Caidwell was beginning to nod. “It would have had to get the Thuriens out of the way somehow,” he agreed.
“Precisely,” Danchekker said. “But not too quickly. There was a lot that it wanted to learn from them first. And the really cunning part was that at the end of it all, the Thuriens’ own ingenuity and technology would provide the means whereby the Jevlenese would get rid of them. Then, armed with stolen Ganymean science and with JEVEX as their leader, the Jevienese would have had the Galaxy at their mercy. Think of all those developing worlds.
and a technology that could cross light-years in moments. They would become the masters of every part of explored space, poised to expand their empire without limit, and the only potential opposition would be safely locked up inside a gravitic shell that nothing could get out of.” Danchekker gripped his lapels and turned from side to side to take in the astounded expressions around him. “So now at last we see what was behind it all-the ultimate design that they had been working on, probably ever since Minerva. And how near they came to succeeding!”
“So the weapons at Uttan . . .” Calazar said falteringly, still struggling to grasp the enormity of it all. “They were never in-tended to be used against Thurien at all?”
“I doubt it,” Danchekker said. “I suspect that they were for afterward, to add teeth to their expansion when the time came.”
“Yes, and guess who’d have been first on the list,” Heller said. “They were Lambians, and we were Cerians.”
“Of course!” Showm whispered. “Earth would have been defenseless. That was why they concealed your demilitarization from us.” She nodded slowly in grudging admiration. “It was neatly worked out. First they work to retard Earth’s advancement while they grow strong and learn. Then they accelerate Earth’s rate of discovery suddenly, engineer the results into a threat which they enlist Ganymean aid to eliminate. And finally they remove the threat to themselves but conceal the fact from the Ganymeans, and use the very technique that they have induced the Ganymeans to develop as the means of eliminating the Ganymeans instead. That would have left them in a position to settle the old score with the Cerians without interference, and with the odds overwhelmingly in their favor.”
“We wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Caldwell breathed, for once genuinely staggered.
“And the Jevlenese would have repossessed the solar system, which I suspect has always been their first goal,” Danchekker said. “I would imagine they have always considered it rightly theirs. And they would no longer have had to play second fiddle to the Ganymeans, a position they clearly have never been able to come to terms with gracefully.”
“It all makes sense,” Calazar said in a resigned voice. “Why they were so insistent about administering their own, autonomous group of worlds . . . why they needed a system independent of VISAR, controlling its own volume of space.” He looked at Showm and nodded. “A lot of things are beginning to make sense now.”
He fell silent for a few seconds. When he spoke again his voice was lighter. “If all this is true, then our problem of what to do next could be eased considerably. If the roots of it all lay not so much in the Jevienese people but in JEVEX, then maybe there is hope for them after all. Distasteful punitive measures may not be necessary.”
A distant look came into Showm’s eyes. “Ye-es,” she said slowly, and began nodding. “Perhaps, given the right help, they might rebuild their civilization upon a new model and emerge from it all as a mature and benign race. All may not be lost yet.”
“It does give us a positive goal to aim at and a task to accomplish,” Calazar said, sounding more enthusiastic. “Despite all the setbacks, things might work out to a successful conclusion. As you say, all is not lost.”
“Er, at present this is merely a hypothesis, you understand,” Danchekker said hastily. “But there might be a way to test it. If the whole thing did in fact begin with JEVEX, it might be possible to trace the origins of some of the things we’ve been talking about back to conceptual subnets of some form buried in JEVEX’S older archives.” He looked at Calazar. “I assume that once your people are fully in control of Jevien, it would be possible to reactivate parts of JEVEX in a controlled fashion and allow VISAR to examine its records thoroughly.”