lines were isolated and branched apart, both forms must lie on the
same branch!”
“How can you say that, Chris?” someone insisted. “We know they came
from different branches.”
“What do you know?” Danchekker whispered.
“Well, I know that the Lunarians came from the branch that was
isolated on Minerva. . .”
“Agreed.”
“. . . And I know that man comes from the branch that was isolated
on Earth.”
“How?”
The question echoed sharply around the walls like a pistol shot.
“Well ” The speaker made a gesture of helplessness. “How do I
answer a question like that? It. . . it’s obvious.”
“Precisely!” Danchekker showed his teeth again. “You assume it-just
as everybody else does! That’s part of the conditioning you’ve
grown up with. It has been assumed all through the history of the
human race, and naturally so-there has never been any reason to
suppose otherwise.” Danchekker straightened up and regarded the
room with an unblinking stare. “Now perhaps you see the point of
all this. I am stating that, on the evidence we have just examined,
the human race did not evolve on Earth at all. It evolved on
Minerva!”
“Oh, Chris, really. . .”
“This is getting ridiculous. .
Danchekker hammered on relentlessly: “Because, if we accept that
divergence must have occurred, then both we and the Lu-
narians must have evolved in the same place, and we already know
that they evolved on Minerva!”
A murmur of excitement mixed with protest ran around the room.
“I am stating that Charlie is not just a distantly related cousin
of man-he is our direct ancestor!” Danchekker did not wait for
comment but pressed on in the same insistent tone: “And I believe
that I can give you an explanation of our own origins which is
fully consistent with these deductions.” An abrupt silence fell
upon the room. Danchekker regarded his colleagues for a few
seconds. When he spoke again, his voice had fallen to a calmer and
more objective note.
“From Charlie’s account of his last days, we know that some
Lunarians were left alive on the Moon after the fighting died down.
Charlie himself was one of them. He did not survive for long, but
we can guess that there were others-desperate groups such as the
ones he described-scattered across that Lunar surface. Many would
have perished in the meteorite storm on Farside, but some, like
Charlie’s group, were on Nearside when Minerva exploded and were
spared the worst of the bombardment. Even a long time later, when
the Moon finally stabilized in orbit around Earth, a handful of
survivors remained who gazed up at the new world that hung in their
sky. Presumably some of their ships were still usable-perhaps just
one, or two, or a few. There was only one way out. Their world had
ceased to exist, so they took the only path open to them and set
off on a last, desperate attempt to reach the surface of Earth.
There could be no way back-there was no place to go back to.
“So we must conclude that their attempt succeeded. Precisely what
events followed their emergence out into the savagery of the Ice
Age we will probably never know for sure. But we can guess that for
generations they hung on the very edge of extinction. Their
knowledge and skills would have been lost. Gradually they reverted
to barbarism, and for forty thousand years were lost in the midst
of the general struggle for survival. But survive they did. Not
only did they survive, they consolidated, spread, and flourished.
Today their descendants dominate the Earth just as they dominated
Minerva-you, I, and the rest of the human race.”
A long silence ensued before anybody spoke. When somebody did, the
tone was solemn. “Chris, assuming for now that every-
thing was like you’ve said, a point stifi bothers me: If we and the
Lunarians both came from the Minervan line, what happened to the
other line? Where did the branch that was developing on Earth go?”
“Good question.” Danchekker nodded approval. “We know from the
fossil record on Earth that during the period that came after the
visits of the Ganymeans several developments in the general human