James P. Hogan - Giants 2 - The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

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The Gentle Giants of Ganymede -- James P. Hogan

(Version 2002.02.12 -- Done)

To my wife, Lyn, who showed me that greener grass can always be made to

grow on whatever side of the field one happens to be.

Prologue

Leyel Torres, commander of the scientific observation base near the

equator on Iscaris III, closed the final page of the report that he had been

reading and stretched back in his chair with a grateful sigh. He sat for a

while, enjoying the feeling of relaxation as the seat adjusted itself to

accommodate his new posture, and then rose to pour himself a drink from one of

the flasks on a tray on the small table behind his desk. The drink was cool

and refreshing, and quickly dispelled the fatigue that had begun to build up

inside him after more than two hours of unbroken concentration. Not much

longer now, he thought. Two months more and they should be saying good-bye to

this barren ball of parched rock forever and returning to the clean, fresh,

infinite star-speckled blackness that lay between here and home.

He cast his eye around the inside of the study of his private quarters

in the conglomeration of domes, observatory buildings and communications

antennas that had been home for the last two years. He was tired of the same,

endless month-in, month-out routine. The project was exciting and stimulating

it was true, but enough was enough; going home, as far as he was concerned,

couldn't come a day too soon.

He walked slowly over to the side of the room and stared for a second or

two at the blank wall in front of him. Without turning his head he said aloud:

"View panel. See-through mode."

The wall immediately became one-way transparent, presenting him with a

clear view out over the surface of Iscaris III. From the edge of the jumble of

constructions and machinery that made up the base, the dry, uniform reddish-

brown crags and boulders stretched all the way to the distinctly curved

skyline where they abruptly came to an end beneath a curtain of black velvet

embroidered with stars. High above, the fiery orb of Iscaris blazed

mercilessly, its reflected rays filling the room with a warm glow of orange

and red. As he looked out across the wilderness, a sudden longing welled up

inside him for the simple pleasure of walking under a blue sky and breathing

in the forgotten exhilaration of a wind blowing free. Yes, indeed -- departure

couldn't come a day too soon.

A voice that seemed to issue from nowhere in particular in the room

interrupted his musings.

"Marvyl Chariso is requesting to be put through, Commander. He says it's

extremely urgent."

"Accept," Torres replied. He turned about to face the large view screen

that occupied much of the opposite wall. The screen came alive at once to

reveal the features of Chariso, a senior physicist, speaking from an

instrumentation laboratory in the observatory. His face registered alarm.

"Leyel," Chariso began without preamble. "Can you get down here right

away. We've got trouble -- real trouble." His tone of voice said the rest.

Anything that could arouse Chariso to such a state had to be bad.

"I'm on my way," he said, already moving toward the door.

Five minutes later Torres arrived in the lab and was greeted by the

physicist, who by this time was looking more worried than ever. Chariso led

him to a monitor before a bank of electronic equipment where Galdern Brenzor,

another of the scientists, was staring grim-faced at the curves and data

analyses on the computer output screens. Brenzor looked up as they approached

and nodded gravely.

"Strong emission lines in the photosphere," he said. "Absorption lines

are shifting rapidly toward the violet. There's no doubt about it; a major

instability is breaking out in the core and it's running away."

Torres looked over at Chariso.

"Iscaris is going nova," Chariso explained. "Something's gone wrong with

the project and the whole star's started to blow up. The photosphere is

exploding out into space and preliminary calculations indicate we'll be

engulfed here in less than twenty hours. We have to evacuate."

Tones stared at him in stunned disbelief. "That's impossible."

The scientist spread his arms wide. "Maybe so, but it's fact. Later we

can take as long as you like to figure out where we went wrong, but right now

we've got to get out of here...fast!"

