgren exclaimed. "Keep going!"

Thrax moved the rod slowly back and forth several times, and the

contrivance walked its way jerkily across the slab. As it approached the edge,

however, its motion became stiffer and slower, and Thrax had to push harder on

the rod to keep it moving. "It's starting to jam," he said. "I can feel it."

"Hmm." Dalgren stooped to peer at the horizontal guides. "Ahah, yes, I

think I can see why. The main guide is expanding and starting to jam." He

sighed and sat down on a stool. "I'm not sure how we get around it. It may

need an additional compensating liner."

Every problem solved seemed to introduce a new complication. They had

adjusted the device for correct operation early in the morning, but as the

world shrank from east to west under Grakh's kneading, the mechanism's

dimensions had changed. Automatically, Thrax began mentally composing a prayer

to Gralth. Then he checked himself, remembering that those were old methods

that had to be set aside firmly if the new ones were ever to be understood. At

the same time, he felt an inner twinge of discomfort at such defiance of all

his years of conditioning.

As if echoing his doubts, a voice spoke accusingly from the doorway.

"Sorcerers! Blasphemy! These things belong to a higher realm. They are not

meant to be meddled with here in the world of Waroth. That is why the powers

are failing. Just as you are abandoning faith, so are the gods abandoning us."

It was Keyalo, a foster son of Dalgren and Thrax's aunt, Yonel. He was a

couple of years older than Thrax and had resented Thrax's intrusion into the

household ever since Thrax's own family had been lost when Vandros, the

underworld god whose blood ran as rivers of light, punished the Dertelians by

consuming five villages in a lake of fire.

"No one can be sure of that, Keyalo," Dalgren replied. His voice was

curt. Keyalo had never expressed gratitude for being taken in, and there was

little liking between the two of them either way. The fact that he had come

down to the basement at all indicated that he was out to cause trouble.

"The priests know!" Keyalo retorted. "The gods are putting us to a test.

And we shall all be judged by the failures of those who deny them, such as

you."

"Appeasing the gods, angering the gods..." Dalgren shook his head. "I'm

beginning to suspect that it's all in the mind. The world runs according to

its own rules, and what we think they influence is all our imagination. When

has anyone ever -- "

Without warning, Keyalo stepped forward and shot out an arm in the

manner of a Master casting a firebolt, pointing at the mechanism on the slab.

The tip of his finger swelled and glowed faintly for an instant -- most people

could achieve that -- and then returned to normal without discharging. Keyalo

stared at it in anger and surprised disappointment.

Perhaps he had thought that a concentrated moment of belief and will

would induce a god to favor him.

Keyalo's problem was that he was lazy. He hung around the disciples and

the Masters, and sometimes attended the ceremonies, and even a few of the

lessons, occasionally; but he could never have mustered the concentration and

discipline to enter one of the orders and train into an adept. Probably that

was why he was so jealous of Thrax, whom he knew had the potential. But in

Keyalo's eyes Thrax not only abused his ability but, what was worse,

misdirected it upon heresy.

"We are busy," Dalgren said in a tight voice. "Your words are wasted

here, Keyalo. Leave us alone."

"It is those like you who are bringing destruction on all of us," Keyalo

hissed. Then, white-faced with rage, he turned and left the room.

Dalgren took the rods and walked the device back across the slab in

silence while the mood cleared. "They say there are devices in Hyperia that

propel themselves," he murmured absently. "Imagine, Thrax, a chariot without a

drodhz. What form of propulsion could move it, I wonder?"

"They say there are devices that fly, too," Thrax pointed out, his voice

registering the obvious impossibility of such a notion. "The stories become

exaggerated with telling and retelling."

But Dalgren's expression remained serious. "But why not?" he asked. "It

simply involves the same way of looking at things: Instead of jumping to the

conclusion that it can't work because, try saying, it could work, if...You've

only got to open your eyes to see that the world is filled with animals that

propel themselves and creatures that fly. If we can make other objects do

whatever they do, then why shouldn't they behave in the same way?"

Thrax nodded, but his expression remained unconvinced. "Maybe I'll

believe it when I've seen a drodhzless carriage," he said. "You know, Uncle,

it wouldn't surprise me if you start talking about spinning objects next."

Dalgren let go the rods and straightened up. "Spinning objects?" he

repeated. "Now you are getting fanciful. I couldn't even imagine how to

begin."

Thrax stared out at the patch of sky visible through the top of the

basement window. "It's the same seers who tell of them," he pointed out.

"Ah yes. But if it's true, it's something that can only exist in

Hyperia. Our animals prove that at least the concepts of objects propelling

themselves and objects flying are possible in Waroth. The precedents exist.

But we don't have a precedent for what you're talking about. If it's possible

at all, space itself must be different from what we know in this world. And

quite beyond my ability to contemplate."

