In Danchekker #146;s office, high in the main building of the Westwood Biological Institute on the outskirts of Houston, the professor and Hunt were watching the view of the Shapieron being sent down from a telescopic camera tracking from a satellite high above the Earth. The image grew gradually smaller and then suddenly enlarged again as the magnification was stepped up. Then it began to shrink once more.
"It #146;s just coasting," Hunt commented from an armchair set over to one side of the room. "Seems as if they want to get one last look at us." Danchekker said nothing but just nodded absently as he watched from behind his desk. The commentary coming over on audio confirmed Hunt #146;s observation.
"Radar indicates that the ship is still traveling quite slowly compared to the performance that we have seen before. It doesn #146;t seem to be going into orbit . . . just continuing to move steadily away from Earth. This is the last time you #146;ll have a chance to see this fantastic vessel live, so make the most of the moment. We are looking at the closing page of what has surely been the most astounding chapter ever written in the history of the human race. How can things ever be the same again?" A short pause. "Hello, something #146;s happening I #146;m told. . . The ship #146;s starting to accelerate now. It #146;s really streaking away from us now, building up speed faster all the time. . . ." The image on the screen began to perform a crazy dance of growing and shrinking again at a bewildering rate.
"They #146;re on main drive," Hunt said, as the commentator continued.
"The image is starting to break up. . . . The stressfield #146;s becoming noticeable now. . . . It #146;s going. . . getting fainter . . . That #146;s it. Well I guess that just about #151;" The voice and picture died together as Danchekker flipped a switch behind his desk to cut off the display.
"So, there they go to meet whatever destiny awaits them," he said. "I wish them well." A short silence ensued while Hunt fished in his pockets for his lighter and cigarette case. As he leaned back in his chair again he said, "You know, Chris, when you think about it, these last couple of years have been pretty remarkable."
"To say the least."
"Charlie, the Lunarians, the ship at Pithead, the Ganymeans and now this." He gestured toward the blank screen. "What better time could we have picked to be alive? It makes every other period of history seem a bit dull, doesn #146;t it?"
"It does indeed . . . very dull indeed." Danchekker seemed to be answering automatically, as if part of his mind were still hurtling out into space with the Shapieron.
"It #146;s a bit of a pity, though, in some ways," Hunt said after a while.
"What is?"
"The Ganymeans. We never really got to the bottom of some of the interesting questions, did we? It #146;s a pity they couldn #146;t have stayed around just a little longer #151;until we #146;d managed to figure out a few more of the answers. Actually I #146;m a bit surprised they didn #146;t. At one stage they seemed even more curious about some things than we were."
Danchekker seemed to turn the proposition over in his mind for a long time. Then he looked up and across to where Hunt was sitting and eyed him in a strange way. When he spoke his voice was curiously challenging.
"Oh really? Answers to questions such as what, might I ask?" Hunt frowned at him for a second, then shrugged as he exhaled a stream of smoke.
"You know what questions. What happened on Minerva after the Shapieron left? Why did they ship all those terrestrial animals there? What bumped off all the Minervan animals? That kind of thing. . . It would be nice to know, even if it is a bit academic now, if only to tidy all the loose ends up."
"Oh, those." Danchekker #146;s air of studied nonchalance was masterly. "I think I can supply you with whatever answers you require to those questions." The matter-of-factness in Danchekker #146;s voice left Hunt at a loss for words. The professor cocked his head to one side and regarded him quizzically but could not contain a slight admission of the amusement that he felt.
"Well. . . Good God, what are they then?" Hunt managed at last. He realized that in his astonishment he had let his cigarette slip from his fingers and made hasty efforts to retrieve it from the side of his chair.
Danchekker watched the pantomime in silence, then replied. "Let me see now, to answer directly the questions that you have just asked would not really convey very much, since they all interrelate. Most of them follow from the work I have been doing here ever since we got back from Ganymede, which covers quite a lot of ground. Perhaps it would be simpler if I just start at the beginning and follow it through from there." Hunt waited while Danchekker leaned back and interlaced his fingers in front of his chin and contemplated the far wall to collect his thoughts.
At last Danchekker resumed. "Do you recall the piece of research from Utrecht that you brought to my attention soon after we got back #151;concerning the way in which animals manufacture small amounts of toxins and contaminants to exercise their defensive systems?"