Tones stared at the two grim faces while his mind instinctively tried to

reject what it was being told. He gazed past them at another large wall screen

that was presenting a view being transmitted from ten million miles away in

space. He was looking at one of the three enormous G-beam projectors,

cylinders two miles long and a third of a mile across, that had been built in

stellar orbit thirty million miles from Iscaris with their axes precisely

aligned on the center of the star. Behind the silhouette of the projector

Iscaris's blazing globe was still normal in appearance, but even as he looked

he imagined that he could see its disk swelling almost imperceptibly but

menacingly outward.

For a moment his mind was swamped by emotions -- the enormity of the

task that suddenly confronted them, the hopelessness of having to think

rationally under impossible time pressures, the futility of two years of

wasted efforts. And then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling evaporated

and the commander in him reasserted itself.

"ZORAC," he called in a slightly raised voice.

"Commander?" The same voice that had spoken in his study answered.

"Contact Garuth on the Shapieron at once. Inform him that a matter of

the gravest urgency has arisen and that it is imperative for all commanding

officers of the expedition to confer immediately. I request that he put out an

emergency call to summon them to link in fifteen minutes from now. Also, sound

a general alert throughout the base and have all personnel stand by to await

further instructions. I'll link in to the conference from the multiconsole in

Room 14 of the Main Observatory Dome. That's all."

Just over a quarter of an hour later Tones and the two scientists were

facing an array of wall screens that showed the other participants in the

conference. Garuth, commander-in-chief of the expedition, sat flanked by two

aides in the heart of the mother-ship Shapieron two thousand miles above

Iscaris III. He listened without interruption to the account of the situation.

The chief scientist, speaking from elsewhere in the ship, confirmed that in

the past few minutes sensors aboard the Shapieron had yielded data similar to

that reported by instruments from the surface of Iscaris III, and that the

computers had produced the same interpretation. The G-beam projectors had

caused some unforeseen and catastrophic change in the internal equilibrium of

Iscaris, and the star was in the process of turning into a nova. There was no

time to think of anything but escape.

"We have to get everybody off the surface," Garuth said. "Leyel, the

first thing I need is a statement of what ships you've got down there at the

moment, and how many personnel they can bring up. We'll send down extra

shuttles to ferry out the rest as soon as we know what your shortage in

carrying capacity is. Monchar..." He addressed his deputy on another of the

screens. "Do we have any ships more than fifteen hours out from us at maximum

speed?"

"No, sir. The farthest away is out near Projector Two. It could make it

back in just over ten."

"Good. Recall them all immediately, emergency priority. If the figures

we've just heard are right, the only way we'll stand a chance of getting clear

is on the Shapieron's main drives. Prepare a schedule of expected arrival

times and make sure that preparations for reception have been made."

"Yes, sir."

"Leyel..." Garuth switched his gaze back to look straight out of the

screen in Room 14 of the Observatory Dome. "Bring all your available ships up

to flight-readiness and begin planning your evacuation at once. Report back on

status one hour from now. One bag of personal belongings only per person."

"May I remind you of a problem, sir." The chief engineer of the

Shapieron, Rogdar Jassilane, added from the drive section of the ship.

"What is it, Rog?" Garuth's face turned away to look at another screen.

"We still have a fault on the primary retardation system for the main-

drive toroids. If we start up those drives, the only way they'll ever slow

down again is at their own natural rate. The whole braking system's been

stripped down. We could never put it together again in under twenty hours, let

alone trace the fault and fix it."

Garuth thought for a moment. "But we can start them up okay?"

"We can," Jassilane confirmed. "But once those black holes start

whirling round inside the toroids, the angular momentum they'll build up will

be phenomenal. Without the retardation system to slow them down, they'll take

years to coast down to a speed at which the drives can be deactivated. We'd be

under main drive all the time, with no way of shutting down." He made a

helpless gesture. "We could end up anywhere."

"But we've no choice," Garuth pointed out. "It's fly or fry. We'll have

to set course for home and orbit the Solar System under drive until we've

dropped to a low enough return velocity. What other way is there?"

"I can see what Rog's getting at," the chief scientist interjected.