Thrax continued to stare up at the window. "Another universe, beyond our

wildest imaginings," he said distantly.

"I think I know how to compensate for the daily contraction, now,"

Dalgren muttered, returning his attention to the mechanism.

"Where objects spin..." Thrax went on dreamily, more to himself.

"Then we'll have to think about getting it to turn corners."

"And inhabited by strange beings."

"We'd need two more slides at the top."

"What kind of beings could they be?"

CHAPTER TWO

Dr. Victor Hunt closed the starter circuit, and the turbine engine of the GM

Husky groundmobile standing in the driveway outside the garage kicked into

life. As Hunt eased the throttle valve open with a screwdriver, the pitch

rose, then settled at a smooth, satisfying whine. He held the position steady

and cocked an inquiring eye at his neighbor, Jerry Santello, who was on the

far side of the opened hood, tapping at buttons and watching the screen of a

portable test unit connected to the vehicle's drive processor.

"It's looking better, Vic. Try it a few revs higher...Now gun it a few

times...Yup, I think we've cracked it."

"How about the burn on idle?" Hunt ran the turbine down to a murmur

while Jerry inspected the panel; then Hunt speeded it back up a little and

repeated the process several times.

"Good," Jerry pronounced. "I reckon that's it. It had to be the

equalizer. Shut it down now, and let's have that beer."

"That sounds like one of the better ideas I've heard today." Hunt turned

tile valve fully back, operated a cutout, and the engine died.

Jerry unplugged the test lead, which rewound itself into the case. He

closed the lid, gathered together the tools they had been using, and returned

them to their box. "How is it with you English guys? Is it right, you drink it

warm? Am I supposed to put it in the cooker or something?"

"Oh, don't believe everything they tell you, Jerry."

Jerry looked relieved. "So it's okay normal?"

"Sure."

"Hang on there while I get a couple from inside. We can sit out here and

take in the sun."

"Even better."

While Jerry's swarthy, mustached form, clad in beach shorts and a navy

sweatshirt, flip-flopped its way eupeptically up the shallow, curving steps

flanking the rockery by the side of the apartment, Hunt walked around the

front of the Husky to toss a few more items into the toolbox. Then he sat down

on a grassy hump below the wall separating Jerry's driveway from his own and

fished a pack of Winston's from his shirt pocket.

Around him, the other apartment units of Redfern Canyons clustered in

comfortable, leafy seclusion on terraced slopes divided by steep ravines

climbing from a central valley. The main valley contained a common access road

running alongside a creek that widened at intervals into shady pools fringed

by rocky shelves and overhangs. Although the name was more than a little

forced in the middle of Maryland less than a dozen miles north of the center

of Washington, D.C., and the artificiality of the pseudo-Californian

contouring went without saying, on the whole it had all been pleasingly

accomplished. The effect worked. After the months that he had spent inside the

cramped, miniature metal cities of the UN Space Arm's long-range mission ships

and at its bases down on the ice fields beneath the methane haze of Ganymede,

Hunt wasn't complaining.

He lit a cigarette and exhaled, smiling faintly to himself as the vista

of Redfern Canyons brought to mind the two directors from an Italian urban-

development corporation who had approached him several days previously. Could

the Ganymean "gravitic" technology -- which enabled gravitational fields to be

generated, manipulated, and switched on and off at will as readily as familiar

electrical and magnetic effects -- be somehow engineered into a piece of

mountainous terrain, they had wanted to know, in such a way as to render it

gravitationally flat? The idea was to create high-income habitats, or even

entire townships, in places that would offer all the visual aesthetics of the

Dolomites, and yet be as easy to walk around as Constitution Gardens.

Ingenious, Hunt had conceded.

And typical of human adaptability.

It was hardly a year since mankind had made the first contact with

intelligent aliens and brought them back to Earth; and as if that weren't

enough, the discovery of an interstellar alien culture, and Earth's opening

what promised to become a permanent relationship with it, had followed less

than half as long since, with all the promise which that portended of

unimaginable gains to human knowledge and the greatest single upheaval ever to

occur in the history of the race. The whole edifice of science could crash and

have to be rebuilt afresh; every philosophic insight might be demolished to

its foundations -- but people only became seriously affected when they thought

they saw a way of making a buck or two. The human alacrity for getting back to

business-as-usual would never cease to amaze him, Hunt thought. Ganymeans had

often marveled at the same thing.

Jerry came ambling back down from the house with a six-pack of Coors, a

large bag of potato chips, and a tub of onion-flavored dip. He perched himself

on one of the rocks lining the foot of the bank that Hunt was sprawled on and

passed him a can. "I thought you guys were supposed to drink it warm," he said

again.

"English beer is heavier," Hunt said. "If it's too cold you lose the

taste. It's better at room temperature, that's all -- which in a pub means

cellar temperature, usually a bit less than the bar. Nobody actually warms

it."