"The self-immunization process. Yes, I remember. ZORAC picked that one up. Animals possess it but human beings don #146;t. What about it?"
"I found the subject rather intriguing and spent some time after our discussion following it up, which included holding some very long and detailed conversations with a Professor Tatham from Cambridge, an old friend of mine who specializes in that kind of thing. In particular, I wanted to know more about the genetic codes that are responsible for this self-immunization mechanism forming in the developing embryo. It seemed to me that if we were going to try to pinpoint the causes for this radical difference between us and the beasts, this was the level at which we should look for it."
"And. . ."
"And, the results were extremely interesting . . . in fact, remarkable." Danchekker #146;s voice fell almost to a whisper that seemed to accentuate every syllable. "As ZORAC discovered, in virtually all of today #146;s terrestrial animals, the genetic coding that determines their self-immunization mechanism is closely related to the coding responsible for another process; you might say that both processes are subsets of the same program. The other process regulates carbon-dioxide absorption and rejection."
"I see . . ." Hunt nodded slowly. He didn #146;t yet see exactly where Danchekker was leading, but he was beginning to sense something important.
"You #146;re always telling me you don #146;t like coincidences," Danchekker went on. "I don #146;t either. There was far too much of a coincidence about this, so Tatham and I started delving a bit deeper. When we investigated the experiments performed at Pithead and on board Jupiter Five , we came across a second rather remarkable thing, that tied in with what I have just been talking about #151;concerning the Oligocene animals found in the ship there. The Oligocene animals all contain the same genetic coding elements, but in their case there is a difference. The subprograms that control the two processes I mentioned have somehow been separated out; they exist as discrete groupings that lie side by side on the same DNA chain. Now that is very remarkable, wouldn #146;t you say?"
Hunt considered the question for a few seconds.
"You mean that in today #146;s animals both processes are there, but all scrambled up together, but in the Oligocene species they #146;re separated out."
"Yes."
"All the Oligocene species?" Hunt asked after a moment #146;s further reflection. Danchekker nodded in satisfaction at seeing that Hunt was on the right track.
"Precisely, Vic. All of them."
"That doesn #146;t really make sense. I mean, the first thing you #146;d think would be that some kind of mutation had occurred to change one form into the other #151;the scrambled-up form and the separated-out form. That could have happened either way around. In one case the scrambled form could be the #145;natural #146; terrestrial pattern that became mutated on Minerva; that would explain why the animals from there have it and the descendants of the ones that were left here don #146;t. Alternatively, you could suppose that twenty-five million years ago the separated-out form was standard, which explains of course why the animals from that time exhibit it, but that in subsequent evolution here on Earth it changed itself into the scrambled form." He looked across at Danchekker and threw his arms out wide. "But there #146;s one basic flaw in both those arguments #151;it happened in lots of different species, all at the same time."
"Quite." Danchekker nodded. "And, by all the principles of selection and evolution that we accept, that would appear to rule out the possibility of any kind of mutation #151;natural mutation, anyway. It would be inconceivable for the same chance event to occur spontaneously and simultaneously in many distinct and unrelated lines. . . utterly inconceivable."
"Natural mutation?" Hunt looked puzzled. "What are you saying then?"
"It #146;s perfectly simple. We #146;ve just agreed that the difference couldn #146;t be due to ordinary natural mutation, but nevertheless it #146;s there. The only other explanation possible then is that it was not natural."
Impossible thoughts flashed through Hunt #146;s mind. Danchekker read the expression on his face and voiced them for him.
"In other words they didn #146;t just happen; they were made to happen. The genetic codings were deliberately rearranged. We are talking about an artificial mutation."
For a moment Hunt was stunned. The word deliberate denoted conscious volition, which in turn implied an intelligence.
Danchekker nodded again to confirm his thoughts. "If I may rephrase your question of a minute ago, what we are really asking is, did the animals that were shipped to Minerva change, or did the animals that were left on Earth change after the others were shipped? Now add to the equation the further fact that we have established #151;that somebody deliberately caused the change to happen #151;and we are left with only one choice."
Hunt completed the argument for him. "There hasn #146;t been anybody around on Earth during the last twenty-five million years that could have done it, so it must have been done on Minerva. That can only mean. . ." His voice trailed off as the full implication became clear.