"It's not quite as simple as that. You see, at the velocities that we would

acquire under years of sustained main drive, we'd experience an enormous

relativistic time-dilation compared to reference frames moving with the speed

of Iscaris or Sol. Since the Shapieron would be an accelerated system, much

more time would pass back home than would pass on board the ship; we know

where we'd end up all right...but we won't be too sure of when."

"And, in fact, it would be worse than just that," Jassilane added. "The

main drives work by generating a localized space-time distortion that the ship

continuously 'falls' into. This also produces its own time-dilation effect.

Hence you'd have the compound effect of both dilations added together. What

that would mean with an unretarded main drive running for years, I couldn't

tell you -- I don't think anything like it has ever happened."

"I haven't done any precise calculations yet, naturally," the chief

scientist said. "But if my mental estimates are anything to go by, we could be

talking about a compound dilation of the order of millions."

"Millions?" Garuth looked stunned.

"Yes." The chief scientist looked out at them soberly. "For every year

that we spend slowing down from the velocity that we'll need to escape the

nova, we could find that a million years have passed by the time we get home."

Silence persisted for a long time. At last Garuth spoke in a voice that

was heavy and solemn. "Be that as it may, to survive we have no choice. My

orders stand. Chief Engineer Jassilane, prepare for deep-space and bring the

main drives up to standby readiness."

Twenty hours later the Shapieron was under full power and hurtling

toward interstellar space as the first outrushing front of the nova seared its

hull and vaporized behind it the cinder that had once been Iscaris III.

Chapter One

In a space of time less than a single heartbeat in the life of the

universe, the incredible animal called Man had fallen from the trees,

discovered fire, invented the wheel, learned to fly and gone out to explore

the planets.

The history that followed Man's emergence was a turmoil of activity,

adventure and ceaseless discovery. Nothing like it had been seen through eons

of sedate evolution and slowly unfolding events that had gone before.

Or so, for a long time, it had been thought.

But when at last Man came to Ganymede, largest of the moons of Jupiter,

he stumbled upon a discovery that totally demolished one of the few beliefs

that had survived centuries of his insatiable inquisitiveness: He was not,

after all, unique. Twenty-five million years before him, another race had

surpassed all that he had thus far achieved.

The fourth manned mission to Jupiter, early in the third decade of the

twenty-first century, marked the beginning of intensive exploration of the

outer planets and the establishment of the first permanent bases on the Jovian

satellites. Instruments in orbit above Ganymede had detected a large

concentration of metal some distance below the surface of the moon's ice

crust. From a base specially sited for the purpose, shafts were sunk to

investigate this anomaly.

The spacecraft that they found there, frozen in its changeless tomb of

ice, was huge. From skeletal remains found inside the ship, the scientists of

Earth reconstructed a picture of the race of eight-foot-tall giants that had

built it and whose level of technology was estimated as having been a century

or more ahead of Earth's. They christened the giants the "Ganymeans," to

commemorate the place of the discovery.

The Ganymeans had originated on Minerva, a planet that once occupied the

position between Mars and Jupiter but which had since been destroyed. The bulk

of Minerva's mass had gone into a violently eccentric orbit at the edge of the

Solar System to become Pluto, while the remainder of the debris was dispersed

by Jupiter's tidal effects and formed the Asteroid Belt. Various scientific

investigations, including cosmic-ray exposure-tests on material samples

recovered from the Asteroid Belt, pinpointed the breakup of Minerva as having

occurred some fifty thousand years in the past -- long, long after the

Ganymeans were known to have roamed the Solar System.

The discovery of a race of technically advanced beings from twenty-five

million years back was exciting enough. Even more exciting, but not really

surprising, was the revelation that the Ganymeans had visited Earth. The cargo

of the spacecraft found on Ganymede included a collection of plant and animal

specimens the likes of which no human eye had ever beheld -- a representative

cross section of terrestrial life during the late Oligocene and early Miocene

periods. Some of the samples were well preserved in canisters while others had

evidently been alive in pens and cages at the time of the ship's mishap.

