techniques, had revealed that the continuity from ancient to modem
had not been as smooth as supposed. There was a confused period in
the recent past-at about fifty thousand years before-during which
the curve was discontinuous, and a comparatively abrupt lengthening
in the day had occurred. Furthermore, the rate of deceleration was
measurably greater after this discontinuity than it had been
before. Nobody knew why this should have happened, but it seemed to
indicate a period of violent climatic upheaval, as the corals had
taken generations to set-
tie down to a stable growth pattern afterward. The data seemed to
indicate that widespread changes had taken place on Earth around
this mysterious point in time, probably accompanied by global
flooding, and all in all there could be enough behind the story to
explain the complete disappearance of any record of the Lunarians’
existence.
The fourth main theory was that of the Returning Exiles, which
found these attempts to explain the disappearance of the
terrestrial Lunarians artificial and inadequate. The basic tenet of
this theory was that there could be only one satisfactory reason
for the fact that there were no signs of Lunarians on Earth: There
had never been any Lunarians on Earth worth talking about. Thus,
they had evolved on Minerva as Danchekker maintained and had
evolved an advanced civilization, unlike their contemporary
brothers on Earth, who remained backward. Eventually, compelled by
the Ice Age threat of extinction, the two superpowers of Cerios and
Lambia had emerged and begun the race toward the Sun in the way
described by Linguistics. Where Linguistics had gone wrong,
however, was that by the time of Charlie’s narrative, these events
were already historical; the goal was already achieved. The
Lambians had drawn ahead by a small margin and had already
commenced building settlements on Earth, several of them named
after their own towns on Minerva. The Cerians followed hard on
their heels and established a fire base on Luna, the objective of
course being to knock out the Lambian outposts on Earth before
moving in themselves.
This theory did not explain the flight time of Charlie’s ship, but
its supporters attributed the difficulty to unknown differences
between Minervan and local (Lunar) dating systems. On the other
hand, it required only a few pilot Lambian bases to have been set
up on Earth by the time of the war; thus, whatever remained of
these after the Cerian assault, could credibly have vanished in
fifty thousand years.
And as the battle lines were drawn up and the first ranging shots
started whistling up and down the corridors of Navcomms, in
no-man’s-land sat Hunt. Somehow, he was convinced, everybody was
right. He knew the competence of the people around him and had no
doubt in their ability to get their figures right. If, after weeks
or months of patient effort, one of them pronounced that x was 2,
then he was quite prepared to believe that, in all probability, it
would turn out to be. Therefore, the paradox had to be an illusion.
To try to argue which side was right and which was wrong was
missing the whole point. Somewhere in the maze, probably so
fundamental that nobody had even thought to question it, there had
to be a fallacy-some wrong assumption that seemed so obvious they
didn’t even realize they were making it. If they could just get
back to fundamentals and identify that single fallacy, the paradox
would vanish and everything that was being argued would slide
smoothly into a consistent, unified whole.
chapter eighteen
“You want me to go to Jupiter?” Hunt repeated slowly, making sure
he had heard correctly.
Caidwell stared back over his desk impassively. “The Jupiter Five
Mission will depart from Luna in six weeks time,” he stated.
“Danchekker has gone about as far as he can go with Charlie. What
details are left to be found out can be taken care of by his staff
at Westwood. He’s got better things he’d like to be doing on
Ganymede. There’s a whole collection of alien skeletons there, plus
a shipload of zoology from way back that nobody’s ever seen the
like of before. It’s got him excited. He wants to get his hands on