"The Ganymeans!" Danchekker said. He allowed some time for this to sink in and then continued. "The Ganymeans altered the genetic coding of the terrestrial animals that they took back to their own planet. I am fairly certain that the samples that were recovered from the ship at Pithead were descendants of a strain that had been mutated in this way and had faithfully carried on the mutation in themselves. This is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence we have reviewed. Also, it is strongly supported by another interesting piece of evidence."
By now Hunt was ready for anything.
"Oh?" he replied. "What?"
"That strange enzyme that turned up in all of the Oligocene species," Danchekker said. "We know now what it did." The look on Hunt #146;s face asked all the questions for him. Danchekker continued: "That enzyme was constructed for one specific task. It cleaved the DNA chain at precisely the point where those two coding groups were joined #151;in species where they were separated out, of course. In other words, it isolated the genetic code that defined the C02 -tolerance characteristics."
"Okay," Hunt said slowly, but still not following the argument fully. "I #146;ll take your word for that. . . . But how does that support what you just said about the Ganymeans? I #146;m not quite #151;"
"That enzyme was not a result of any natural process! It was something that had been manufactured and introduced artificially. That was where the radioactive decay products came from; the enzyme was manufactured artificially and included radioactive tracer elements to allow its progress through the body to be tracked and measured. We use the same technique widely in medical and physiological research ourselves."
Hunt held up a hand to stop Danchekker going any further for the time being. He sat forward in his chair and closed his eyes for a second as he mentally stepped through the reasoning that the professor had summarized.
"Yes. . . okay. . . You #146;ve pointed out all along that chemical processes can #146;t distinguish a radioisotope from a normal one. So, how could the enzyme have selected radioisotopes to build into itself? Answer: It couldn #146;t; somebody must have selected them and therefore the enzyme must have been manufactured artificially. Why use radioisotopes? Answer: Tracers." Hunt again looked across at the professor, who was following and nodding encouragement. "But the enzyme does a specialized job on the modified DNA chain, and you #146;ve already established that the DNA was modified artificially in the animals that were shipped to Minerva. . . . Ah, I see . . . I can see how the two tie in together. What you #146;re saying is that the Ganymeans altered the DNA coding of the terrestrial animals, and then manufactured a specific enzyme to operate on the altered DNA."
"Exactly."
"And what was the purpose of it all?" Hunt was becoming visibly excited. "Any ideas on that?"
"Yes," Danchekker replied. "I think we have. In fact the things that we have just considered tell us all that we need to know to guess at what they were up to." He sat back and interlaced his fingers again. "With the enzyme performing in the way that I have just described, the object of the exercise becomes clear. At least I think it does. . . . If the animals that possessed the already altered DNA were implanted with the enzymes, the chromosomes in their reproductive cells would have been modified. This would have made it possible for a strain of offspring to be bred from them who possessed the CO2 coding in the form of an isolated, compact unit that could be manipulated and #145;got at #146; with comparative ease. If you like, it enabled this particular characteristic to be separated out, perhaps with a view to its becoming the focal point of further experiments with later generations. . . ." Danchekker #146;s voice took on a curious note as he uttered the last few words, as if he were hinting that the main implication of his dissertation was about to emerge.
"I can see what you #146;re saying," Hunt told him. "But not quite why. What were they up to then?"
"That was how they sought to solve their environmental problem after all else had failed," Danchekker said. "It must have been something that was thought of during the later period of Ganymean history on Minerva #151;sometime after the Shapieron went to Iscaris, otherwise Shilohin and the others would have known about it."
"What was how they sought to solve it? Sorry, Chris, I #146;m afraid I #146;m not with you all the way yet."
"Let us recapitulate for a moment on their situation," Danchekker suggested. "They knew that the CO2 level on Minerva had begun to rise, and that one day it would reach a point that they would be unable to withstand; the other Minervan native species would be unaffected, but the Ganymeans would be vulnerable as a consequence of their breeding their original tolerance out of themselves as part of the trade-off for better accident-resistance. They lost it when they took the decision to dispense permanently with their secondary circulation systems. They declined climatic engineering as a solution and tried migration to Earth and the Iscaris experiment but both failed. Later on, it appears, they must have tried something else."
Hunt was all ears. He made a gesture of total capitulation and said simply, "Go on."
"One thing that they did discover on Earth, however, was a family of life that had evolved from origins in a warmer environment than that of Minerva, and which had not had to contend with the load-sharing problem that had caused the double-circulatory-system architecture to become standard on their own planet. Of particular interest, terrestrial life had evolved a completely different mechanism for dealing with carbon dioxide #151;one that did not depend on any secondary circulation system."
