James P Hogan. Inherit The Stars. Giant Series #1

problem was that the whole supposition rested on the slender

assumption that the figure 1836 did, in fact, denote the pro-

ton-electron mass ratio and was not merely a coincidental reference

to something completely different. They needed a second source of

information to check it against.

When Hunt talked to the mathematicians one afternoon, he was

surprised to learn that they were unaware that the chemists and

anatomists in other departments had computed estimates of surface

gravity. As soon as he mentioned the fact, everybody saw the

significance at once. If the Lunarians had adopted the practice

that was common on Earth-using the same units to express mass and

weight on their own planet-then the numbers in the table gave

Lunarian weights. Furthermore, there was available to them at least

one object whose weight they could estimate accurately:

Charlie himself. Thus, since they already had an estimate of

surface gravity, they could easily approximate how much Charlie

would have weighed in kilograms back home. Only one piece of

information was missing for a solution to the whole problem: a

factor to convert kilograms to Lunarian weight units. Then Hunt

speculated that there could well be among Charlie’s personal

documents an identity card, a medical card-something that recorded

his weight in his own units. If so, that one number would tell them

all they needed to know. The discussion ended abruptly, with the

head of the Mathematics section departing in great haste and a

state of considerable excitement to talk to the head of the

Linguistics section. Linguistics agreed to make a special note if

anything like that turned up. So far nothing had.

Another small group, tucked away in offices in the top of the

Navcomms HQ building, was working on what was perhaps the most

exciting discovery to come out of the books so far. Twenty pages,

right at the end of the second book, showed a series of maps. They

were all drawn to an apparently small scale, each one depicting

extensive areas of the world’s surface-but the world so depicted

bore no resemblance to Earth. Oceans, continents, rivers, lakes,

islands, and most other geographical features were easily

distinguishable, but in no way could they be reconciled with

Earth’s surface, even allowing for the passage of fifty thousand

years- which would have made little difference anyway, aside from

the size of the polar ice caps.

Each map carried a rectangular grid of reference lines, similar to

those of terrestrial latitude and longitude, with the lines spaced

forty-eight units (decimal) apart. These numbers were presumed

to denote units of Lunarian circular measure, since nobody could

think of any other sensible way to dimension coordinates on the

surface of a sphere. The fourth and sevent~i maps provided the key:

the zero line of longitude to which all the other lines were

referenced. The line to the east was tagged “528” and that to the

west “48,” showing that the full Lunarian circle was divided into

576 Lunarian degrees. The system was consistent with their

duo-decimal counting method and their convention of reading from

right to left. The next step was to calculate the percentage of the

planet’s surface that each map represented and to fit them together

to form the complete globe.

Already, however, the general scheme was clear. The ice caps were

far larger than those believed to have existed on Earth during the

Pleistocene Ice Age, stretching in some places to within twenty

(Earth) degrees of the equator. Most of the seas around the

equatorial belt were completely locked in by coastlines and ice. An

assortment of dots and symbols scattered across the land masses in

the ice-free belt and, more thinly, over the ice sheets themselves,

seemed to indicate towns and cities.

When Hunt received an invitation to come up and have a look at the

maps, the scientists working on them showed him the scales of

distance that were printed at the edges. If they could only find

some way of converting those numbers into miles, they would have

the diameter of the planet. But nobody had told them about the

tables the Mathematics section thought might be mass-unit

conversion factors. Maybe one of the other tables did the same

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