The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

Geneva with officials and Heads of State from every corner of the globe, all hurrying to participate in the hastily worked out welcoming formalities. Swarms of buzzing VTOL jets shuttled back and forth between Geneva International Airport and what was now being called Ganyville to convey them to their final destination while traffic on the Geneva/Lausanne highway below deteriorated to a bumper-to-bumper jam, private aircars having been banned from the area. A peppering of colors, becoming denser as the hours went by, appeared on the green inland slopes that overlooked Ganyville, as the first spectators arrived and set up camp with tents, sleeping bags, blankets and picnic stoves, determined to secure and hold a grandstand view. A continuous cordon of jovial but overworked policemen, including some from Italy, France and Germany since the numbers of the tiny Swiss force were simply not up to the task, maintained a clear zone two hundred meters wide between the rapidly growing crowd and the perimeter fence, while on the lakeward side a flotilla of police launches scurried to and fro to keep at bay an armada of boats, yachts and craft of every description. Along the roadsides an instant market came into being as the more entrepreneurial members of the shopkeeping fraternity from the nearby towns loaded their stocks into trucks and brought the business to where the customers were. A lot of small fortunes were made that day, from selling everything from instant meals and woolly sweaters to hiking boots and high-power telescopes.

Several thousand miles above, the Shapieron was not quite away from it all. An assortment of UNSA craft had formed themselves into a ragged escort around the ship, sweeping with it round the Earth every hour and a half. Many of them carried newsmen and camera crews broadcasting live to an enthralled audience via the World News Grid. They had exchanged messages with ZORAC and the Earthmen aboard who had come with the Shapieron from Jupiter, thrilled the viewers below by beaming down views from inside an alien spacecraft, and mixed in constantly updated reports of the latest developments at Lake Geneva. In between, the commentators had described ad nauseam how the ship had first appeared over Ganymede, what had transpired since, where their race had originated in the first place, why the expedition had gone to Iscaris and what had happened there, and anything else they could think of to fill in time before the big event. Half the factories and offices on Earth were estimated to have given it up as a bad job and closed down until after the big event was all over, since the employees who weren #146;t glued to a screen somewhere else were glued to one being paid out of the firm #146;s money. As one president of a New York company commented to an NBC street interviewer: 'I #146;m not gonna spend thousands to find out all over again what King Canute proved centuries ago #151;you can #146;t stop the tide once it #146;s made its mind up. I #146;ve sent #146;em all home to get it outa their systems. I guess this year we #146;ve got an extra day #146;s public holiday.' On being asked what he himself intended doing, he replied with surprise: 'Me? I #146;m going home to watch the landing, of course.'

Inside the Shapieron , Hunt and Danchekker were among the mixed group of Ganymeans and Earthmen gathered in the ship #146;s command center #151;the place to which Hunt had been conducted with Storrel and the others at the time of their momentous first visit from Jupiter Five. A number of eggs had been dispatched from the Shapieron to descend to lower altitudes and obtain, for the aliens #146; benefit, a bird #146;s-eye preview of different parts of Earth. The Earthmen were explaining the significance of some of the pictures that the eggs were sending back. Already the Ganymeans had gazed incredulously at the teeming density of life in cities such as New York, Tokyo and London, gasped at the spectacles of the Arabian desert and the Amazon jungle #151;terrain unlike any that had existed on Minerva #151;and stared in mute, horrified fascination at a telescopic presentation of lions stalking zebra in the African grasslands.

To Hunt, the familiar sights of green continents, sun-drenched plains and blue oceans, after what felt like an eternity of nothing but rock, ice and the blackness of space, were overpowering. As different parts of the mosaic of Earth came and went across the main screen, he detected a steady change in the moods of the Ganymeans too. The earlier misgivings and apprehensions that some of them had felt were being swept away by an almost intoxicating enthusiasm that became contagious as time went by. They were becoming restless and excited #151;keen to see more, firsthand, of the incredible world where chance had brought them.

One of the eggs was hovering three miles up over Lake Geneva and relaying up to the Shapieron its telescopic view of the throngs that were still building up on the hills overlooking Ganyville and all over the meadows surrounding it. The Ganymeans were pleasantly surprised, and at the same time astounded, that they should be the objects of such widespread interest and such a display of mass emotion. Hunt had tried to explain that the arrival of alien spacecraft was not something that happened very often, let alone one from twenty-five million years in the past, but the Ganymeans appeared unable to comprehend how anything could give rise to a spontaneous demonstration of emotion on so vast a scale. Monchar had wondered if the Earthmen that they had so far met represented 'the more stable and rational end to the human spectrum rather than a typical cross section.' Hunt had decided to say nothing and leave it at that. Monchar would no doubt be able to answer that for himself in good time.

A lull in the conversation had occurred and everybody was watching the screen as one of the Ganymeans muttered commands to ZORAC to take the egg a little lower and zoom in closer. The view expanded and closed in on the side of a small, grassy hill, by this time thick with people of all ages, sizes, manners and garbs. There were people cooking, people drinking, people playing and people just sitting; it could have been a day at the races, a pop festival, a flying display, or all of them rolled into one.

'Are they all safe out in the open there?' one of the Ganymeans asked dubiously after a while.

'Safe?' Hunt looked puzzled. 'How do you mean?'

'I #146;m surprised that none of them seem to be carrying guns. I #146;d have thought they would have guns.'

'Guns? What for?' Hunt asked, somewhat bewildered.

'The carnivores,' the Ganymean replied, as if it was obvious. 'What will they do if they are attacked by carnivores?'

Danchekker explained that few animals existed that were dangerous to Man, and that those that did lived only in a few restricted areas, all of them many thousands of miles from Switzerland.

'Oh, I assumed that was why they have built a defensive system around the place,' the Ganymean said.

Hunt laughed. 'That #146;s not to keep carnivores out,' he said. 'It #146;s to keep humans out.'

'You mean they might attack us?' There was a sudden note of alarm in the question.

'Not at all. It #146;s simply to insure your privacy and to make sure that nobody makes a nuisance of himself. The government assumed that you wouldn #146;t want crowds of sightseers and tourists wandering around you all the time and getting in the way.'

'Couldn #146;t the government just make a law ordering them to stay away?' Shilohin asked from across the room. 'That sounds much simpler.'

Hunt laughed again, probably because the feeling of seeing home again was affecting him a little. 'You haven #146;t met many Earth-people yet,' he said. 'I don #146;t think they #146;d take very much notice. They #146;re not what you might call . . . easily disciplined.'

Shilohin was evidently surprised by the statement. 'Really?' she said. 'I had always imagined them to be precisely the opposite. I mean . . . I #146;ve watched some of the old newsreels from Earth #151;from the archives of your J5 computers, newsreels from the times when there were wars on Earth. Thousands of Earthmen all dressed the same walked backward and forward in straight lines while others shouted commands which they obeyed instantly. And the wars. . . when they were ordered to fight the wars and kill other Earthmen, they obeyed. Is that not being disciplined?'

'Yes . . . it is,' Hunt admitted uncomfortably, hoping he wasn #146;t about to be asked for an explanation; there wasn #146;t one.

But the Ganymean who had been worried about carnivores was persistent.

'You mean that if they are ordered to do something that is clearly irrational, they will do it unhesitatingly,' he said. 'But if they are ordered to do something that is not only eminently sensible but also polite, they will take no notice?'

'Er . . . I guess that #146;s about it,' Hunt said weakly. 'Very often anyway.'

Another Ganymean crewman half turned from the console that he was watching.

'They #146;re all mad,' he declared firmly. 'I #146;ve always said so. It #146;s the biggest madhouse in the Galaxy.'