"When I sent you off to Ganymede, I just wanted you to find out a little bit more about the guys. I didn #146;t expect you to come back with a whole shipful of them." Gregg Caldwell chewed on his cigar and looked out across his desk with an expression that was half amusement and half feigned exasperation. Hunt, sprawled in the chair opposite, grinned and took another sip of his scotch. It was good to be back among the familiar surroundings of Navcomms HO again. The inside of Caldwell #146;s luxurious office with its murals and one wall completely dedicated to a battery of view-screens; the panoramic view down over the rainbow towers of Houston #151;nothing had changed.
"So you #146;ve got more than your money #146;s worth, Gregg," he replied. "Not complaining, are you?"
"Hell no. I #146;m not complaining. You #146;ve done another good job by the way things are shaping up. It #146;s just that whenever I set you an assignment, things seem to have this tendency to kinda. . . get outa hand. I always end up with more than I bargained for." Caldwell removed his cigar from his teeth and inclined his head briefly. "But as you say, I #146;m not complaining."
The executive director studied Hunt thoughtfully for a few seconds. "So. . . what was it like to be away from Earth for the first time?"
"Oh, it was. . . an experience," Hunt answered automatically, but when he looked up he saw from the mischievous twinkle that danced in the eyes below the craggy brows that the question had been more than casual. He should have known. Caldwell never said or did anything without a reason.
"Know thyself," Caldwell quoted softly. "And others too, maybe, huh?" He shrugged as if making light of the matter, but the twinkle still remained in his eyes.
Hunt #146;s brows knitted for a split second, and then his eyes slowly widened as the cryptic message behind this turn in the conversation became clear. It took perhaps two seconds for the details to click into place in his brain. In the early days of the Lunarian investigations, just after Hunt had moved to Houston from England, his relationship with Danchekker had been caustic. Progress toward unraveling the mystery was more often than not hampered because the two scientists dissipated their energies fruitlessly in personal conflicts. But later on, in the wilderness of Luna and out in the void between Earth and Jupiter, all that had somehow been forgotten. It was then that the two scientists had begun to work in harmony, and the difficulties had crumbled before the powerful assault of their combined talents, which was what had been needed to solve the Lunarian problem. Hunt could see that clearly now. Suddenly, he also realized that this state of affairs had not come about through mere accident. He stared at Caldwell with new respect, and slowly nodded ungrudging approval.
"Gregg," he said, in a tone of mock reproach. "You #146;ve been pulling strings again. You set us up."
"I did?" Caldwell #146;s voice was suitably innocent.
"Chris and me. It was out there we began to see each other as people and learned to pool our marbles. That #146;s what cracked the Lunarian riddle. You knew it would happen. . ." Hunt pointed an accusing finger across the desk. "That #146;s why you did it."
Caldwell compressed his heavy jowls momentarily into a tight-lipped grin of satisfaction. "So, you got more than your money #146;s worth," he threw back. "Not complaining, are you?"
"Smooth operator," Hunt complimented, raising his glass. "Okay, we #146;ve both had a good deal. That #146;s how I think business ought to be. But now to the present and the future #151;what have you got lined up next?"
Caldwell sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. He exhaled a long stream of blue smoke. "What about this bunch of alien guys you brought back from Europe; are you still tied up most of the time with looking after them?"
"They #146;ve been introduced over at Westwood now," Hunt told him. "They #146;re interested in the Lunarians and particularly want to have a look at Charlie over there. Chris Danchekker is handling that side of things, which leaves me fairly free for a while."
"Fine. What I #146;d like you to start giving some thought to is a preliminary overview of Ganymean science," Caldwell said. "What with this ZORAC machine of theirs and all the conferences and discussions they #146;re having all over the place, there #146;s more information coming across than we can handle. When all the excitement dies down there #146;s going to be one hell of a lotta work to get through with all that. When you were coordinating the Charlie business you operated a pretty good network of channels to most of the leading scientific institutions and establishments around the world. I #146;d like you to use those channels again to make a start at cataloging and evaluating everything that #146;s new, especially things that could be of particular use to UNSA #151;like their gravitics. We may find we want to revise a lot of our own research programs in light of what these big guys have got to tell us. Now seems as good a time as any to begin."
