A strange silence fell over the Thuriens. Calazar and Showm looked uneasily at each other; Eesyan looked down and fiddled awkwardly with his knuckles. The Terrans and the Shapieron Ganymeans looked at them curiously. Eventually Calazar looked up with a sigh. “Your demonstration of how to get truth from the Jevienese was remarkable. You were wrong on one of your assumptions, however. We have never agreed to any proposal by the Jevienese that they maintain a military force either to counter
possible aggressive expansionism by Earth or for any other reason.
Heller didn’t seem too reassured by the statement as she sat down. “You know now what they’re like,” she said. “How can you be certain that they haven’t been secretly arming themselves?”
“We can’t,” Calazar admitted. “If they have, the implications of the situation that would confront both of our civilizations are serious.”
Caldwell was puzzled. He frowned for a moment as if to check over what was going through his mind, stared at Heller for a second, then looked across at Calazar. “But we assumed that was why they invented the phony stories,” he said. “If that wasn’t the reason, then what was?”
The Thuriens looked even more uncomfortable. Showm turned to Calazar and spread her hands as if conceding there was something that couldn’t be concealed any longer. Calazar hesitated, then nodded. “It is clear to us now why the Jevlenese falsified their reports,” Showm said, turning her head to address the whole room. An expectant hush fell as she paused. She took a long breath and resumed, “There is more to this, which up until now we have felt it wiser not to talk about. . .” She turned her head momentarily sideways to glance at Garuth and his colleagues,
to any of you.” They waited. She went on, “For a long time the Ganynjeans have been haunted by the specter of Minerva repeating itself, and this time possibly spilling out into the Galaxy. Just under a century ago, the Jevlenese persuaded our predecessors that Earth was on the verge of doing just that, and urged a solution to contain Earth’s expansion permanently. The Thuriens commenced working on a contingency plan accordingly. Because of the false picture that we were given by the Jevienese, we have continued with the preparations to implement that plan. If we had known the true situation on Earth, we would have abandoned the idea. Clearly the Jevlenese were misleading us in order to harness our technology to contain their rival permanently and eliminate it from competing with them across the Galaxy in times to come. That was what Broghuilio meant when he referred to the final solution.”
The Terrans needed a few seconds to digest what Showm was saying. “I’m not sure I follow what you mean,” Danchekker said
at last. “Contained Earth’s expansion by what means? You don’t mean by force, surely.”
Calazar shook his head slowly. “That would not be the Ganymean way. We said contain, not oppose. The choice of word was deliberate.”
Hunt frowned as he tried to fathom what Calazar was driving at. Contain Earth? It was too late for that; mankind’s civilization had already spread a long way beyond Earth. Then it could only mean. . . His eyes widened suddenly in disbelief. Surely not even Thurien minds could think on a scale as vast as that. “Not the solar system!” he gasped, staring at Calazar in awe. “You’re not telling us you were going to shut in the whole solar system.”
Calazar nodded gravely. “We devised a scheme for using our gravitic science to create a shell of steepened gravitational gradient that nothing-not Earthmen, nor Earthmen’s aggression, nor even light itself, would escape from. Inside the shell conditions would be normal, and Earth would be free to pursue whatever way of life it chose. And beyond the shell, so would we.” Calazar looked around and took in the appalled stares coming back at him. “That was to have been our final solution,” he told them.
chapter twenty-eight
And so for the first time in the long history of their race the Ganymeans found themselves at war, or at least in a situation so akin to war that the differences were academic. Their response to the Jevlenese was swift and devastating. Calazar ordered VISAR to withdraw all its services from the Jevlenese who were physically present on Thurien and the other Ganymean-controlled worlds. A whole population who throughout their lives had taken for granted the ability to communicate or travel instantly anywhere at any time, to have information of every description available on request, and who had relied completely on machines for every facet of their existence, found themselves suddenly cut off from the only form of society that they knew how to function in. They were isolated, powerless, and panic-stricken. Within hours they had been reduced to helplessness and were speedily rounded up and detained, as much for their own safety and sanity as to keep them Out of any unlikely mischief, until the Ganymeans decided what to do with them. The whole Jevlenese contingent scattered across all the Ganymean worlds had thus been eliminated in a single lightning blow that left no survivors.
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