Hunt looked incredulous. He stared at Danchekker for a second while the professor waited for the response.
"You #146;re not trying to say. . . they didn #146;t try and pinch it?"
Danchekker nodded. "If my suspicions are anything to go by, that is exactly what they tried to do. The animals from Earth were transported back to Minerva for the purpose of large-scale genetic experiments. The object of those experiments, I believe, was threefold: first, to modify the DNA coding in such a way that the C02 -tolerance portion became separated out from the scrambled form #151;as you put it #151;that had evolved naturally on Earth; second, to perfect a means #151;the enzyme #151;of isolating that block of code and passing it on in an intact and workable unit to later strains; third, but this is a guess, to implant those codes into Minervan animals in an attempt to find out if a Minervan life form could be modified into developing a mechanism for dealing with carbon dioxide that did not depend on its secondary system. We have evidence that they achieved the first two of these objectives; the third must necessarily remain speculative, at least for the time being."
"And if they did succeed in the third, then the next step would be. . ." Hunt #146;s voice trailed off again. The sheer ingenuity of the Ganymean scheme made it difficult for him to accept it unquestioningly.
"If it worked, and if there were no undesirable side effects, the intention was no doubt to engineer the same codes into themselves," Danchekker confirmed. "Thus they would enjoy an in-built tolerance that would happily continue to perpetuate itself through succeeding generations, while at the same time preserving all the advantages that they had already gained by doing away with their secondary systems. A fascinating example of what intelligence can do to improve on Nature when natural evolution throws up a solution that leaves much to be desired, don #146;t you think?"
Hunt rose from his chair and began pacing slowly from one side of the office to the other as he marveled at the sheer audacity of even conceiving such a scheme. The Ganymeans had expressed wonder at Man #146;s readiness to meet Nature head-on in every challenge, but here was something, surely, that Man would have balked at. The basic instincts of the Ganymeans steered them away from physical danger, conflict and the like, but their thirst for intellectual adventure and combat, it appeared, was unquenchable; that was the spur that had driven them to the stars. Danchekker watched in silence, waiting for the question that he knew would come next. At length Hunt stopped and wheeled to face the desk.
"Yes, it was neat, all right," he agreed. "But it didn #146;t work, did it, Chris?"
"Regrettably, no," Danchekker conceded. "But not for reasons for which, I feel, they were really to blame. We might have some catching up to do with them technically, but nevertheless I believe that we are in a position to see where they went wrong." He didn #146;t wait for the obvious question at that point but went on. "We have the advantage of knowing far more than they possibly could have about life on our own planet. We have access to the work of thousands of scientists who have studied the subject for centuries, but the Ganymeans who came here twenty-five million years ago did not. In particular, they could not have known what Professor Tatham and his team at Cambridge have only just discovered."
"The scrambling together of the self-immunization and the CO2 -tolerance codings?"
"Yes, exactly that. The thing that the Ganymean genetic engineers would never have realized was that in isolating the latter, in order to make their proposed later experiments simpler, they were losing the former. Because of the method they adopted, the descendant strains that they bred would have been ideal subjects for further C02 -tolerance research, but they would also have lost their self-immunization capabilities. In other words, the Ganymeans created and raised a whole range of mixed terrestrial animal species that possessed no trace of the age-old mechanism for stimulating their own defensive processes by flooding the body with mild doses of pollutants #151;a mechanism which we still see today in the descendants of the animals that remained on Earth to continue evolving naturally, of course."
Hunt had stopped pacing and was now looking down at Danchekker with a slow frown spreading across his face, as if another thought had just struck him.
"But there #146;s something else, isn #146;t there?" he said. "The self-immunization process has something to do with higher brain functions. . . . Are you saying what I think you #146;re saying?"
"I suspect so. As you know, the toxins introduced into the body by the self-immunization process in today #146;s animals has the effect of inhibiting the development of the higher brain centers. And another thing #151;Tatham #146;s latest work indicates that, because of the way terrestrial life happens to have evolved, the capacity for violence and aggression is closely related to the development of those centers too. Thus, the Ganymeans would have found themselves unable to produce variants of the type they wanted without also removing the inhibition on the development of higher brain functions, and in addition producing an enhanced tendency toward aggression. That being the case and the Ganymeans being the way they were, I can #146;t really see them taking the experiment any further. They would never have risked introducing anything like that into themselves, whatever the urgency of the situation. Never."