The seven ships that were to make up the Jupiter Five Mission were being

constructed in Lunar orbit at the time these discoveries were made. When the

mission departed, a team of scientists traveled with it, eager to delve more

deeply into the irresistibly challenging story of the Ganymeans.

A data manipulation program running in the computer complex of the mile-

and-a-quarter-long Jupiter Five Mission command ship, orbiting two thousand

miles above Ganymede, routed its results to the message-scheduling processor.

The information was beamed down by laser to a transceiver on the surface at

Ganymede Main Base, and relayed northward via a chain of repeater stations. A

few millionths of a second and seven hundred miles later, the computers at

Pithead Base decoded the message destination and routed the signal to a

display screen on the wall of a small conference room in the Biological

Laboratories section. An elaborate pattern of the symbols used by geneticists

to denote the internal structures of chromosomes appeared on the screen. The

five people seated around the table in the narrow confines of the room studied

the display intently.

"There. If you want to go right down to it in detail, that's what it

looks like." The speaker was a tall, lean, balding man clad in a white lab

coat and wearing a pair of anachronistic gold-rimmed spectacles. He was

standing in front and to one side of the screen, pointing toward it with one

hand and clasping his lapel lightly with the other. Professor Christian

Danchekker of the Westwood Biological Institute in Houston, part of the UN

Space Arm's Life Sciences Division, headed the team of biologists who had come

to Ganymede aboard Jupiter Five to study the early terrestrial animals

discovered in the Ganymean spacecraft. The scientists sitting before him

contemplated the image on the screen. After a while Danchekker summarized once

more the problem they had been debating for the past hour.

"I hope it is obvious to most of you that the expression we are looking

at represents a molecular arrangement characteristic of the structure of an

enzyme. This same strain of enzyme has been identified in tissue samples taken

from many of the species so far examined in the labs up in J4. I repeat --

many of the species -- many different species..." Danchekker clasped both

hands to his lapels and gazed at his mini-audience expectantly. His voice fell

almost to a whisper. "And yet nothing resembling it or suggestive of being in

any way related to it has ever been identified in any of today's terrestrial

animal species. The problem we are faced with, gentlemen, is simply to explain

these curious facts."

Paul Carpenter, fresh-faced, fair-haired and the youngest present,

pushed himself back from the table and looked inquiringly from side to side,

at the same time turning up his hands. "I guess I don't really see the

problem," he confessed candidly. "This enzyme existed in animal species from

twenty-five million years back -- right?"

"You've got it," Sandy Holmes confirmed from across the table with a

slight nod of her head.

"So in twenty-five million years they mutated out of all recognition.

Everything changes over a period of time and it's no different with enzymes.

Descendant strains from this one are probably still around but they don't look

the same..." He caught the expression on Danchekker's face. "No?...What's the

problem?"

The professor sighed a sigh of infinite patience. "We've been through

all that, Paul," he said. "At least, I was under the impression that we had.

Let me recapitulate: Enzymology has made tremendous advances over the last few

decades. Just about every type has been classified and catalogued, but never

anything like this one, which is completely different from anything we've ever

seen."

"I don't want to sound argumentative, but is that really true?"

Carpenter protested. "I mean...we've seen new additions to the catalogues even

in the last year or two, haven't we? There was Schneider and Grossmann at Sao

Paulo with the P273B series and its derivatives...Braddock in England with --

"Ah, but you're missing the whole point," Danchekker interrupted. "Those

were new strains, true, but they fell neatly into the known standard families.

They exhibited characteristics that place them firmly and definitely within

known related groups." He gestured again toward the screen. "That one doesn't.

It's completely new. To me it suggests a whole new class of its own -- a class

that contains just one member. Nothing yet identified in the metabolism of any

form of life as we know it has ever done that before." Danchekker swept his

eyes around the small circle of faces.

