The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

'Excuse me, Dr. Hunt.'

'Yes?'

'A Sergeant Brukhov wants to talk for a second. Are you accepting calls?'

'Excuse me a minute,' he said to Shilohin. 'Okay. Put him on.'

'Dr. Hunt?' The voice of one of the UNSA pilots came through clearly.

'Here.'

'Sorry to bother you, but we #146;re sorting out the arrangements for getting everybody back to Pithead. I #146;m taking a transporter back half an hour from now and I #146;ve got a couple of empty seats. Also there #146;s a Ganymean ship leaving about an hour later and some of the guys are hitching a ride on it. You #146;re on the list to go; it #146;s your choice which way.'

'Any idea who #146;s going on the Ganymean ship?'

'Don #146;t know who they are, but they #146;re standing right in front of me. I #146;m in the big room that the conference was held in.'

'Give me a shot, would you?' Hunt asked.

He activated his wrist unit and observed the view being picked up by Brukhov #146;s headband. It showed a group of faces that Hunt recognized at once, all of them from the labs at Pithead. Carizan was there. . . so was Frank Towers.

'Thanks for the offer,' Hunt said. 'I #146;ll go with them though.'

'Okay. . . oh. . . hang on a sec. . .' Indistinct background noises, then Brukhov again. 'One of them wants to know where the hell you #146;ve got to.'

'Tell him I #146;ve found the bar.'

More noises.

'He wants to know where the hell that is.'

'Okay, look over at the wall,' Hunt replied. 'Now follow it along to your left. . . a bit farther. . .' He watched the image move across the screen. 'Hold it there. You #146;re looking at the main door.'

'Check.'

'Through there, turn right and follow the passage. They can #146;t miss it. Drinks are on the house; order through ZORAC.'

'Okay, I got it. They say they #146;ll see you there in a coupla minutes. Over and out.'

'Channel cleared down,' ZORAC informed him.

'Sorry about that,' Hunt said to Shilohin. 'We #146;ve got company on the way.'

'Earthmen?'

'Bunch of drunks from up north. I made the mistake of telling them where we are.'

She laughed #151;he could recognize the sound now #151;and then, slowly, her mood became serious again. 'You strike me as a very rational and level-headed Earthman. There is something that we have never mentioned before because we were unsure of the reactions it might produce, but I feel it is something that we can talk about here.'

'Go on.' Hunt sensed that she had been giving some thought to whatever the matter was while he had been talking to the pilot. He detected a subtle change in her manner; she was not quite conveying that the topic was one of strict confidence, but that how he chose to use the information would be left to his own discretion. He knew his own kind better than she did.

'There was an occasion when the Ganymeans resorted to the use of willful violence. . . deliberate destruction of life.'

Hunt waited in silence, unsure of what kind of response would be appropriate.

'You know,' she went on, 'about the problem that Minerva was experiencing #151;with the carbon-dioxide level rising. Well, one possible solution presented itself immediately #151;simply migrate to another planet. But this was at a time before there were any ships like the Shapieron . . . before we could travel to other stars. Therefore we could contemplate only the planets of the Solar System. Apart from Minerva itself, only one of them could have supported life.'

Hunt looked at her blankly; the message had not quite registered.

'Earth,' he said with a slight shrug.

'Yes, Earth. We could move our whole civilization to Earth. As you know, we sent expeditions to explore it, but when they sent back details of the environment that they found there, we knew that there could be no simple answer to Minerva #146;s problems. Ganymeans could never have survived amid such savagery.'

'So the idea was abandoned then?' Hunt suggested.

'No . . . not quite. You see, the whole terrestrial ecology and the creatures that formed part of it were thought by many Ganymeans to be so unnatural as to constitute a perversion of life itself #151;a smear upon an otherwise perfect universe that the universe would be a better place without.' Hunt gaped at her as what she was saying began to sink in. 'A suggestion was put forward that the whole planet be wiped clean of the disease that infested it. Terrestrial life would be exterminated, and then Minervan forms would be substituted. After all, the supporters of the scheme argued, it would be simply playing the game by Earth #146;s own rules.'

Hunt was stunned. After everything that had been said, the Ganymeans could actually have been capable of conceiving a scheme like that? She watched and seemed to read the thought in his mind.

'Most Ganymeans opposed the idea, instinctively, totally and without compromise. It was completely against their basic nature. The public protest that it provoked was probably the most vigorous in our whole history.

'Nevertheless, our own world was in danger of becoming uninhabitable, and some members of the government took the view that they had an obligation to investigate every possible alternative. So, in secret, they set up a small colony on Earth to experiment on a local scale.' She saw the questions forming on Hunt #146;s lips and held up a hand to forestall them. 'Don #146;t ask me where on Earth this colony was or what methods they employed to do the things they were sent there to do; I have great difficulty in speaking about this at all. Let us just say that the results were catastrophic. In some regions the ecology collapsed completely as a consequence of the things that were done and many terrestrial species became extinct during what you call the Oligocene period for this reason. Some of the areas affected remain deserts on Earth to this day.'

Hunt didn #146;t know what to say, so said nothing. The things he had just been told were shocking not because of the means or ends that they implied, which were all too familiar to humans, but because they were so unexpected. For him the conversation was a revelation and a staggering one at that, but no more. For the Ganymean, he realized, it was traumatic.

Shilohin seemed somewhat reassured by the absence of any violent emotional response on his part, and so continued. 'Not surprisingly, the psychological effects on the colonists were equally disastrous. The whole sorry affair was quietly ended and filed away as one of the shabbier episodes of our history. We prefer to try and forget about it.'

A babble of human voices interspersed with laughter came from further along the corridor. As Hunt looked up expectantly Shilobin touched his arm to retain his attention for a moment longer.

'That, Dr. Hunt, is the real reason why we feel too ashamed to talk about the Oligocene Earth and its animals,' she said.

Chapter Thirteen

The Shapieron was pronounced fully functional once more and the Ganymeans announced their intention to take the ship for a test flight to the outermost fringe of the Solar System. The trip was expected to take about a week.

A mixed gathering of scientists, engineers and UNSA personnel had congregated in the messroom at Pithead to watch the takeoff, the view of which was being relayed from Main Base and shown on the wall screen. Hunt, Carizan and Towers were sharing a table at the back of the room and drinking coffee. As the countdown neared zero, the hubbub of conversation quieted and an air of expectancy descended.

'All UNSA vessels have cleared the area. You #146;re okay to go on schedule.' The voice of the controller at Main sounded from the audio grille.