“Me, too.” Hunt thought for a long time. At last he shook his head
with a sigh. “Doesn’t make sense. Anyhow, what else is there?”
“Well, we’ve got the general picture of a totally authoritarian
State, demanding unquestioning obedience from the individual and
controlling just about everything that moves. Everything needs a
license; there are travel licenses, off-work licenses, sick-ration
licenses-even procreation licenses. Everything is in short supply
and rationed by permits-food, every kind of commodity, fuel, light,
accommodation-you name it. And to keep everybody in line, the State
operates a propaganda machine like you never dreamed of. To make
things worse, the whole planet was desperately short of every kind
of mineral. That slowed them down a lot. Despite their concentrated
effort, their rate of technological progress was probably not as
fast as you’d think. Maybe a hundred years didn’t give them as long
as it sounds.” Maddson turned some sheets, scanned the next one
briefly, and then went on. “To make matters worse still, they also
had a big political problem.”
“Go on.”
“Now, we’re assuming that as their civilization developed, it
followed similar lines to ours-first tribes, then villages, towns,
nations, and so on. Seems reasonable. So, somewhere along the way
they started discovering the different sciences, same as we did. As
you’d expect, the same ideas started occurring to different people
in different places at around the same time-like, we’ve gotta get
outa this place. As these ideas became accepted, the Lunarians seem
to have figured also that there just weren’t sufficient resources
for more than a few lucky ones to make it. No way were they going
to get a whole planet full of people out.”
“So they fought about it,” Hunt offered.
“That’s right. The way I picture it, lots of nations grew up, all
racing each other, as well as the ice, to get the technological
edge. Every other one was a rival, so they fought it out. Another
thing that made them fight was the mineral shortage, especially the
shortage of metallic ores.” Maddson pointed at a map of Minerva
mounted above the table. “See those dots on the ice sheets? Most of
them were a combination of fortress and mining town. They dug right
down through the ice to get at the deposits, and the army was there
to make sure they kept the stuff.”
“And that was the way life was. Mean people, eh?”
“Yeah, for generation after generation.” Maddson shrugged. “Who
knows? Maybe if we were freezing over fast, we’d be forced in the
same direction. Anyhow, the situation had complications. They had
the problem of having to divide their efforts and resources between
two different demands all the time: first, developing a technology
that would support mass interplanetary travel and, second,
armaments and the defense organization to protect it
-and there weren’t a lot of resources to divide in the first place.
Now, how would you solve a problem like that?”
Hunt pondered for a while. “Cooperate?” he tried.
“Forget it. They didn’t think that way.”
“Only one other strategy possible, then: Wipe out the opposition
first and then concentrate everything on the main objective.”
Maddson nodded solidly. “That is exactly what they did. War, or
near war, was pretty well a natural way of life all through their
history. Gradually the smaller fish were eliminated until, by the
time we get to Charlie, there are only two superpowers left, each
dominating one of the two big equatorial continental land
masses . . .” He pointed at the map again. “. . . Cerios and
Lambia. From various references, we know Charlie was a Cerian.”
“All set for the big showdown, then.”
“Check. The whole planet was one big fortress-factory. Every inch
of surface was covered by hostile missiles; the sky was full of
orbiting bombs that could be dropped anywhere. We get the
impression that relative to the pattern of our own civilization,
their armaments programs had taken a bigger share than space
research and had progressed faster.” Maddson shrugged again. “The
rest you can guess.”
Hunt nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “It all fits,” he mused. “It
must have been a huge con, though. I mean, even from whichever side