“Exactly,” she said. “And those were the two conclusions we -arrived at too.” A few gasps of amazement came from various
parts of the room. “Both possibilities were studied extensively. Eventually a team of astrophysicists convinced the government that warming up the Sun was the more practicable. Nobody could find a flaw in the calculations, but, as always, our government was cautious and elected not to blow a wad on fooling around with the Sun. They wanted to see some proof first that the plan would work
• . . Yes, Dr. Hunt?” She had noticed his hand hail raised to attract attention.
“Could you give us a few details on how they proposed to do such a thing?” he asked. “I think even the idea of contemplating something like that has astonished a few of us here.” Mutters of agreement from all around echoed his sentiments.
“Certainly,” she replied. “The Ganymeans, as most of you know by now, had developed a branch of technology that is not yet understood in your own world-a technology based on the principles of artificially generating and controlling the effect termed ‘gravity.’ The proposal of the Ganymean astrophysicists involved placing three very large and very powerful projectors in orbit around the Sun, which would concentrate beams of space.-time distortion-‘gravity intensification’ if you like, although that describes the effect of the process rather than its nature-at the Sun’s center. Theory predicted that this would induce an increase, effectively, in the Sun’s self-gravitation and produce a slight collapse of the star, which would cease when the radiation pressure again balanced the gravitational pressure. At the new equilibrium the Sun would radiate more strongly and, provided that all the right quantities were chosen, would just compensate for the loss of Minerva’s greenhouse effect. In other words we could now risk tampering with the carbon-dioxide level since, if we blew it and we started to freeze, we could put things right again by adjusting the solar constant. Does that answer the question sufficiently, Dr. Hunt?”
“Yes . . . very much so. Thank you.” There were a thousand other questions that he could have asked at that moment, but he decided to leave them all for ZORAC later; for the time being he was having enough trouble even trying to visualize engineering on such a scale, yet Shilohin made the whole thing sound as routine as putting up an apartment block.
“As I said a moment ago,” Shilohin resumed, “our government insisted on testing the theory first. Our expedition was formed for that purpose-to carry out a full-scale trial experiment on a Sun-like star elsewhere.” She paused and made a gesture that was not familiar. “As it turned out, I guess they did the right thing. The star became unstable and went nova. We barely escaped with our lives. Garuth has just told you of the problem with the Shapieron’s propulsive system that resulted in the situation we have now- although we have aged less than twenty years since leaving Iscaris, on your time scale this all happened twenty-five million years ago. So here we are.”
A chorus of mutterings broke Out around the room. Shilohin waited for a few moments before continuing. “It’s a bit cramped in here and difficult to change places. Does anybody else have any
questions for me before I sit down again and hand this back to Garuth?”
“Just one.” The speaker was Lawrence Foster, commander of Main. “A few of us have been wondering. . . You developed a technology that was way ahead of ours-interstellar travel for in-stance. So you must have explored the Solar System pretty thoroughly in the course of all that. Somebody here’s taking bets that at least some Ganymeans got to Earth at some time. Care to comment on that?”
Shilohin seemed to flinch slightly for some reason. . . although it was difficult to be sure. She did not answer at once, but turned to exchange a few briefly muttered words with Garuth. Then she looked up again.
“Yes. . . you are correct. . .” The words coming through the headphones and earpieces of the listeners sounded hesitant, as if faithfully reproducing an uncertainty from the original utterances. “The Ganymeans came. . . to Earth.”