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of Minerva had been cleared up. Everything now pointed to the
Lunarians and their civilization as having developed on Minerva and
not on Earth. It explained the failure of Schorn's early attempt to
fix the length of the day in Hunt's calendar by calculating
Charlie's natural periods of sleep and wakefulness. The ancestors
of the Lunarians had arrived from Earth carrying a deeply rooted
metabolic rhythm evolved around a twenty-four-hour cycle. During
the twenty-five million years that followed, some of the more
flexible biological processes in their descendants adapted
successfully to the thirty-five-hour day of Minerva, while others
changed only partially. By Charlie's time, all the Lunarians'
physiological clocks had gotten hopelessly out of synchronization;
no wonder Schorn's results made no sense. But the puzzling numbers
in Charlie's notebook still remained to be accounted for.
In Houston, Caldwell read Hunt and Danchekker's joint report with
deep satisfaction. He had realized long before that to achieve
results, the abilities of the two scientists would have to be
combined and focused on the problem at hand instead of being
dissipated fruitlessly in the friction of personal incompatibility.
How could he manipulate into being a situation in which the things
they had in common outweighed their differences? Well, what did
they have in common? Starting with the simplest and most obvious
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thing-they were both human beings from planet Earth. So where would
this fundamental truth come to totally overshadow anything else?
Where but on the barren wastes of the Moon or a hundred
million miles out in the emptiness of space? Everything seemed to
be working out better than he had dared hope.
"It's like I always said," Lyn Garland stated coyly when Hunt's
assistant showed her a copy of the report. "Gregg's a genius with
people."
The arrival in Ganymede orbit of the seven ships from Earth was a
big moment for the Jupiter Four veterans, especially those whose
tour of duty was approaching an end and who could now look forward
to going home soon. In the weeks to come, as the complex program of
maneuvering supplies and equipment between the ships and the
surface installations unfolded, the scene above Ganymede would
become as chaotic as that above Luna had been during departure
preparations. The two command ships would remain standing off ten
miles apart for the next two months. Then Jupiter Four, accompanied
by two of the recently arrived freighters, would move out to take
up station over Callisto and begin expanding the pilot base already
set up there. Jupiter Five would remain at Ganymede until joined by
Saturn Two, which was at that time undergoing final countdown for
Lunar lift-out and due to arrive in five months. After rendezvous
above Ganymede, one of the two ships (exactly which was yet to be
decided) would set course for the ringed planet, on the farthest
large-scale manned probe yet attempted.
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The long-haul sailing days of Jupiter Four were over. Too slow by
the standards of the latest designs, it would probably be stripped
down to become a permanent orbiting base over Callisto. After a few
years it would suffer the ignoble end of being dismantled and
cannibalized for surface constructions.
With all the hustle and traffic congestion that erupted in the
skies over Ganymede, it was three days before the time came for the
group of UNSA scientists to be ferried to the surface. After months
of getting used to the pattern of life and the company aboard the
ship, Hunt felt a twinge of nostalgia as he packed his belongings
in his cabin and stood in line waiting to board the Vega moored
alongside in the cavernous midships docking bay. It was probably
the last he would see of the inside of this immense city of metal
alloys; when he returned to Earth, it would be aboard one of the
small, fast cruisers ferried out with the mission.
An hour later Jupiter Five, festooned in a web of astronautic
engineering, was shrinking rapidly on the cabin display in the
Vega. Then the picture changed suddenly and the sinister frosty
countenance of Ganymede came swelling up toward them.
Hunt sat on the edge of his bunk inside a Spartan room in
number-three barrack block of Ganymede Main Base and methodically
transferred the contents of his kit bag into the aluminum locker [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]