"The group stays intact for a while then?" Hunt guessed, referring to the team that he had headed during the Lunarian investigations and which had continued working under the supervision of his deputy, mainly to tidy up the unresolved details, during his time on Ganymede.
"Yep." Caldwell nodded. "The way they work seems set up for the job. Have you said hello to them yet?"
Hunt shook his head. "Only got back this morning. I came straight on here."
"Do that then," Caldwell said. "There are probably a lot of old friends around here that you want to see. Take the rest of this week to settle in again. Then make a start on what we just talked about on Monday. Okay?"
"Okay. The first thing I #146;ll do is go see the group and give them an idea of what our next job #146;s going to be. I think they #146;ll like it. Who knows . . . they might even have half of it organized for me by Monday if they start thinking about it." He cocked an inquiring eye at Caldwell. "Or is that what you figure you pay me to do?"
"I pay you to think smart," Caldwell grunted. "That #146;s called delegation. If you wanna delegate too, that #146;s what I call thinking smart. Do it."
Hunt spent the rest of that day with his own staff, familiarizing himself with some of the fine points of how they had been getting on #151;he had kept in touch with them almost daily for the general things #151;and outlining for them his recent directive from Caldwell. After that there was no getting away; they quizzed him for hours about every scrap of information that he had managed to absorb on Ganymean scientific theory and technology, kept him talking all through lunch, and succeeded in extracting a commitment from him to arrange for a Ganymean scientist or two to come and give them an intensive teach-in. At least, he reflected as he finally, left for home at nine o #146;clock that night, he was not going to have any problems with motivation there.
Next morning he made a point of avoiding that part of Navcomms HQ building that contained his own offices and started his day by paying a call on another old friend of his #151;Don Maddson, head of the linguistics section. It was Don #146;s team, working in cooperation with several universities and research institutes all over the world, that had played one of the most important roles in the Lunarian saga by untangling the riddle of the Lunarian language, using documents found on Charlie #146;s person and, later, a library of microdot texts from the remains of a Lunarian base that had come to light near Tycho, Without the translations, it would never have been possible even to prove conclusively that the Lunanans and the Ganymeans had come from the same planet.
Hunt stopped outside the door of Maddson #146;s office, knocked lightly and entered without waiting for a reply. Maddson was sitting behind his desk studying a sheet from a stack of the innumerable pieces of paper without which his office would never have seemed complete. He glanced up, stared incredulously for a second, and then his face split into a broad ear-to-ear smile.
"Vic! What the. . ." He half rose from his chair and began pumping Hunt #146;s proffered hand vigorously. "It #146;s great to see ya. I knew you were back on Earth but nobody told me you were Stateside yet. . ." He beckoned Hunt toward an easy chair on the other side of the desk. "Sit down, sit down. When did you get in?"
"Yesterday morning," Hunt replied, settling himself comfortably. "I had to see Gregg and then I got tied up completely with the Group L bunch. Gregg wants us to start thinking about writing a compendium of Ganymean science. They #146;re all dead keen to go on it. . . kept me talking till heavens knows what time last night in the Ocean Bar."
"Ganymeans, eh?" Maddson grinned. "I thought maybe you #146;d have brought us one back."
"There #146;s a load of #146;em over at Westwood with Chris Danchekker right now."
"Yeah. I know about that. They #146;re due to pay us a call here later. Everybody around here #146;s getting keyed up with the suspense. They can #146;t wait." Maddson sat back in his chair and regarded Hunt over interlaced fingers for a few seconds. At last he shook his head. "Well, I dunno where to start, Vic. It #146;s been all this time . . . there are so many questions . . . I guess there #146;s enough to keep us talking all day, huh? Or maybe you #146;re getting tired of people asking all the same things all the time, over and over?"
"Not at all," Hunt said. "But why don #146;t we save all that for lunch? Maybe some of the others might like to join us and then I #146;ll only need to say it all to everybody once; otherwise I might end up getting tired of it, and that wouldn #146;t do."
"Great idea," Maddson agreed. "We #146;ll reserve the topic for lunch. In the meantime, have a guess what we #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."
"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."