"So they gave the whole thing up as a bad job in the end and went off to pastures new," Hunt completed.
"Maybe, and again maybe not. We have no way of telling for sure. I certainly hope so for the sake of Garuth and his friends." Danchekker leaned forward on the desk and at once his mood became more serious. "But whatever the answer to that is, at least we have a definite answer to another of the questions that you asked at the beginning."
"Which one?"
"Well, consider the situation that must have existed on Minerva when the Ganymeans came to the point of accepting that their ambitious genetic engineering solution was running into trouble. They could go away to another star or stay on their own world and perish. Either way, the days of the Ganymean presence on Minerva were numbered. Now take them out of the equation, and what is left? Answer #151;two populations of animals both of which are well adapted to handling the environmental conditions. First there are the native Minervan types, and second the artificially mutated descendants of the imported terrestrial types, free to roam the planet after the departure of the Ganymeans. Now return to the equation one further factor that I have established through long interrogation of ZORAC #146;s archives #151;the native Minervan species would not have been poisonous to terrestrial carnivores #151;and what do you conclude?"
Hunt gazed back with eyes that were suddenly aghast.
"Christ!" he breathed. "It would have been a bloody slaughter."
"Yes, indeed. Consider a planet inhabited only by those ridiculous Technicolored cartoon animals that we found drawn on the walls of that ship at Pithead #151;animals that had never evolved any specializations for defense, concealment or escape, and which had no need for fight-or-flight instincts at all. Now throw in among them a typical mix of predators from Earth #151;every one a selected product of millions of years of improvement of the arts of ferocity, stealth and cunning. . . added to which they were evolving higher levels of intelligence that had previously been inhibited and their already fearsome aggressiveness was being further reinforced. Now what picture do you see?"
Hunt just continued to stare in horrified silence as the picture unfolded before his mind #146;s eye.
"That #146;s what wiped them all out," he said at last. "That poor bloody Minervan zoo wouldn #146;t have had a chance. No wonder it didn #146;t last for more than a few generations after the Ganymeans disappeared from the scene."
"With another consequence as well," Danchekker came in. "The terrestrial carnivores concentrated on the most readily available prey #151;the native species #151;and so gave the terrestrial herbivores a breathing space to increase their numbers and become firmly established. By the time the Minervan natives had been wiped out the carnivores would have been forced to revert to their old habits, but by that time the situation would have stabilized. A mixed and balanced terrestrial animal ecology had been given time to establish itself across Minerva. . . ." The professor #146;s voice took on a soft and curious tone. "And that is the way things must have remained . . . right on through until the time of the Lunarians."
"Charlie. . ." Hunt sensed that Danchekker was at last hinting at something he had been building up to all along. "Charlie," Hunt repeated. "You found that same enzyme in him too, didn #146;t you?"
#145;We did, but in a somewhat degenerate form. . . as if it were in the last phases of fading away completely. It did fade away of course, since Man no longer possesses it. . . . But the interesting point, as you say, is that Charlie had it and so, presumably, did the rest of the Lunarians."
"And there was only one place for it to come from. . ."
"Precisely."
Hunt raised a hand to his brow as the full import of these revelations hit him. He turned slowly to meet Danchekker #146;s solemn gaze and then slowly, his features knotted into a mask of disbelief that strove to reject the things that reason now stripped bare, sank weakly down onto an arm of the nearest chair. Danchekker said nothing, waiting for Hunt to put the pieces together for himself.
"The population on Minerva included samples of the latest Oligocene primates," Hunt said after a while. "They were almost certainly as advanced as anything that Earth had produced at the time, and with the greatest potential for advancing further. The Ganymeans had unwittingly removed the inhibition on further brain development. . . ." He looked up and met Danchekker #146;s imperturbable stare again. "They #146;d have raced ahead from there. There was nothing to stop them. And with their aggressive streak unleashed as well. . . a whole race of runaway mutants. . . psychological Frankenstein monsters. . . ."
