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the basic design of ZORAC. Also as Shilohin had indicated, they were a cautious people, cautious not in
the sense of being timid, but of premeditating every move and action. They never did anything without
knowing exactly what they were trying to achieve, why they wanted to achieve it, how they were going to
do it, and what they would do if the expected failed to materialize. To the average engineer from Earth
the disaster of Iscaris would have been shrugged off as just one of those things to be forgotten or tried
again with hopes for better luck; to the Ganymeans it was inexcusable that such a thing should ever have
happened and they had not yet fully come to terms with it, even after twenty years.
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Hunt saw them as a dignified and proud race, moderate in speech and noble in bearing, yet underneath it
all sociable and approachable. They exhibited none of the suspicion and mistrust of strangers that was
typical through much of the society of Earth. They were quiet, reserved, self-assured, and above all they
were rational. As Danchekker remarked to Hunt one day in the bar at Pithead: "If the whole universe
went insane and blew itself up, I'm sure the Ganymeans would still be there at the end of it to put the
pieces together again."
The bar at Pithead became the main focus of social activity between the small group of Ganymeans and
the Earthmen. Every evening after dinner, ones and twos of both races would begin trickling in until the
room was filled to capacity and every square foot of horizontal space, including the floor, was covered
by a sprawling body of one kind or the other, or littered with glasses. The discussions rambled on to
touch every subject conceivable and usually went through to the early hours of the morning; for anybody
not disposed to seek solitude and privacy, there was little else to do after work at Pithead.
The Ganymeans developed a strong partiality for scotch whiskey, which they preferred neat, by the
tumblerful. They reciprocated by bringing in a distillation of their own from the Shapieron. A number of
the Earthmen experimented with it and found it to be pleasant, warming, slightly sweet . . . and of
devastating potency, but not until about two hours after beginning to drink it. Those who had learned the
hard way christened it GTB- Ganymean Time Bomb.
It was during one of these evenings that Hunt decided to broach directly the subject that had been
puzzling more than a few of the Earthmen for some time. Shilohin was present, so was Monchar, Garuth's
second-in-command, together with four other Ganymeans; on the Earth side were Danchekker, Vince
Carizan the electronics engineer, and a half-dozen others.
"There is a point that's been bothering some of us," he said, by that time having come to appreciate the
Ganymean preference for direct speech. "You must know that having people around today who can
describe how Earth was in the distant past makes us want to ask all kinds of questions, yet you never
seem to want to talk about it. Why?" A few murmurs from all around endorsed the question. The room
suddenly became very quiet. The Ganymeans seemed ill at ease again and looked at each other as if
hoping someone else would take the lead.
Eventually Shilohin replied. "We know very little about your world. It's a delicate issue. You have a
culture and history that are completely strange. . . ." She gave the Ganymean equivalent of a shrug.
"Customs, values, manners. . . accepted ways of saying things. We wouldn't want to offend somebody
by unwittingly saying the wrong thing, so we tend to avoid the subject."
Somehow the answer was not really convincing.
"We all believe there's a deeper reason than that," Hunt said candidly. "We in this room might come from
different origins, but first and foremost we are all scientists. Truth is our business and we shouldn't shy
away from the facts. This is an informal occasion and we all know each other pretty well now. We'd like
you to be frank. We're curious."
The air became charged with expectancy. Shilohin looked again toward Monchar, who quietly signaled
his acquiescence. She downed the last of her drink slowly as she collected her thoughts, then looked up
to address the room.
"Very well. Perhaps, as you say, we would do better without any secrets. There was one crucial
difference between the patterns of natural evolution that unfolded on your world and on our world-on
Minerva there were no carnivores." She paused as if waiting for a response, but the Earthmen continued
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to sit in silence; obviously there was more to come. She felt a twinge of sudden relief inside. Perhaps the
Ganymeans had been overapprehensive of the possible reactions of these unpredictable and violently
inclined dwarves after all.
"The basic reason for this difference, believe it or not, lay in the fact that Minerva was much farther away
from the Sun." She went on to explain. "Life could never have developed on Minerva at all without the
greenhouse effect, which you already know about. Even so, it was a cold planet, certainly in comparison
to Earth.
"But this greenhouse effect kept the Minervan oceans in a liquid state and, as on Earth, life first appeared
in the shallower parts of the oceans. Conditions there did not favor progression toward higher forms of
life as much as on the warmer Earth; the evolutionary process was relatively slow."
"But intelligence appeared there much earlier than it did on Earth," somebody tossed in. "Seems a little
strange."
"Only because Minerva was further from the Sun and cooled more quickly," Shilohin replied. "That
meant that life got off to an early start there."
"Okay."
She resumed. "The patterns of evolution on the two worlds were remarkably similar to start with.
Complex proteins appeared, leading eventually to self-replicating molecules, which in time led to the
formation of living cells. Unicellular forms came first, then colonies of cells and after them multicelled
organisms with spe
cialized features-all of them variations on the basic marine invertebrate form.
"The point of departure at which the two lines went their own way, each in response to the conditions
prevailing on its own planet, was marked by the appearance of marine vertebrates- boned fishes. This
stage marked a plateau beyond which the Minervan species couldn't progress toward anything higher
until they had solved a fundamental problem that was not faced by their counterparts on Earth. The
problem was simply their colder environment.
"You see, as improvements appeared in the Minervan fish species, the improved body processes and
more highly refined organs demanded more oxygen. But the demand was already high because of the
lower temperature. The primitive circulatory systems of the early Minervan fish couldn't cope with the
dual workload of carrying enough oxygen to the cells, and of carrying wastes and toxins away from the
cells-not if progress toward anything more advanced was going to be made, anyway." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]