“Second-they could reduce the CO2 as before, but have ready at hand a method for warming up the Sun to compensate for the loss of the greenhouse effect if the atmospheric engineering got out of control. They tried that on Iscaris but it went wrong, as the scientists on Minerva learned when they received a message from the Shapieron that was sent just before the ship itself got away.”
Hunt made no move to interrupt, so Danchekker continued. “Third-they could migrate to Earth. They tried doing so on a pilot scale, but that went wrong too.” Danchekker shrugged and held the posture, his arms extended to indicate that he had run out of possibilities. Hunt waited for a moment longer, but the professor evidently had nothing more to say.
“So what the devil did they do?” Hunt asked.
“I don’t know. The Ganymeans don’t know either, since whatever else may have been thought of was thought of after they had left Minerva. They are as curious as we are-more so I would imagine. It was their world.”
“But the animals from Earth,” Hunt insisted. “They were all imported later on. Couldn’t they have had something to do with the solution?”
“They could have, certainly, but what exactly, I’ve no idea. Neither have the Ganymeans. We’re satisfied, though, that it would not have been anything to do with using a terrestrial type of ecology to absorb the CO2. That simply wouldn’t have worked.”
“That idea’s gone right out the window, eh?”
“Right out,” Danchekker said decisively. “Why they brought the animals there and whether or not it had anything to do with their atmospheric problem is still all a mystery. . . .” The professor paused and peered intently over the top of his spectacles. “There’s another mystery too now-a new one-from what we’ve just been talking about.”
“Another one?” Hunt returned his stare curiously. “What?”
“All the other Minervan animals,” Danchekker replied slowly. “You see, if they all possessed a perfectly adequate mechanism for dealing with CO2, it couldn’t have been the changing atmosphere of Minerva that wiped them all out after all. If that didn’t, then what did?”
chapter fourteen
The landscape was a featureless, undulating sheet of ice that extended in every direction to merge into the gloom of a perpetual night. Overhead a diminutive Sun, barely more than just a bright star among millions, sent down its feeble rays to paint an eerie and foreboding twilight on the scene.
The huge shadowy shape of the ship soared upward to lose itself in the blackness above; arc lights set high on its side cast down a brilliant cone of whiteness, etching out an enormous circle on the ice next to where the ship stood. Around the inside of the periphery of the pool of light, several hundred spacesuited, eight-foot-tall figures stood four deep in unmoving ranks, their heads bowed and their hands clasped loosely before them. The area within the circle was divided into a series of concentric rings and at regular intervals around each ring rectangular pits had been cut into the ice, each one aligned with the center. By the side of each of the pits lay a metallic, box-shaped container roughly nine feet long and four feet wide.
A small group of figures walked slowly to the center and began moving around the innermost ring, stopping at each pit in turn and watching in silence while the container was lowered before moving on to the next. A second small group followed, filling each of the pits with water from a heated hose; the water froze solid in seconds. When they had finished the first ring they moved out to begin on the second, and continued until they were back at the edge of the circle.
They stood gazing for a long time at the simple memorial that they had erected in the center of the circle-a golden obelisk with an inscription on each face, surmounted by a light that would burn f or a hundred years. And as they gazed, their thoughts went back in time to friends and faces that they once had known, and who could never again be more than memories.
Then, when the time had come, they turned away and began filing slowly back toward their ship. When the arc lights were