“You mean that all the land-dwelling species that developed
later inherited the basic pattern of a double system?” Danchekker said, fascinated. “They were all poisonous?”
“Precisely,” she replied. “By that time the trait had become firmly established as a fundamental part of their basic design- much as many vertebrate characteristics on your own world. It was faithfully passed on to all later descendants, essentially unchanged. . . .”
Shilohin paused as a few mutterings and murmurs of surprise arose from the listeners; the implication of what she was saying was beginning to dawn on them. Somebody at the back finally put it into words.
“That explains what you said at the start-why there were no carnivores on Minerva later on. They could never become established for all the reasons you’ve been talking about, even if they appeared spontaneously from time to time.”
“Quite so,” she confirmed. “Occasionally an odd mutation in that direction would appear but, as you point out, it could never gain a foothold again. The animals that evolved on Minerva were exclusively herbivorous. They did not follow the same lines of development as terrestrial animals because the selective factors operating in their natural environment were different. They evolved no fight-or-ifight instincts since there was nothing to defend against and nothing to flee from. They did not develop behavior patterns based on fear, anger or aggression since such emotions had no survival value to them, and hence were not selected and reinforced. There were no fast runners since there were no predators to run from, and there was no need for natural camouflage. There were no birds, since there was nothing to stimulate their appearance.”
“Those murals in the ship!” Hunt turned to Danchekker as the truth suddenly hit him. “They weren’t children’s cartoons at all, Chris. They were rôal!”
“Good Lord, Vic.” The professor gaped and blinked through his spectacles in surprise, wondering why the same thought hadn’t struck him. “You’re right. Of course. . . you’re absolutely right. How extraordinary. We must study them more closely . . .” Danchekker seemed about to say something else but stopped abruptly, as if another thought had just occurred to him. He frowned and rubbed his forehead but waited until the hubbub of voices had died away before he spoke.
“Excuse me,” he called when normality had returned. “There is something else. . . If there were no predators in existence at all, what kept the numbers of the herbivores in check? I can’t see any mechanism for preserving a natural balance.”
“I was just coming to that,” Shilohin answered. “The answer is:
accidents. Even slight cuts or abrasions would allow poison to seep from the secondary system into the primary. Most accidents were fatal to Minervan animals. Natural selection favored natural protection. The species that survived and flourished were those with the best protection-leathery outer skins, thick coverings of fur, scaly armor plating, and so on.” She held up one of her hands to display extensive nails and knuckle pads, and then shifted the collar of her shirt slightly to uncover part of the delicate, overlapping, scaly plates that formed a strip along the top of her shoulder. “Many remnants of ancestral protection are still detectable in the Ganymean form today.”
Hunt realized now the reasons for the Ganymeans’ temperament being the way it was. From the origins that Shilohin had just described, intelligence had emerged not in response to any need to manufacture weapons or to outwit foe or prey, but as a means of anticipating and avoiding physical damage. Learning and the communication of knowledge would have assumed a phenomenal survival value among the primitive Ganymeans. Caution in all things, prudence, and the ability to analyze all possible outcomes of an action would have been reinforced by selection; haste and rashness would be fatal.
Evolving from such ancestors, what else could they be but instinctively cooperative and nonaggressive? They would know nothing of violent competition in any form or of the use of force against a rival; hence they exhibited none of the types of complex behavior patterns which, in a later and more civilized society, would “normally” afford symbolic expression of such instincts. Hunt wondered what was “normal.” Shilohin, as if reading his thoughts, supplied a definition from the Ganymean point of view.