"Every species of animal life that we know belongs to a known family

group and has related species and ancestors that we can identify. At the

microscopic level the same thing applies. All our previous experiences tell us

that even if this enzyme does date from twenty-five million years back, we

ought to be able to recognize its family characteristics and relate it to

known enzyme strains that exist today. However, we cannot. To me this

indicates something very unusual."

Wolfgang Fichter, one of Danchekker's senior biologists, rubbed his chin

and stared dubiously at the screen. "I agree that it is highly improbable,

Chris," he said. "But can you really be so sure that it is impossible? After

all, over twenty-five million years?...Environmental factors may have changed

and caused the enzyme to mutate into something unrecognizable. I don't know,

some change in diet maybe...something like that."

Danchekker shook his head decisively. "No. I say it's impossible." He

raised his hands and proceeded to count points off on his fingers. "One --

even if it did mutate, we'd still be able to identify its basic family

architecture in the same way we can identify the fundamental properties of,

say, any vertebrate. We can't.

"Two -- if it occurred only in one species of Oligocene animal, then I

would be prepared to concede that perhaps the enzyme we see here had mutated

and given rise to many strains that we find in the world today -- in other

words this strain represents an ancestral form common to a whole modern

family. If such were the case, then perhaps I'd agree that a mutation could

have occurred that was so severe that the relationship between the ancestral

strain and its descendants has been obscured. But that is not the case. This

same enzyme is found in many different and nonrelated Oilgocene species. For

your suggestion to apply, the same improbable process would have had to occur

many times over, independently, and all at the same time. I say that's

impossible."

"But..." Carpenter began, but Danchekker pressed on.

"Three -- none of today's animals possesses such an enzyme in its

microchemistry yet they all manage perfectly well without it. Many of them are

direct descendants of Oligocene types from the Ganymean ship. Now some of

those chains of descent have involved rapid mutation and adaptation to meet

changing diets and environments while others have not. In several cases the

evolution from Oligocene ancestors to today's forms has been very slow and has

produced only a small degree of change. We have made detailed comparisons

between the microchemical processes of such ancestral Oligocene ancestors

recovered from the ship and known data relating to animals that exist today

and are descended from those same ancestors. The results have been very much

as we expected -- no great changes and clearly identifiable relationships

between one group and the other. Every function that appeared in the

microchemistry of the ancestor could be easily recognized, sometimes with

slight modifications, in the descendants." Danchekker shot a quick glance at

Fichter. "Twenty-five million years isn't really so long on an evolutionary

time scale."

When no one seemed ready to object, Danchekker forged ahead. "But in

every case there was one exception -- this enzyme. Everything tells us that if

this enzyme were present in the ancestor, then it, or something very like it,

should be readily observable in the descendants. Yet in every case the results

have been negative. I say that cannot happen, and yet it has happened."

A brief silence descended while the group digested Danchekker's words.

At length Sandy Holmes ventured a thought. "Couldn't it still be a radical

mutation, but the other way around?"

Danchekker frowned at her.

"How do you mean, the other way around?" asked Henri Rousson, another

senior biologist, seated next to Carpenter.

"Well," she replied, "all the animals on the ship had been to Minerva,

hadn't they? Most likely they were born there from ancestors the Ganymeans had

transported from Earth. Couldn't something in the Minervan environment have

caused a mutation that resulted in this enzyme? At least that would explain

why none of today's terrestrial animals have it. They've never been to Minerva

and neither have any of the ancestors they've descended from."

"Same problem," Fichter muttered, shaking his head.

"What problem?" she asked.

"The fact that the same enzyme was found in many different and

nonrelated Oligocene species," Danchekker said. "Yes, I'll grant that

differences in the Minervan environment could mutate some strain of enzyme

brought in from Earth into something like that." He pointed at the screen

again. "But many different species were brought in from Earth -- different

species each with its own characteristic metabolism and particular groups of

enzyme strains. Now suppose that something in the Minervan environment caused

those enzymes -- different enzymes -- to mutate. Are you seriously suggesting

that they would all mutate independently into the same end-product?" He waited

for a second. "Because that is exactly the situation that confronts us. The

Ganymean ship contained many preserved specimens of different species, but

every one of those species possessed precisely the same enzyme. Now do you

want to reconsider your suggestion?"

