since any mutant that didn #146;t avoid them wouldn #146;t live long enough to become a parent in the first place.'
'You can see the same thing in terrestrial insects, for example,' Danchekker threw in. 'Some species mimic the coloring of wasps and bees, although they are quite harmless. Other animals leave them alone completely #151;it #146;s the same principle.'
'Okay, that makes sense.' Carizan motioned for Shilohin to continue.
'So marine life on Minerva developed into three broad fainilies: carnivorous types; nonpoisonous noncarnivores, with specialized alternative defense mechanisms; and poisonous noncarnivores, which possessed the most effective defense and were left free to carry on their development from what was already an advanced and privileged position.'
'This didn #146;t alter their resistance to cold then?' somebody asked.
'No, the secondary system in these species continued to perform its original function as well as ever. As I said, the only differences that had occurred were that the toxin concentration was increased and it became isolated from the primary.'
'I got it.'
'Fine. Now, the two types of noncarnivores had to eat, so they competed between themselves for what was available #151;plants, certain rudimentary invertebrate organisms, water-borne organic substances and so on. But Minerva was cold and did not offer an abundance of things like that #151;nothing like what is found on Earth, for instance. The poisonous species were efficient competitors and gradually became overwhelmingly dominant. The nonpoisonous noncarnivores declined and, since they constituted the food supply for the carnivores, the numbers and varieties of carnivores declined with them. Eventually two distinct groups segregated out of all this and from that time on lived separate lives: the nonpoisonous types moved out into the oceans away from the competition, and the carnivores naturally followed them. Those two groups evolved into a pattern of deep-sea life that eventually found its own balance and stabilized. The poisonous types retained the shallower, coastal waters as their sole preserve, and it was from them that land dwellers subsequently emerged.'
'You mean that all the land-dwelling species that developed later inherited the basic pattern of a double system?' Danchekker said, fascinated. 'They were all poisonous?'
'Precisely,' she replied. 'By that time the trait had become firmly established as a fundamental part of their basic design #151;much as many vertebrate characteristics on your own world. It was faithfully passed on to all later descendants, essentially unchanged. . . .'
Shilohin paused as a few mutterings and murmurs of surprise arose from the listeners; the implication of what she was saying was beginning to dawn on them. Somebody at the back finally put it into words.
'That explains what you said at the start #151;why there were no carnivores on Minerva later on. They could never become established for all the reasons you #146;ve been talking about, even if they appeared spontaneously from time to time.'
'Quite so,' she confirmed. 'Occasionally an odd mutation in that direction would appear but, as you point out, it could never gain a foothold again. The animals that evolved on Minerva were exclusively herbivorous. They did not follow the same lines of development as terrestrial animals because the selective factors operating in their natural environment were different. They evolved no fight-or-flight instincts since there was nothing to defend against and nothing to flee from. They did not develop behavior patterns based on fear, anger or aggression since such emotions had no survival value to them, and hence were not selected and reinforced. There were no fast runners since there were no predators to run from, and there was no need for natural camouflage. There were no birds, since there was nothing to stimulate their appearance.'
'Those murals in the ship!' Hunt turned to Danchekker as the truth suddenly hit him. 'They weren #146;t children #146;s cartoons at all, Chris. They were real!'
'Good Lord, Vic.' The professor gaped and blinked through his spectacles in surprise, wondering why the same thought hadn #146;t struck him. 'You #146;re right. Of course. . . you #146;re absolutely right. How extraordinary. We must study them more closely . . .' Danchekker seemed about to say something else but stopped abruptly, as if another thought had just occurred to him. He frowned and rubbed his forehead but waited until the hubbub of voices had died away before he spoke.
'Excuse me,' he called when normality had returned. 'There is something else. . . If there were no predators in existence at all, what kept the numbers of the herbivores in check? I can #146;t see any mechanism for preserving a natural balance.'
'I was just coming to that,' Shilohin answered. 'The answer is: accidents. Even slight cuts or abrasions would allow poison to seep from the secondary system into the primary. Most accidents were fatal to Minervan animals. Natural selection favored natural protection. The species that survived and flourished were those with the best protection #151;leathery outer skins, thick coverings of fur, scaly armor plating, and so on.' She held up one of her hands to display extensive nails and knuckle pads, and then shifted the collar of her shirt slightly to uncover part of the delicate, overlapping, scaly plates that formed a strip along the top of her shoulder. 'Many remnants of ancestral protection are still detectable in the Ganymean form today.'
Hunt realized now the reasons for the Ganymeans #146; temperament being the way it was. From the origins that Shilohin had just described, intelligence had emerged not in response to any need to manufacture weapons or to outwit foe or prey, but as a means of anticipating and avoiding physical damage. Learning and the communication of knowledge would have assumed a phenomenal survival value among the primitive Ganymeans. Caution in all things, prudence, and the ability to analyze all possible outcomes of an action would have been reinforced by selection; haste and rashness would be fatal.
Evolving from such ancestors, what else could they be but instinctively cooperative and nonaggressive? They would know nothing of violent competition in any form or of the use of force against a rival; hence they exhibited none of the types of complex behavior patterns which, in a later and more civilized society, would 'normally' afford symbolic expression of such instincts. Hunt wondered what was 'normal.' Shilohin, as if reading his thoughts, supplied a definition from the Ganymean point of view.
'You can imagine then how, when civilization eventually began to develop, the early Ganymean thinkers looked upon the world that they saw about them. They marveled at the way in which Nature, in its infinite wisdom, had imposed a strict natural order upon all living things: the soil fed the plants and the plants fed the animals. The Ganymeans accepted this as the natural order of the universe.'
'Like a divinely ordained plan,' somebody near the bar suggested. 'Sounds like a religious outlook.'
'You #146;re right,' Shilohin agreed, turning to face the speaker. 'In the early history of our civilization religious notions did prevail widely. Before scientific principles were better understood, our people attributed many of the mysteries that they were unable to explain to the workings of some omnipotent agency . . . not unlike your God. The early teachings held that the natural order of living things was the ultimate expression of this guiding wisdom. I suppose you would say: The will of God.'
'Except in the deep-ocean basins,' Hunt commented.
'Well, that fit in quite well too,' Shilohin replied. 'The early religious thinkers of our race saw that as a punishment. In the seas, way back before history, the law had been defied. As a punishment for that, the lawbreakers had been banished permanently to the deepest and darkest depths of the oceans and never emerged to enjoy sunlight.'
Danchekker leaned toward Hunt and whispered, 'Rather like the Fall from Eden. An interesting parallel, don #146;t you think?'
'Mmm. . . with a T-bone steak in place of an apple,' Hunt murmured.
Shilohin paused to push her glass across the bar and waited for the steward to refill it. The room remained quiet while the Earthmen digested the things she had been saying. At last she sipped her drink, and then resumed.
'And so, you see, to the Ganymean, Nature was indeed perfect in all its harmony, and beautiful in its perfection. As the sciences were discovered and the Ganymeans learned more about the universe in which they lived, they never doubted that however far among the stars their knowledge might take them and however far they might one day probe toward infinity, Nature and its natural law would everywhere reign supreme. What reason had they even to imagine otherwise? They were unable even to conceive how things could be otherwise.'
She stopped for a moment and swept her eyes slowly around the room, as if trying to weigh up the expressions on the circle of faces.
