The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

#146;re into now?'

'Who?'

'Us. . . the section. . . Linguistics.'

'What?'

Maddson took a deep breath, stared Hunt straight in the eye and proceeded to deliver a string of utterly meaningless syllables in a deep, guttural voice. Then he sat back and beamed proudly, his expression inviting Hunt to accept the implied challenge.

'What the hell was that all about?' Hunt asked, as if doubting his own ears.

'Even you don #146;t know?'

'Why should I?'

Maddson was evidently enjoying himself. 'That, my friend, was Ganymean,' he said.

'Ganymean?'

'Ganymean!'

Hunt stared at him in astonishment. 'How in God #146;s name did you learn that?'

Maddson waited a moment longer to make the most of Hunt #146;s surprise, then gestured toward the display unit standing on one side of his desk.

'We #146;ve got ourselves a channel through to ZORAC,' he said. 'There #146;s been a pretty fantastic demand for access into it ever since it was hooked into the Earthnet, just as you #146;d imagine. But being UNSA we qualify for high priority. That sure is one hell of a machine.'

Hunt was duly impressed. 'So, ZORAC #146;s been teaching you Ganymean, eh,' he said. 'It fits. I should have guessed you wouldn #146;t let a chance like that slip by.'

'It #146;s an interesting language,' Maddson commented. 'It #146;s obviously matured over a long period of time and been rationalized extensively #151;hardly any irregular forms or ambiguities at all. Actually, it #146;s pretty straightforward to learn structurewise, but the pitch and vocal inflections don #146;t come naturally to a human. That #146;s the most difficult part.' He made a throwing-away motion in the air. 'It #146;s only of academic interest I guess. . . but as you say, a chance we couldn #146;t resist.'

'How about the Lunarian texts from Tycho,' Hunt asked. 'Been making progress on the rest of those too?'

'You bet.' Maddson waved toward the piles of papers covering the desk and the table standing against the wall on one side of his office. 'We #146;ve been pretty busy here all around.'

Maddson proceeded to describe some of the details his team of linguists had been able to fill in during Hunt #146;s absence, concerning the Lunarian culture and the way in which it had been organized on the Minerva of fifty thousand years before. There was a thumbnail sketch of the war-torn history of the Lunarian civilization; some detailed maps of parts of the planet #146;s surface with accounts of geographic, climatic, agricultural and industrial characteristics; a treatise on the citizen #146;s obligations and duties toward the State in the totalitarian fortress- factory that was Minerva; a description of native Minervan life forms as reconstructed from fossil remains and some speculations on the possible causes of their abrupt extinction twenty-five million years before. There were numerous references to the earlier race that had inhabited the planet before the Lunarians themselves had emerged; obviously, a civilization such as that of the Ganymeans could never have passed away without leaving ample traces of itself behind for posterity. The Lunarians had marveled at the ruins of Ganymean cities, examined their awesome machines without growing much the wiser, and reconstructed a fairly comprehensive picture of how their world had once looked. In most of their writings, the Lunarians had referred to the Ganymeans simply as the Giants.

Then, more than an hour after they had begun talking, Maddson drew out a set of charts from below some other papers and spread them out for Hunt #146;s inspection. They were views of the heavens at night, showing the stars in groupings that were not immediately recognizable. Captions, which Hunt identified as being written in Lunarian, were scattered across the charts and below each caption, in smaller print, a translation appeared in English.

'These might interest you, Vic,' Maddson said, still bubbling with enthusiasm. 'Star charts drawn by Lunarian astronomers fifty thousand years ago. When you #146;ve looked at them for a little while, you #146;ll pick out all the familiar constellations. They #146;re a bit distorted from the ones we see today because the relative displacements have altered a little with time, of course. In fact, we passed these on to some astronomers at Hale who were able to calculate from the distortions exactly how long ago these charts were drawn. It doesn #146;t come out at too far off fifty thousand years at all.'