The woman looked helplessly at the table for a second, then made a

gesture of resignation. "Okay...If you put it like that, I guess it doesn't

make sense."

"Thank you," Danchekker acknowledged stonily.

Henri Rousson leaned forward and poured himself a glass of water from

the pitcher standing in the center of the table. He took a long drink while

the others continued to stare thoughtfully through the walls or at the

ceiling.

"Let's go back to basics for a second and see if that gets us anywhere,"

he said. 'We know that the Ganymeans evolved on Minerva -- right?" The heads

around him nodded in assent. "We also know that the Ganymeans must have

visited Earth because there's no other way they could have ended up with

terrestrial animals on board their ship -- unless we're going to invent

another hypothetical alien race and I'm sure not going to do that because

there's no reason to. Also, we know that the ship found here on Ganymede had

come to Ganymede from Minerva, not directly from Earth. If the ship came from

Minerva, the terrestrial animals must have come from Minerva too. That

supports the idea we've already got that the Ganymeans were shipping all kinds

of life forms from Earth to Minerva for some reason."

Paul Carpenter held up a hand. "Hang on a second. How do we know that

the ship downstairs came here from Minerva?"

"The plants," Fichter reminded him.

"Oh yeah, the plants. I forgot..." Carpenter subsided into silence.

The pens and animal cages in the Ganymean ship had contained vegetable

feed and floor-covering materials that had remained perfectly preserved under

the ice coating formed when the ship's atmosphere froze and the moisture

condensed out. Using seeds recovered from this material, Danchekker had

succeeded in cultivating live plants completely different from anything that

had ever grown on Earth, presumed to be examples of native Minervan botany.

The leaves were very dark -- almost black -- and absorbed every available

scrap of sunlight, right across the visible spectrum. This seemed to tie in

nicely with independently obtained evidence of Minerva's great distance from

the Sun.

"How far," Rousson asked, "have we got in figuring out why the Ganymeans

were shipping all the animals in?" He spread his arms wide. "There had to be a

reason. How far are we getting on that one? I don't know, but the enzyme might

have something to do with it."

"Very well, let's recapitulate briefly what we think we already know

about the subject," Danchekker suggested. He moved away from the screen and

perched on the edge of the table. "Paul. Would you like to tell us your answer

to Henri's question." Carpenter scratched the back of his head for a second

and screwed up his face.

"Well..." he began, "first there's the fish. They're established as

being native Minervan and give us our link between Minerva and the Ganymeans."

"Good," Danchekker nodded, mellowing somewhat from his earlier crotchety

mood. "Go on."

Carpenter was referring to a type of well-preserved canned fish that had

been positively traced back to its origin in the oceans of

Minerva. Danchekker had shown that the skeletons of the fish correlated

in general arrangement to the skeletal remains of the Ganymean occupants of

the ship that lay under the ice deep below Pithead Base; the relationship was

comparable to that existing between the architectures of, say, a man and a

mammoth, and demonstrated that the fish and the Ganymeans belonged to the same

evolutionary family. Thus if the fish were native to Minerva, the Ganymeans

were, too.

"Your computer analysis of the fundamental cell chemistry of the fish,"

Carpenter continued, "suggests an inherent low tolerance to a group of toxins

that includes carbon dioxide. I think you also postulated that this basic

chemistry could have been inherited from way back in the ancestral line of the

fish -- right from very early on in Minervan history."

"Quite so," Danchekker approved. "What else?"

Carpenter hesitated. "So Minervan land-dwelling species would have had a

low CO2 tolerance as well," he offered.

"Not quite," Danchekker answered. "You've left out the connecting link

to that conclusion. Anybody...?" He looked at the German. "Wolfgang?"

