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brothers on Earth, who remained backward. Eventually, compelled by
the Ice Age threat of extinction, the two superpowers of Cerios and
Lambia had emerged and begun the race toward the Sun in the way
described by Linguistics. Where Linguistics had gone wrong,
however, was that by the time of Charlie's narrative, these events
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were already historical; the goal was already achieved. The
Lambians had drawn ahead by a small margin and had already
commenced building settlements on Earth, several of them named
after their own towns on Minerva. The Cerians followed hard on
their heels and established a fire base on Luna, the objective of
course being to knock out the Lambian outposts on Earth before
moving in themselves.
This theory did not explain the flight time of Charlie's ship, but
its supporters attributed the difficulty to unknown differences
between Minervan and local (Lunar) dating systems. On the other
hand, it required only a few pilot Lambian bases to have been set
up on Earth by the time of the war; thus, whatever remained of
these after the Cerian assault, could credibly have vanished in
fifty thousand years.
And as the battle lines were drawn up and the first ranging shots
started whistling up and down the corridors of Navcomms, in
no-man's-land sat Hunt. Somehow, he was convinced, everybody was
right. He knew the competence of the people around him and had no
doubt in their ability to get their figures right. If, after weeks
or months of patient effort, one of them pronounced that x was 2,
then he was quite prepared to believe that, in all probability, it
would turn out to be. Therefore, the paradox had to be an illusion.
To try to argue which side was right and which was wrong was
missing the whole point. Somewhere in the maze, probably so
fundamental that nobody had even thought to question it, there had
to be a fallacy-some wrong assumption that seemed so obvious they
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didn't even realize they were making it. If they could just get
back to fundamentals and identify that single fallacy, the paradox
would vanish and everything that was being argued would slide
smoothly into a consistent, unified whole.
chapter eighteen
"You want me to go to Jupiter?" Hunt repeated slowly, making sure
he had heard correctly.
Caidwell stared back over his desk impassively. "The Jupiter Five
Mission will depart from Luna in six weeks time," he stated.
"Danchekker has gone about as far as he can go with Charlie. What
details are left to be found out can be taken care of by his staff
at Westwood. He's got better things he'd like to be doing on
Ganymede. There's a whole collection of alien skeletons there, plus
a shipload of zoology from way back that nobody's ever seen the
like of before. It's got him excited. He wants to get his hands on
them. Jupiter Five is going right there, so he's getting together a
biological team to go with it."
Hunt already knew all this. Nevertheless, he went through the
motions of digesting the information and checking through it for
any point he might have missed. After an appropriate pause he
replied:
"That's fine-I can see his angle. But what does it have to do with
me?"
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Caidwell frowned and drummed his fingers, as if he had been
expecting this question to come, while hoping it wouldn't.
"Consider this an extension of your assignment," he said at last.
"From all the arguing that's going on around this place, nobody
seems to be able to agree just how the Ganymeans fit into the
Charlie business. Maybe they're a big part of the answer, maybe
they're not. Nobody knows for sure."
"True." Hunt nodded.
Caidwell took this as all the confirmation he needed. "Okay," he
said with a gesture of finality. "You've done a good job so far on
the Charlie side of the picture; maybe it's time to balance things
up a bit and give you a crack at the other side, too. Well"- he
shrugged-"the information's not here-it's on Ganymede. In six weeks
time, J Five shoves off for Ganymede. It makes sense to me that you
go with it."
Hunt's brow remained creased in an expression that indicated he
still didn't quite see everything. He posed the obvious question.
"What about the job here?"
"What about it? Basically you correlate information that comes from
dilTerent places. The information will still keep coming from the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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