"Which is, of course, where the Lunarians came from," Danchekker said. His voice was grave. "By rights they shouldn #146;t have survived. All the theories and models of the Ganymean scientists said that they would inevitably destroy themselves. They almost did. They turned a whole planet into one vast fortress and by the time they had developed technology their lives revolved around unceasing warfare and the ruthless, uncompromising determination to exterminate all other rival states. They were capable of conceiving no other formula to solve their problems. In the end they did indeed destroy themselves and Minerva along with them, at least, they destroyed their civilization, if that is the correct term for it. They should have destroyed themselves totally, but, by a million-to-one chance, it did not quite happen. . . ." Danchekker looked up and left Hunt to fill in the rest.
But Hunt just sat and stared, overwhelmed. After the nuclear holocaust between the opposing forces of the two remaining Lunarian superstates had altered permanently the face of Minerva #146;s moon and Minerva had disintegrated, the moon fell inward toward the Sun to be captured by Earth. The tiny band of survivors carried with it had possessed the resources to set off one last, desperate journey #151;to the surface of the new world that now hung in the sky above their heads. For forty thousand years the descendants of those survivors had merged into the survival struggle of Earth, but eventually they had spread all over the planet and emerged as an adversary as formidable as their ancestors had been on Minerva.
At last, Danchekker resumed quietly. "We have speculated for some time now that the Lunarians, and hence Man, originated from an unprecedented mutation that must have occurred somewhere along the primate line that was isolated on Minerva. Also, we have noted that somewhere along his line of ancestry, Man has somehow abandoned the self-immunization process that other animals have in common. Now we see not only proof that these things were true, but also how they came about. In fact, many species went along that same path, but all bar one were destroyed when Minerva was destroyed. Only one #151;Man in the form of the Lunarians #151;came back again." Danchekker paused and took a long breath. "An unprecedented mutation did indeed occur on Minerva, but it was not a natural mutation. Modern Man exhibits fewer of the extremes that drove the Lunarians to their doom, thankfully, but all the same the legacy of our ancestry is written through the pages of our history. Homo sapiens is the end-product of an unsuccessful series of Ganymean genetic experiments!
"The Ganymeans believe that Man is slowly but surely recovering from the instability and compulsive violence that destroyed the Lunarians. Let us hope they are right."
Neither man said anything more for a long time. It was ironic, Hunt thought, that after all the Ganymeans had said, their own kind should turn out to be the prime cause of all the things that had come to pass over the last twenty-five miffion years. And throughout all that time, while primates evolved into sapient beings on Minerva, and the Lunarian civilization came and went, and fifty thousand years of human history were being acted out on Earth, the Shapieron had been out there in the void, preserved by the mysterious workings of the laws that distort time and space.
"An unsuccessful series of Ganymean genetic experiments," Hunt echoed Danchekker. "They started the whole thing. They came back to find us flying spaceships and building fusion plants, and they thought our rate of progress was miraculous. And all the time they #146;d started the whole thing off in their own labs, twenty-five million years ago. . . and given it up as a bad job! It #146;s funny when you think about it, Chris. It #146;s damned funny. And now they #146;ve gone for good. I wonder what they would have said if they #146;d only known what we know now."
Danchekker did not reply at once, but stared thoughtfully at the top of his desk for a while, as if weighing whether or not to say what was going through his head. In the end he stretched an arm forward and began toying idly with a pen. When he spoke he did not engage Hunt #146;s eyes directly but continued to watch the pen tumbling over and over between his fingers.
"You know, Vic, in the last months before they went, the Ganymeans became very interested in all aspects of terrestrial biochemistry, including all our available data on Charlie, Man, and the Oligocene animals from Pithead. For a long time they were bubbling over with curiosity and ZORAC couldn #146;t find enough questions to ask about such matters. And then, about a month ago, they suddenly became very quiet about it all. They hadn #146;t even mentioned it since."
The professor looked up and confronted Hunt with a direct and candid stare.
"I think I know why," he said, very softly. "You see, Vic, they knew all right. They knew. They knew that they had brought a pathetically deformed creature into a hostile universe and left it to fend for itself against odds that were hopeless, and they returned and saw what that creature had become #151;a proud and triumphant conqueror that laughs its defiance at anything the universe cares to throw at it. That is why they are gone. They believe that they owe it to Man to leave him free to perfect the world that he has built for himself in whatever way he chooses. They know what we were and they see what we have made of ourselves since. They feel that we have suffered enough interference in the past and have shown ourselves to be the better managers of our own destiny."
Danchekker tossed the pen aside, gazed up and concluded:
"And somehow, Vic, I don #146;t think that we will let them down. The worst is over now."