"You need to make the assumption that the characteristics of low CO2

tolerance came about in a very remote ancestor -- one that existed before any

land-dwelling types appeared on Minerva." Fichter paused, then continued.

"Then you can postulate that this remote life form was a common ancestor to

all later land dwellers and marine descendants -- for example, the fish. On

the basis of that assumption you can say that the characteristic could have

been inherited by all the land-dwelling species that emerged later."

"Never forget your assumptions," Danchekker urged. "Many of the problems

in the history of science have stemmed from that simple error. Note one other

thing too: If the low-CO2-tolerance characteristic did indeed come about very

early in the process of Minervan evolution and survived right down to the time

that the fish was alive, then suggestions are that it was a very stable

characteristic, if our knowledge of terrestrial evolution is anything to go by

anyway. This adds plausibility to the suggestion that it could have become a

common characteristic that spread throughout all the land dwellers as they

evolved and diverged, and has remained essentially unaltered down through the

ages -- much as the basic design of terrestrial vertebrates has remained

unchanged for hundreds of millions of years despite superficial differences in

shape, size and form." Danchekker removed his spectacles and began polishing

the lenses with his handkerchief.

"Very well," he said. "Let us pursue the assumption and conclude that by

the time the Ganymeans had evolved -- twenty-five million years ago -- the

land surface of Minerva was populated by a multitude of its own native life

forms, each of which possessed a low tolerance to carbon dioxide, among other

things. What other clues do we have available to us that might help determine

what was happening on Minerva at that time?"

"We know that the Ganymeans were quitting the planet and trying to

migrate someplace else," Sandy Holmes threw in. "Probably to some other star

system."

"Oh, really?" Danchekker smiled, showing his teeth briefly before

breathing on his spectacle lenses once more. "How do we know that?"

"Well, there's the ship down under the ice here for a start," she

replied. "The kind of freight it was carrying and the amount of it sure

suggested a colony ship intending a one-way trip. And then, why should it show

up on Ganymede of all places? It couldn't have been traveling between any of

the inner planets, could it?"

"But there's nothing outside Minerva's orbit to colonize," Carpenter

chipped in. "Not until you get to the stars, that is."

"Exactly so," Danchekker said soberly, directing his words at the woman.

"You said 'suggested a colony ship.' Don't forget that that is precisely what

the evidence we have at present amounts to -- a suggestion and nothing more.

It doesn't prove anything. Lots of people around the base are saying we now

know that the Ganymeans abandoned the Solar System to find a new home

elsewhere because the carbon-dioxide concentration in the Minervan atmosphere

was increasing for some reason which we have yet to determine. It is true that

if what we have just said was fact, then the Ganymeans would have shared the

low tolerance possessed by all land dwellers there, and any increase in the

atmospheric concentration could have caused them serious problems. But as we

have just seen, we know nothing of the kind; we merely observe one or two

suggestions that might add up to such an explanation." The professor paused,

seeing that Carpenter was about to say something.

"There was more to it than that though, wasn't there?" Carpenter

queried. "We're pretty certain that all species of Minervan land dwellers died

out pretty rapidly somewhere around twenty-five million years ago...all except

the Ganymeans themselves maybe. That sounds like just the effect you'd expect

if the concentration did rise and all the species there couldn't handle it. It

seems to support the hypothesis pretty well."

"I think Paul's got a point," Sandy Holmes chimed in. "Everything adds

up. Also, it fits in with the ideas we've been having about why the Ganymeans

were shipping all the animals into Minerva." She turned toward Carpenter, as

if inviting him to complete the story from there.

As usual, Carpenter didn't need much encouragement. "What the Ganymeans

were really trying to do was redress the CO2 imbalance by covering the planet

with carbon-dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-producing terrestrial green plants. The

animals were brought along to provide a balanced ecology that the plants could

survive in. Like Sandy says, it all fits."

