“Only if it was like our Sun.”
“You could get a check on the planet’s mass from the glass and
other crystalline materials in his equipment. From the crystal
structure, we should be able to figure out the strength of the
gravitational field they cooled in.”
“How could we get a figure for density?”
“You still need to know the planetary radius.”
“He’s like us, so the surface gravity will be Earthlike.”
“Very probable, but let’s prove it.”
“Prove that’s a calendar first.”
Remarks began pouring in from all sides. Hunt reflected with some
satisfaction that at least he had managed to inject some spirit and
enthusiasm into the proceedings.
Danchekker remained unimpressed. As the noise abated, he rose again
to his feet and pointed pityingly to the single sheet of paper,
still lying in the center of the table.
“All balderdash!” he spat. “There is the sum total of your
evidence. There”-he slid his voluminous ifie, bulging with notes
and papers, across beside it-“is mine, backed by libraries, data
banks, and archives the world over. Charlie comes from Earth!”
“Where’s his civilization, then?” Hunt demanded. “Removed in an
enormous celestial garbage truck?”
Laughter from around the table greeted the return of Danchekker’s
own gibe. The professor darkened and seemed about to say something
obscene. Caldwell held up a restraining hand, but Schorn saved the
situation by interrupting in his calm, unruffled tone. “It would
seem, ladies and gentlemen, that for the moment we must compromise
by agreeing to a purely hypothetical situation. To keep Professor
Danchekker happy, we must accept that
the Lunarians evolved from the same ancestors as ourselves. To keep
Dr. Hunt happy, we must assume they did it somewhere else. How we
are to reconcile these two irreconcilables, I would not for one
moment attempt to predict.”
chapter nine
Hunt saw less and less of the Trimagniscope during the weeks that
followed the progress meeting. Caldwell seemed to go out of his way
to encourage the Englishman to visit the various UNSA labs and
establishments nearby, to “see what’s going on first-hand,” or the
offices in Navcomms HQ to “meet someone you might find
interesting.” Hunt was naturally curious about the Lunarian
investigations, so these developments suited him admirably. Soon he
was on familiar terms with most of the engineers and scientists
involved, at least in the Houston vicinity, and he had a good idea
of how their work was progressing and what difficulties they were
encountering. He eventually acquired a broad overview of the
activity on all fronts and found that, at least at the general
level, the awareness of the whole picture that he was developing
was shared by only a few privileged individuals within the
organization.
Things were progressing in a number of directions. Calculations of
structural efficiency, based on measurements of Charlie’s skeleton
and the bulk supported by it, had given a figure for the surface
gravity of his home planet, which agreed within acceptable margins
of error with figures deduced separately from tests performed on
the crystals of his helmet visor and other components formed from a
molten state. The gravity field at the surface of Charlie’s home
planet seemed to have been not much different from that of Earth;
possibly it was slightly stronger. These results were accepted as
being no more than rough approximations. Besides, nobody knew how
typical Charlie’s physical build had been of that of the Lunarians
in general, so there was no firm indication of whether the planet
in question had been Earth or somewhere else. The issue was still
wide open.
On equipment tags, document headings, and appended to certain
notes, the Linguistics section had found examples of Lunarian words
which matched exactly some of the labels on the calendar, just as
Hunt had suggested they might. While this proved nothing, it
did add further plausibility to the idea that these words indicated
dates of some kind.
Then something else that seemed to connect with the calendar
appeared from a totally unexpected direction. Site-preparation work
in progress near Lunar Tycho Base Three turned up fragments of
metal fabrications and structures. They looked like the ruins of
some kind of installation. The more thorough probe that followed