pattern of evolution on Earth. Now we see where it came from: It
appeared as a mutation among the evolving primates that were
isolated on Minerva. It was transmitted through the population
there until it became a racial characteristic. It proved to be such
a devastating weapon in the survival struggle there that effective
opposition ceased to exist. The inner driving force that it pro
duced was such that the Lunarians were flying spaceships while
their contemporaries on Earth were still playing with pieces of
stone.
“That same driving force we see in man today. Man has proved
invincible in every challenge that the Universe has thrown at him.
Perhaps this force has been diluted somewhat in the time that has
elapsed since it first appeared on Minerva; we reached the brink of
that same precipice of self-destruction but stepped back. The
Lunarians hurled themselves in regardless. It could be that this
was why they did not seek a solution by cooperation-their in-built
tendency to violence made them simply incapable of conceiving such
a formula.
“But this is typical of the way in which evolution works. The
forces of natural selection will always operate in such a way as to
bend and shape a new mutation, and to preserve a variation of it
that offers the best prospects of survival for the species as a
whole. The raw mutation that made the Lunarians what they were was
too extreme and resulted in their downfall. Improvement has taken
the form of a dilution, which results in a greater psychological
stability of the race. Thus, we survive where they perished.”
Danchekker paused to finish his drink. The statues remained
statues.
“What an incredible race they must have been,” he said. “Consider
in particular the handful who were destined to become the
forefathers of mankind. They had endured a holocaust unlike
anything we can even begin to imagine. They had watched their world
and everything that was familiar explode in the skies above their
heads. After this, abandoned in an airless, waterless, lifeless,
radioactive desert, they were slaughtered beneath the billions of
tons of Minervan debris that crashed down from the skies to
complete the ruin of all their hopes and the total destruction of
all they had achieved.
“A few survived to emerge onto the surface after the bombardment.
They knew that they could live only for as long as their supplies
and their machines lasted. There was nowhere they could go, nothing
they could plan for. They did not give in. They did not know how to
give in. They must have existed for months before they realized
that, by a quirk of fate, a slim chance of survival existed.
“Can you imagine the feelings of that last tiny band of Lunarians
as they stood amid the Lunar desolation, gazing up at the new world
that shone in the sky above their heads, with nothing else alive
around them and, for all they knew, nothing else alive in the
Universe? What did it take to attempt that one-way journey into the
unknown? We can try to imagine, but we will never know. Whatever it
took, they grasped at the straw that was offered and set off on
that journey.
“Even this was only the beginning. When they stepped out of their
ships onto the alien world, they found themselves in the midst of
one of the most ruthless periods of competition and extinction in
the history of the Earth. Nature ruled with an uncompromising hand.
Savage beasts roamed the planet; the climate was in turmoil
following the gravitational upheavals caused by the arrival of the
Moon; possibly they were decimated by unknown diseases. It was an
environment that none of their experience had prepared them for.
Still they refused to yield. They learned the ways of the new
world: They learned to feed by hunting and trapping, to fight with
spear and club; they learned how to shelter from the elements, to
read and interpret the language of the wild. And as they became
proficient in these new arts they grew stronger and ventured
farther afield. The spark that they had brought with them and which
had carried them through on the very edge of extinction began to