The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

'No wonder their writings and legends were full of references to the Giants then,' Hunt said. 'That knowledge must have had a terrific influence on how their civilization and thinking developed. Imagine what a difference it might have made if the Sumerians had seen evidence of a long-lost, technically advanced race all around them. They might #151;hey, what #146;s this?' Hunt had been scanning idly over the remaining star charts while he was talking. Suddenly he stopped and peered closely at one of them, at the same time pointing to one of the inscriptions with his finger. The inscription did not refer to a constellation of stars this time, but to a single star, standing alone and shown relatively faintly. The inscription, however, stood out in bold Lunarian characters. Its English equivalent read: The Giants #146; Star.

'Something wrong?' Maddson asked.

'Not wrong. . . just a bit odd.' Hunt was frowning thoughtfully. 'This star #151;it #146;s nowhere near that other constellation. It #146;s in another hemisphere completely, out near Taurus. . . yet it #146;s got a name like that. I wonder why they gave it a name like that.'

'Why not?' Maddson shrugged. 'Why shouldn #146;t they give it a name like that? It #146;s as good as any other. Maybe they were kinda running outa names.'

Hunt was still looking perturbed.

'But it #146;s so faint,' he said slowly. 'Don, are the different brightnesses of the stars shown on these charts significant? I mean, did they tend to show the brighter stars larger, same as we do?'

'As a matter of fact, yes they did,' Maddson answered. 'But what of it? Does it really. . .'

'Which star is this?' Hunt asked, now evidently intrigued and apparently not hearing.

'Search me.' Maddson spread his hands wide. 'I #146;m no astronomer. Is it so important?'

'I think it is.' Hunt #146;s voice was curiously soft, and still held a faraway note.

'How come?'

'Look at it this way. That looks like a very faint star to me #151;magnitude four, five or less at a guess. Something makes me wonder if that star would be visible at all from the Solar System to the naked eye. Now if that were the case, it could only have been discovered after the Lunarians invented telescopes. Right?'

'That figures,' Maddson agreed. 'So what?'

'Well, now we get back to the name. You see, that kind of name #151;The Giants #146; Star #151;is in keeping with all the rest. It #146;s the kind of name that you #146;d expect the ancients of the Lunarian race to come up with. But what if the ancients of the Lunarian race never knew about it. . . because they #146;d never seen it? That means that it had to have been given its name later, after the science of astronomy had been refined to a high level, by the advanced civilization that came later. But why would an advanced civilization give it a name like that?'

A look of growing comprehension spread slowly across Maddson #146;s face. He looked back at Hunt but was too astounded by the implication to say anything. Hunt read the expression and nodded to confirm what Maddson was thinking.

'Exactly. We have to grope around in the dark to find out anything about what kind of evidence of their existence the Ganymeans left behind them. The Lunarian scientists had no such problem because they had the one thing available to them that we don #146;t have #151;the planet Minerva, intact, right under their feet, no doubt with enough evidence and clues buried all over it to keep them busy for generations.' He nodded again in response to Maddson #146;s incredulous stare. 'They must have built up a very complete record of what the Ganymeans had done, all right. But all the evidence they used to do it was lost with them.'

Hunt paused and drew his cigarette case slowly from his inside jacket pocket while he quickly checked over the line of reasoning in his mind.

'I wonder what they knew about that star that we don #146;t know,' he said at last, his voice now had become very quiet. 'I wonder what they knew about that star that caused them to choose a name like that. We #146;ve suspected for a long time that the Giants might have migrated to another star, but we #146;ve never been able to prove it for sure or been able to say what star it might have been. And now this turns up. . .'

Hunt stopped with his lighter poised halfway toward his mouth. 'Don,' he said. 'In your life, do you find that fate steps in and lends a hand every now and again?'

'Never really thought about it,' Maddson admitted. 'But now you come to mention it, I guess I have to agree.'

Chapter Twenty-One

As time went by, the Ganymean scientists grew to know better and work more closely with the scientific community of Earth. In several areas, information supplied by the aliens contributed significantly to advances in human knowledge.

Maps reproduced from ZORAC #146;s data banks showed the surface of the Earth as it had appeared at the time of the early Minervan expeditions to the planet, during its late Oligocene period. These same maps showed the Atlantic Ocean little more than half as wide as was shown on twenty-first-century maps, indicating that the time represented was that much nearer to the breaking adrift of the American continent. The Mediterranean Sea was much wider with Italy half rotated prior to being driven into Europe by Africa #146;s relentless northward drive to create the Alps; India had just made contact with Asia and begun throwing up the Himalayas; Australia was much closer to Africa. Measurements of these maps enabled current theories of plate tectonics to be thoroughly checked and brought a whole new light to bear on many aspects of the Earth sciences.

Throughout all this the Ganymeans declined to say exactly where their experimental colonies on Earth had been located, or what areas had been affected by the ecological catastrophes that they had induced. These matters, they said, were best left in the past where they belonged.

At institutes of physics and universities all over the world, the Ganymeans unveiled the rudiments and fundamental concepts of the theoretical basis of the extended science that had led to the emergence of their technology of gravitics. In this they did not provide blueprints for constructing gadgets and devices whose principles would not be comprehended and whose introduction would have been premature; they offered only general guidance, declaring that Man would fill in the details in his own way, and would do so when the time was right.

The Ganymeans also painted bright and promising pictures of the future by describing the unlimited abundance of resources that the universe had to offer. All substances, they pointed out, were built from the same atoms and, given the right knowledge and sufficient energy, anything required #151;metals, crystals, organic polymers, oils, sugars and proteins #151;could be synthesized from plentiful and freely available materials. Energy, as Man was beginning to discover, was waiting to be trapped in undreamed of quantities. Of the total amount of energy radiated out into space by the Sun, less than one thousandth part of one billionth was actually intercepted by the disk of the Earth. Nearly half of that was reflected away back into space, and of the remainder that actually penetrated through to the surface, only a minute fraction was harnessed to any useful purpose. Borrowing from the commercial jargon of Earth, the Ganymeans described the tiny pockets of energy that happened to be trapped in one form or another about the surface of his planet as representing Man #146;s starting capital. Future generations, they predicted, would look back at Apollo as just the down payment on the best long-term investment Man ever made.

As the months passed by, the two cultures interlocked more closely and adjusted to accommodate one another so well that it seemed to many that the Giants had always been there. The Shapieron toured the globe and spent a day or two at most of the world #146;s major airports, attracting visitors by the tens of thousands; on several occasions it took selected parties on one-hour rides around the Moon and back! Anybody who had access to an Earthnet terminal and who could get through the permanently jammed public exchange could speak to ZORAC, and a number of high-priority channels were permanently reserved for allocation to schools. Despite their ancestry, many of the young Ganymeans developed a passion for baseball, soccer, and other such sports #151;pastimes the likes of which had been unknown to them in their previous shipbound existence. Before long they had formed their own leagues to challenge their terrestrial counterparts. At first their elders were a little disturbed by this turn of events, but later they reasoned that the notion of competition seemed to have brought Man a long way in a short time; perhaps the grafting, in small doses, of the Earthman #146;s will to win onto the