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Danchekker smiled ruefully to himself as he sipped his drink. "Yes, indeed," he said. "As I recall, our meetings in those early days were characterized by what might be described as, ah, somewhat direct and acrimonious exchanges."
Sha
"I remember reading about it at the time," he said, nodding. "But there were so many different reports flying around and so many journalists getting their stories confused, that we never could get a really clear idea of exactly what was going on behind it all. When did you first figure out for sure that the Lunarians came from Minerva?"
"That's a long story," Hunt answered. "The whole thing was an unbelievable mess for a long time. The more we found out, the more everything seemed to contradict itself. Let me see now. . ." He paused and rubbed his chin for a second. "People all over were getting snippets of information from all kinds of tests on the Lunarian remains and relics that started to turn up after Charlie. Then too, there was Charlie himself, his spacesuit, backpack and so on, and all the things with them. . . then the other bits and pieces from around Tycho and places. The clues eventually started fitting together and out of it all we gradually built up a surprisingly complete picture of Minerva and managed to work out fairly accurately where Minerva must have been."
"I was with UNSA at Galveston when you joined Navcomms," Sha
"Quite right," Hunt confirmed. "All it proved was that a planet existed. It didn't prove that the Lunarians evolved on it. As you say, there was still the problem of parallel evolution." He flicked his cigar at the ashtray and shook his head with a sigh. "All kinds of theories were in circulation. Some talked about a civilization from the distant past that had colonized Minerva and had somehow gotten cut off from home; others said they had evolved there from scratch by some kind of convergent process that wasn't properly understood. . . . Life was becoming crazy."
"But at that point we encountered an extraordinary piece of luck," Danchekker came in. "Your colleagues from Jupiter Four discovered the Ganymean spaceship--here, on Ganymede. Once the cargo was identified as terrestrial animals from about twenty-five million years ago, an explanation suggested itself that could account adequately for the whole situation. The conclusion was incredible, but it fit."
Sha
"Yes, it had to be the animals," he said. "That's what I thought. Until you established that the ancestors of the Lunarians had been shipped from Earth to Minerva by the Ganymeans, you had no way of co
"Almost, but not quite," Hunt replied. "We'd already managed to co
"Of course. That's right. There wouldn't have been anything to indicate that the Ganymeans had anything to do with Minerva, would there? So what finally pointed you in the right direction?"
"Another stroke of luck, I must confess," Danchekker said. "Some perfectly preserved fish were found among the food stocks in the remains of a devastated Lunarian base on Luna. We succeeded in proving that the fish were native to Minerva and had been brought to Luna by the Lunarians. Furthermore, the fish were shown to be anatomically related to Ganymean skeletons. This, of course, implied that the Ganymeans too must have evolved from the same evolutionary line as the fish. Since the fish were from Minerva, the Ganymeans also had to be from Minerva."
"So that was where the ship must have come from," Hunt pointed out.
"And where the animals must have come from," Danchekker added.
"And the only way they could have got there is if the Ganymeans took them there," Hunt finished.
Sha
Danchekker made an empty-handed gesture.
"Believe me, I would like nothing better than to be able to comply. But honestly, we haven't made any great strides in that direction yet. What you say is correct; not only the Ganymeans, but also all the land-dwelling forms of life native to Minerva died out or disappeared in a very short space of time, relatively speaking, at about that time. The imported terrestrial species flourished in their place and eventually the Lunarians emerged." The professor showed his palms again. "What happened to the Ganymeans and why? That remains a mystery. Oh. . . we have theories, or should I say we can offer possible explanations. The most popular seems to be that an increase in atmospheric toxins, particularly carbon dioxide, proved lethal to the natives but not to the immigrant types. But to be truthful, the evidence is far from conclusive. I was talking to your molecular biologists here on J5 only yesterday; some of their more recent work makes me less confident in that theory than I was two or three months ago."
Sha
"Good morning, Henry," he said casually. "Is the world treating you well today?"
"Oh, mustn't grumble, sir. I've worked for worse firms than UNSA in my time," Henry replied cheerfully. Hunt was intrigued to note his East London accent. "A change always does you good; that's what I always say."
"What did you do before, Henry?" Hunt inquired.
"Cabin steward for an airline."
Henry moved away to begin clearing the adjacent table. Sha
"Amazing man, Henry," he commented, his tone lowered slightly. "Did you get to meet him at all on the way out from Earth?" The other two shook their heads. "Jupiter Five's reigning chess champion."
"Good Lord," Hunt said, following his gaze with a new interest. "Really?"
"Learned to play when he was six," Sha