Hunt had stopped pacing and was now looking down at Danchekker with a slow frown spreading across his face, as if another thought had just struck him.
“But there’s something else, isn’t there?” he said. “The self-immunization process has something to do with higher brain functions. . . . Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I suspect so. As you know, the toxins introduced into the body by the self-immunization process in today’s animals has the effect of inhibiting the development of the higher brain centers. And another thing-Tatham’s latest work indicates that, because of the way terrestrial life happens to have evolved, the capacity for violence and aggression is closely related to the development of those centers too. Thus, the Ganymeans would have found themselves unable to produce variants of the type they wanted without also removing the inhibition on the development of higher brain functions, and in addition producing an enhanced tendency toward aggression. That being the case and the Ganymeans being the way they were, I can’t really see them taking the experiment any further. They would never have risked introducing anything like that into themselves, whatever the urgency of the situation. Never.”
“So they gave the whole thing up as a bad job in the end and went off to pastures new,” Hunt completed.
“Maybe, and again maybe not. We have no way of telling for sure. I certainly hope so for the sake of Garuth and his friends.” Danchekker leaned forward on the desk and at once his mood became more serious. “But whatever the answer to that is, at least we have a definite answer to another of the questions that you asked at the beginning.”
“Which one?”
“Well, consider the situation that must have existed on Minerva when the Ganymeans came to the point of accepting that their ambitious genetic engineering solution was running into trouble. They could go away to another star or stay on their own world and perish. Either way, the days of the Ganymean presence on Minerva were numbered. Now take them out of the equation, and what is left? Answer-two populations of animals both of which are well adapted to handling the environmental conditions. First there are the native Minervan types, and second the artificially mutated descendants of the imported terrestrial
types, free to roam the planet after the departure of the Ganymeans. Now return to the equation one further factor that I have established through long interrogation of ZORAC’s archives-the native Minervan species would not have been poisonous to terrestrial carnivores-and what do you conclude?”
Hunt gazed back with eyes that were suddenly aghast.
“Christ!” he breathed. “It would have been a bloody slaughter.”
“Yes, indeed. Consider a planet inhabited only by those ridiculous Technicolored cartoon animals that we found drawn on the walls of that ship at Pithead-animals that had never evolved any specializations for defense, concealment or escape, and which had no need for fight-or-flight instincts at all. Now throw in among them a typical mix of predators from Earth-every one a selected product of millions of years of improvement of the arts of ferocity, stealth and cunning. . . added to which they were evolving higher levels of intelligence that had previously been inhibited and their already fearsome aggressiveness was being further reinforced. Now what picture do you see?”
Hunt just continued to stare in horrified silence as the picture unfolded before his mind’s eye.
“That’s what wiped them all out,” he said at last. “That poor bloody Minervan zoo wouldn’t have had a chance. No wonder it didn’t last for more than a few generations after the Ganymeans disappeared from the scene.”
“With another consequence as well,” Danchekker came in. “The terrestrial carnivores concentrated on the most readily available prey-the native species-and so gave the terrestrial herbivores a breathing space to increase their numbers and become firmly established. By the time the Minervan natives had been wiped out the carnivores would have been forced to revert to their old habits, but by that time the situation would have stabilized. A mixed and balanced terrestrial animal ecology had been given time to establish itself across Minerva. . . .” The professor’s voice took on a soft and curious tone. “And that is the way things must have remained . . . right on through until the time of the Lunarians.”