only reference made to him so far had been a tribute in Caldwell’s
opening remarks to the invaluable aid rendered by the
Trimagniscope; apart from the murmur of agreement that had greeted
this comment, no further mention had been made of either the
instrument or its inventor. Lyn Garland had told him: “The
meeting’s on Monday, and Gregg wants you to be there to answer
detailed questions on the scope.” So here he was. Thus far, nobody
had wanted to know anything detailed about the scope-only about the
data it produced. Something gave him the uneasy feeling there was
an ulterior motive lurking somewhere.
~rter aweiiing on Charlie’s computerized, mathematical sex life,
the chair considered a suggestion, put forward by a Texas
planetologist sitting opposite Hunt, that perhaps the Lunarians
came from Mars. Mars had reached a later phase of planetary
evolution than Earth and possibly had evolved inteffigent life
earlier, too. Then the arguments started. Martian exploration went
right back to the 1970s; UNSA had been surveying the surface from
satellites and manned bases for years. How come no sign of any
Lunarian civilization had showed up? Answer: We’ve been on the Moon
a hell of a lot longer than that and the first traces have only
just shown up there. So you could expect discovery to occur later
on Mars. Objection: If they came from Mars, then their civilization
developed on Mars. Signs of a whole civilization should be far more
obvious than signs of visits to a place like Earth’s Moon-
therefore the Lunarians should have been detected a lot sooner on
Mars. Answer: Think about the rate of erosion on the Martian
surface. The signs could be largely wiped out or buried. At least
that could account for there not being any signs on Earth. Somebody
then pointed out that this did not solve the problem-all it did was
shift it to another place. If the Lunarians came from Mars,
evolutionary theory was still in just as big a mess as ever.
So the discussion went on.
Hunt wondered how Rob Gray was getting on back at Westwood. They
now had a training schedule to fit in on top of their normal daily
data-collection routine. A week or so before, Caldwell had informed
them that he wanted four engineers from Naycomms fully trained as
Trimagniscope operators. His explanation, that this would allow
round-the-clock operation of the scope and hence better
productivity from it, had not left Hunt convinced; neither had his
further assertion that Navcomms was going to buy itself some of the
instruments but needed to get some in-house expertise while they
had the opportunity.
Maybe Caldwell intended setting up Navcomms as an independent and
self-sufficient scope-operating facility. Why would he do that? Was
Forsyth-Scott or somebody else exerting pressure to get Hunt back
to England? If this was a prelude to shipping him back, the scope
would obviously stay in Houston. That meant that the first thing
he’d be pressed into when he got back would be a panic to get the
second prototype working. Big deal!
The meeting eventually accepted that the Martian-origin theory
created more problems than it solved and, anyway, was pure
speculation. Last rites in the form of “No substantiating evidence
offered” were pronounced, and the corpse was quietly laid to rest
under the epitaph In Abeyance, penned in the “Action” columns of
the memoranda sheets around the table.
A cryptologist then delivered a long rambling account of the
patterns of character groupings that occurred in Charlie’s personal
documents. They had already completed preliminary processing of all
the individual papers, the contents of the wallet, and one of the
books; they were about half way through the second. There were many
tables, but nobody knew yet what they meant; some structured lines
of symbols suggested mathematical formulas; certain page and
section headings matched entries in the text. Some character
strings appeared with high frequency, some with less; some were
concentrated on a few pages, while others were evenly spread
throughout. There were lots of figures and statistics. Despite the
enthusiasm of the speaker, the mood of the room grew heavy and the
questions fewer. They knew he was a bright guy; they wished he’d