"You're trying to fit the evidence to suit the answers that you already

want to prove," Danchekker cautioned. "Let's separate once more the evidence

that is fact from the evidence which is supposition or mere suggestion." The

discussion continued with Danchekker leading an examination of the principles

of scientific deduction and the techniques of logical analysis. Throughout,

the figure who had been following the proceedings silently from his seat at

the end of the table farthest from the screen continued to draw leisurely on

his cigarette, taking in every detail.

Dr. Victor Hunt had also accompanied the team of scientists who had come

with Jupiter Five more than three months before to study the Ganymean ship.

Although nothing truly spectacular had emerged during this time, huge volumes

of data on the structure, design and contents of the alien ship had been

amassed. Every day, newly removed devices and machinery were examined in the

laboratories of the surface bases and in the orbiting J4 and J5 mission

command ships. Findings from these tests were as yet fragmentary, but clues

were beginning to emerge from which a meaningful picture of the Ganymean

civilization and the mysterious events of twenty-five million years before

might eventually emerge.

That was Hunt's job. Originally a theoretical physicist specializing in

mathematical nucleonics, he had been brought into the

UN Space Arm from England to head a small group of UNSA scientists; the

group's task was to correlate the findings of the specialists working on the

project both on and around Ganymede and back on Earth. The specialists painted

the pieces of the puzzle; Hunt's group fitted them together. This arrangement

was devised by Hunt's immediate boss, Gregg Caldwell, executive director of

the Navigation and Communications Division of UNSA, headquartered in Houston.

The scheme had already worked well in enabling them to unravel successfully

the existence and fate of Minerva, and first signs were that it promised to

work well again.

He listened while the debate between the biologists went full circle to

end up focusing on the unfamiliar enzyme that had started the whole thing off.

"No, I'm afraid not," Danchekker said in reply to a question from

Rousson. "We have no idea at present what its purpose was. Certain functions

in its reaction equations suggest that it could have contributed to the

modification or breaking down of some kind of protein molecule, but precisely

what molecule or for what purpose we don't know." Danchekker gazed around the

room to invite further comment but nobody appeared to have anything to say.

The room became quiet. A mild hum from a nearby generator became noticeable

for the first time. At length Hunt stubbed his cigarette and sat back to rest

his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Sounds as if there's a problem there,

all right," he commented. "Enzymes aren't my line. I'm going to have to leave

this one completely to you people."

"An, nice to see you're still with us, Vic," Danchekker said, raising

his eyes to take in the far end of the table. "You haven't said a word since

we sat down."

"Listening and learning." Hunt grinned. "Didn't have a lot to

contribute."

"That sounds like a philosophical approach to life," Fichter said,

shuffling the papers in front of him. "Do you have many philosophies of

life...maybe a little red book full of them like that Chinese gentleman back

in nineteen whatever it was?"

"'Fraid not. Doesn't do to have too many philosophies about anything.

You always end up contradicting yourself. Blows your credibility."

Fichter smiled. "You've nothing to say to throw any light on our problem

with this wretched enzyme then," he said.

Hunt did not reply immediately but pursed his lips and inclined his head

to one side in the manner of somebody with doubts about the advisability of

revealing something that he knew. "Well," he finally said, "you've got enough

to worry about with that enzyme as things are." The tone was mildly playful,

but irresistibly provocative. All heads in the room swung around abruptly to

face in his direction.

"Vic, you're holding out on us," Sandy declared. "Give."

Danchekker fixed Hunt with a silent, challenging stare. Hunt nodded and

reached down with one hand to operate the keyboard recessed into the edge of

the table opposite his chair. Above the far side of Ganymede, computers on

board Jupiter Five responded to his request. The display on the conference

room wall changed to reveal a densely packed columnar arrangement of numbers.

Hunt allowed some time for the others to study them. "These are the

results of a series of quantitative analytical tests that were performed

recently in the J5 labs. The tests involved the routine determination of the

chemical constituents of cells from selected organs in the animals you've just

been talking about -- the ones from the ship." He paused for a second, then

continued matter-of-factly. "These numbers show that certain combinations of

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James P. Hogan - Giants 2 - The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

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