"Oh."

"And the lighter lager stuff, which is closer to yours, they prefer

chilled, just like you do. So we're not really so alien, after all."

"That's nice to know, anyhow. We've had enough aliens showing up around

here recently." Jerry flipped open his own can and tilted his head back to

take a swig; then he wiped his mustache with the back of a hand. "Hell, what

am I telling you for? You must get tired of people asking about them."

"Sometimes, Jerry. It depends on the people."

"There's a couple I know across in Silver Spring -- old friends -- with

this kid who's about five. Last time I was over there, he wanted to know what

planet Australians come from."

"What planet?"

Jerry nodded. "Yeah, see: Austr-alians. It was the way he heard it. He

figured they had to be from someplace else."

"Oh, I get it." Hunt grinned. "Smart kid."

"I never thought about it that way in over thirty years."

"Kids don't have the ruts yet that adults have carved into their minds.

They're born logical. Crooked thinking has to be taught."

"It doesn't work that way in your area, though -- science? That right?"

Jerry said.

"Oh, don't believe that myth. If anything, it's worse. You always have

to wait for a generation of entrenched authority to die off before anything

new happens. It's not like revolutions in your business. At least in politics

you can get rid of the obstructions yourself and move things along."

"But at least you always know you've got a job," Jerry pointed out.

"There is that side to it, I suppose," Hunt agreed.

Although still officially an employee of the CIA at Langley, Jerry had

been on extended leave for three months. With the residual Soviet-Western

rivalry transforming into economic competition, and the global development of

nuclear technology spelling an end to the dependence of advanced nations on

oil-rich, medieval dictator-states and sheikhdoms, the world had been on its

way to resolving the twentieth century's legacy of political absurdities even

before the first Ganymean contact. That had shaken things up enough, even

though it involved only a single shipload of time-stranded aliens. But after

the meeting with the Thuriens, immediately following that event, nobody knew

what the next ten years would hold in store. Few doubted, however, that there

was little in the realm of human affairs that would stand unaffected.

"Although, I don't know...with all those new worlds out there, you never

know what we might find," Hunt said. "It's your line of business that the

Ganymeans can't compete in, not mine. I wouldn't think of turning my badge in

just yet if I were you."

Jerry seemed unconvinced as he took another draft, but there was nothing

to make an issue over. "Let's hope you're right," he replied. After a pause he

went on. "So I guess it's all keeping you pretty busy over at Goddard, eh? I

hear you coming and going at all hours of the day and night."

"We're up to our ears there," Hunt agreed. He snorted lightly. "And the

funny thing is that at the beginning of the last century it was the scientists

who were talking about handing their badges in -- half of them, anyway --

because they didn't think there was anything worthwhile left to discover. So

maybe you can take some heart from that."

"Are you mixed up with that thing that's been in orbit up there for the

last couple of weeks?" Jerry asked. "I saw on the news that a bunch of 'em

from there were down at Goddard." A gigantic Thurien space vessel, named the

Vishnu by Terrans, after the Hindu deity that was able to cross the universe

in two strides, was currently visiting Earth, having brought delegations to

meet with representatives of various nations, institutions, corporations, and

other organizations for all manner of purposes as the scope of dealings

between the two cultures grew.

"Yes, I talk to some of them," Hunt said, nodding.

"What kind of thing do you do there exactly?" Jerry asked curiously.

Hunt drew on his cigarette and stared out at the central valley between

the green, terraced slopes. A glint of metallic bronze appeared briefly as a

car rounded a bend a short distance away on the road below. "I used to be with

UNSA's Navcomms division down in Houston -- that was how I got to go on the

Jupiter Five mission. So I was out at Ganymede and mixed up with the Ganymeans

right from the start."

"Okay." Jerry nodded.

"Well, now this business with Thurien is all happening, one of the

things we need to find out is what sense we can make of their sciences, and

how much of our own needs to go in the trash can. UNSA moved me up to Goddard

to head up a team that's looking into some parts of that."

"And they do things like travel around between stars and remodel whole

planets?" Jerry thought about it for a moment. "That could be pretty hair-

raising."

Hunt nodded. "They've got power plants out in space that turn eight

lunar masses of material a day into energy and beam it instantly to wherever

you need it, light-years away. Sometimes I feel like a scribe from an old

monastery would have, trying to unravel what goes on inside IBM."

"Wasn't there a woman who used to visit sometimes, when you first moved

here?" Jerry asked. "Kinda red hair, not bad-looking...

Hunt nodded. "That's right. Lyn."

"I talked to her once or twice. Said she'd moved up from Houston, too.

So was she with UNSA as well?"

"Right."

"Haven't seen her around lately."

