“But there’s nothing outside Minerva’s orbit to colonize,” Carpenter chipped in. “Not until you get to the stars, that is.”
“Exactly so,” Danchekker said soberly, directing his words at the woman. “You said ‘suggested a colony ship.’ Don’t forget that that is precisely what the evidence we have at present amounts to
-a suggestion and nothing more. It doesn’t prove anything. Lots of people around the base are saying we now know that the Ganymeans abandoned the Solar System to find a new home elsewhere because the carbon-dioxide concentration in the Minervan atmosphere was increasing for some reason which we have yet to determine. It is true that if what we have just said was fact, then the Ganymeans would have shared the low tolerance possessed by all land dwellers there, and any increase in the atmospheric concentration could have caused them serious problems. But as we have just seen, we know nothing of the kind; we merely observe one or two suggestions that might add up to such an explanation.” The professor paused, seeing that Carpenter was about to say something.
“There was more to it than that though, wasn’t there?” Carpen
ter queried. “We’re pretty certain that all species of Minervan land dwellers died out pretty rapidly somewhere around twenty-five million years ago . . . all except the Ganymeans themselves maybe. That sounds like just the effect you’d expect if the concentration did rise and all the species there couldn’t handle it. It seems to support the hypothesis pretty well.”
“I think Paul’s got a point,” Sandy Holmes chimed in. “Everything adds up. Also, it fits in with the ideas we’ve been having about why the Ganymeans were shipping all the animals into Minerva.” She turned toward Carpenter, as if inviting him to complete the story from there.
As usual, Carpenter didn’t need much encouragement. “What the Ganymeans were really trying to do was redress the CO2 imbalance by covering the planet with carbon-dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-producing terrestrial green plants. The animals were brought along to provide a balanced ecology that the plants could survive in. Like Sandy says, it all fits.”
“You’re trying to fit the evidence to suit the answers that you already want to prove,” Danchekker cautioned. “Let’s separate once more the evidence that is fact from the evidence which is supposition or mere suggestion.” The discussion continued with Danchekker leading an examination of the principles of scientific deduction and the techniques of logical analysis. Throughout, the figure who had been following the proceedings silently from his seat at the end of the table farthest from the screen continued to draw leisurely on his cigarette, taking in every detail.
Dr. Victor Hunt had also accompanied the team of scientists who had come with Jupiter Five more than three months before to study the Ganymean ship. Although nothing truly spectacular had emerged during this time, huge volumes of data on the structure, design and contents of the alien ship had been amassed. Every day, newly removed devices and machinery were examined in the laboratories of the surface bases and in the orbiting 14 and 15 mission command ships. Findings from these tests were as yet fragmentary, but clues were beginning to emerge from which a meaningful picture of the Ganymean civilization and the mysterious events of twenty-five miffion years before might eventually emerge.
That was Hunt’s job. Originally a theoretical physicist specializing in mathematical nucleonics, he had been brought into the
UN Space Arm from England to head a small group of UNSA scientists; the group’s task was to correlate the findings of the specialists working on the project both on and around Ganymede and back on Earth. The specialists painted the pieces of the puzzle; Hunt’s group fitted them together. This arrangement was devised by Hunt’s immediate boss, Gregg Caldwell, executive director of the Navigation and Communications Division of UNSA, headquartered in Houston. The scheme had already worked well in enabling them to unravel successfully the existence and fate of Minerva, and first signs were that it promised to work well again.
He listened while the debate between the biologists went full circle to end up focusing on the unfamiliar enzyme that had started the whole thing off.