Hunt said nothing but leaned forward to peer closely at the charts. This was fascinating #151;a record of the skies as they had appeared when the Lunarian civilization had been at its peak, immediately prior to its catastrophic fall. As Maddson had said, all the familiar constellations were there, but changed subtly from those seen in modern times. The other thing that made them difficult to identify were the sets of lines drawn all over the charts to interconnect groups of the more prominent stars into patterns and shapes that bore no resemblance to the familiar constellations; the lines tended to draw the eye along unfamiliar paths and obscure the better-known patterns. Orion, for example, was there, but not connected up as a single, intact configuration; part of it was grouped independently into a subset, while the other part was separated from the rest of Orion and linked to the normally distinct parallelogram of Lepus to form something else instead. The result was that it took time to identify the two parts of Orion and mentally fuse them back together again to reveal that Orion was there at all.

'I see,' Hunt observed thoughtfully at last. 'They saw pictures in the stars just like we do, only they saw different ones. Takes a while to get used to, doesn #146;t it?'

'Yeah #151;interesting, huh?' Maddson agreed. 'They not only saw different shapes; they grouped the stars differently too. That doesn #146;t really come as a surprise though; I #146;ve always said there was more dog in the mind of the beholder than there ever was in Canis Major. Still, it #146;s interesting to see that their minds seemed to work the same way. . . even if they were every bit as susceptible to autosuggestion.'

'What #146;s this?' Hunt inquired after a few more seconds. He indicated a pattern that lay over toward the left-hand side of the chart he had been studying. The Lunarians had formed a large constellation by connecting together Hercules, Serpens, Corona Borealis and part of Boцtes to produce a starfish-shaped pattern. The English translation of its name read simply The Giant.

'I wondered if you #146;d spot that one,' Maddson said, nodding in approval. 'Well, as we know, the Lunarians knew all about the Ganymeans having been there before them. I guess they musta kinda named one of their constellations . . . sort of in honor of them, or something like that.' He swept a hand over the chart to take in the whole extent of it. 'As you can see, they named their constellations after all kinds of things, but mainly after animals just like we did. I suppose it must be a natural tendency in some kind of way.' He pointed back at the one Hunt had picked out. 'If you #146;re the imaginative kind, you can see something in that which vaguely suggests the Ganymean form . . . it does to me anyhow. I mean. . . in Hercules you can see the head and the two arms raised up. . . Serpens forms a slightly flexed leg trailing back . . . and then the lines through Corona Borealis and then down to Arcturus give you the other leg. See what I mean? It sorta looks like a figure running or leaping.'

'It does, doesn #146;t it,' Hunt agreed. His eyes held a faraway look for a moment, then he went on: 'I #146;ll tell you something else this tells us, Don: The Lunarians knew about the Giants very early in their history too #151;not just later on after they discovered the sciences.'

'How d #146;you figure that?'

'Well, look at the names that they #146;ve given to all their constellations. As you said, they #146;re all simple, everyday things #151;animals and so on. Those are the kinds of names that a simple and primitive people would think up. . . names that come from the things they see in the world around them. We got our names for our constellations in exactly the same way.'

'You mean that these names were handed down from way back,' Maddson said. 'Through the generations . . . from the early times when the Lunarians were just starting to think about getting civilized. Yeah, I suppose you could be right.' He paused to think for a second. 'I see what you mean now. . . . The one they called The Giant was probably named at about the same time as the rest. The rest were named while the Lunarians were still primitive, so The Giant was named while they were still primitive. Conclusion: The Lunarians knew about the Ganymeans right from the early days. Yeah #151;I #146;ll buy that. . . I suppose it #146;s not all that surprising, though. I mean, from the pictures that the Ganymeans have shown us of their civilization, there must have been all kinds of evidence left lying around all over the planet. The early Lunarians could hardly have missed it, primitive or not. All they had to do was have eyes.'