Hunt made a vague gesture with the can he was holding, and stubbed his

cigarette in a tin lid that he had found in the toolbox. "An old flame from

her college days breezed in out of nowhere, and the next thing I knew it was

serious and they got married. They're over in Germany now. She's still with

UNSA -- coordinating some program with the European side."

"Just like that, eh?"

"Oh, it was just as well, Jerry. She'd been sending domestication

signals my way for a while. You know how it is."

"Not really your scene, huh?"

"No...Probably a great institution, mind you, Jerry. But I don't think

I'm ready for an institution yet."

Jerry seemed more at ease, as if back on ground that he understood. He

raised his beer. "I'll drink to that."

"Never tried it?" Hunt asked.

"Once. That was enough."

"Not exactly a happy affair?"

Jerry pulled a face. "Oh, no, there's no such thing as an unhappy

marriage. They're all happy -- you only have to look at the wedding pictures.

It's the living together afterward that does it." He crumpled his empty can

and dropped it into the carton, then pulled out another, peeled back the tab,

and settled back comfortably until he was half lying against a tree standing

behind the rock.

Hunt stretched back on the grassy bank and clasped his hands behind his

head. "Anyhow, life's full and exciting right now. I don't need any of that

kind of complication. A whole alien civilization. A revolution in science --

profound things that need concentration."

"You need all your time," Jerry agreed solemnly. "Can't afford the

distraction."

"To tell you the truth, life has never been simpler and more

exhilarating."

"A good way for it to be."

Hunt lay back in the sun and closed his eyes. "Oh, you don't have to

worry about that. All the complications are three thousand miles away now, in

Germany, and that's about where I intend to keep them."

At the sound of a car coming to a halt, he opened his eyes and sat up

again. The metallic bronze car that he had glimpsed approaching a minute or

two before had come up the access road and was standing outside the gateway

where the driveways from the two apartments merged. It was a newish-looking

Peugeot import, sleek in line, but with just the right note of restraint in

dark brown upholstery and trim to set it apart from pretentiousness.

The same could be said of the woman who was driving it. She was in her

early to mid-thirties, with a sweep of raven hair framing an open face with

high cheeks, a slightly pouting, well-formed mouth, rounded, tapering chin,

and a straight nose, just upturned enough to add a hint of puckishness. She

was wearing a neatly cut, sleeveless navy dress with a square white collar,

and the tanned arm resting along the sill of the open window bore a light

silver bracelet.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was easy and natural. She inclined her head

slightly to indicate the still-open hood of Jerry's Husky. "Since you're

relaxing, I assume you got it fixed."

Jerry detached himself from the tree and straightened up. "Yes. It's

fine now. Er...can we help you?"

Her eyes were bright and alive, with a deep, intelligent quality about

them that gave the impression of having taken in everything of note in the

scene in a brief, first glance. Her gaze flickered over the two men candidly,

curiously, but with no attempt at beguiling. Her manner was neither overly

assertive nor defensive, intrusive nor apologetic, or calculated to impress.

It was just, simply and refreshingly, the way that strangers everywhere ought

to be able to be with each other.

"I think I'm in the right place," she said. "The sign at the bottom said

there were only these two places up here. I'm looking for a Dr. Hunt."

CHAPTER THREE

The planet Jevlen possessed oceans that were rich in chloride and chlorate

salts. Molecules of these found their way high aloft via circulating winds and

air currents, where they were readily dissociated by a sun somewhat bluer and

hotter than Earth's, and therefore more active in the ultraviolet. This

mechanism sustained a population of chlorine atoms in the upper atmosphere,

which resulted in a palish chartreuse sky illuminated by a greeny-yellow sun.

The atmosphere also had a high neon content, which with its relatively low

discharge voltage added an almost continual background of electrical activity

that appeared in the form of diffuse, orange-red streaks and streamers.

This was where, fifty thousand years previously, after the destruction

of Minerva, the Thurien Ganymeans installed the survivors of the Lambian

branch of protohumanity, when the Cerian branch elected to be returned to

Earth. Thereafter, the Jevlenese were given all the benefits of Thurien

technology and allowed to share the knowledge gained through the Thurien

sciences. The Thuriens readily conferred to them full equality of rights and

status, and in time Jevlen became the center of a quasi-autonomous system of

Jevlenese-controlled worlds.

As the Thuriens saw things, a misguided worldview resulting from the

Lunarians' predatorial origins had been the cause of the defects that drove

them to the holocaust of Minerva. It wasn't so much that the limited

availability of resources caused humans to fight over them, as most Terran

conventional wisdom supposed; rather, the instinct to fight over anything led

to the conclusion that what was fought over had to be worth it, in other

words, of value, and hence in scarce supply.

But once the Lunarians absorbed the Ganymean comprehension that the

resources of the universe were infinite in any sense that mattered, all that

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