Inherit the Stars Page 4

  "Holes like this aren't unknown on the Moon," Caldwell remarked. "But they are rare enough to prompt our men into taking a closer look. The inside was a bit of a mess. There had been a rockfall—maybe several falls; not much room—just a heap of rubble and dust . . . at first sight, anyway." A new picture on the screen confirmed this statement. "But when they got to probing around a bit more, they came across something that was really unusual. Underneath they found a body—dead!"

  The picture changed again to show another view of the interior, taken from the same angle as the previous one. This time, however, the subject was the top half of a human figure lying amid the rubble and debris, apparently at the stage of being half uncovered. It was clad in a space suit which, under the layer of gray-white dust, appeared to be bright red. The helmet seemed intact, but it was impossible to make out any details of the face behind the visor because of the reflected camera light. Caldwell allowed them plenty of time to study the picture and reflect on these facts before speaking again.

  "That is the body. I'll answer some of the more obvious questions before you ask. First—no, we don't know who he is—or was—so we call him Charlie. Second—no, we don't know for sure what killed him. Third—no, we don't know where he came from." The executive director caught the puzzled look on Hunt's face and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

  "Accidents can happen, and it's not always easy to say what caused them—I'll buy that," Hunt said. "But to not know who he is . . . ? I mean, he must have carried some kind of ID card; I'd have thought he'd have to. And even if he didn't, he must be from one of the UN bases up there. Someone must have noticed he was missing."

  For the first time the flicker of a smile brushed across Caldwell's face.

  "Of course we checked with all the bases, Dr. Hunt. Results negative. But that was just the beginning. You see, when they got him back to the labs for a more thorough check, a number of peculiarities began to emerge which the experts couldn't explain—and, believe me, we've had enough brains in on this. Even after we brought him back here, the situation didn't get any better. In fact, the more we find out, the worse it gets."

  "'Back here'? You mean . . . ?"

  "Oh, yes. Charlie's been shipped back to Earth. He's over at the Westwood Biological Institute right now—a few miles from here. We'll go and have a look at him later on today."

  Silence reigned for what seemed like a long time as Hunt and Gray digested the rapid succession of new facts. At last Gray offered:

  "Maybe somebody bumped him off for some reason?"

  "No, Mr. Gray, you can forget anything like that." Caldwell waited a few more seconds. "Let me say that from what little we do know so far, we can state one or two things with certainty. First, Charlie did not come from any of the bases established to date on Luna. Furthermore"—Caldwell's voice slowed to an ominous rumble—"he did not originate from any nation of the world as we know it today. In fact, it is by no means certain that he originated from this planet at all!"

  His eyes traveled from Hunt to Gray, then back again, taking in the incredulous stares that greeted his words. Absolute silence enveloped the room. A suspense almost audible tore at their nerves.

  Caldwell's finger stabbed at the keyboard.

  The face leaped out at them from the screen in grotesque close-up, skull-like, the skin shriveled and darkened like ancient parchment, and stretched back over the bones to uncover two rows of grinning teeth. Nothing remained of the eyes but a pair of empty pits, staring sightlessly out through dry, leathery lids.

  Caldwell's voice, now a chilling whisper, hissed through the fragile air.

  "You see, gentlemen—Charlie died over fifty thousand years ago!"

  Chapter Six

  Dr. Victor Hunt stared absently down at the bird's-eye view of the outskirts of Houston sliding by below the UNSA jet. The mind-numbing impact of Caldwell's revelations had by this time abated sufficiently for him to begin putting together in his mind something of a picture of what it all meant.

  Of Charlie's age there could be no doubt. All living organisms take into their bodies known proportions of the radioactive isotopes of carbon and certain other elements. During life, an organism maintains a constant ratio of these isotopes to "normal" ones, but when it dies and intake ceases, the active isotopes are left to decay in a predictable pattern. This mechanism provides, in effect, a highly reliable clock, which begins to run at the moment of death. Analysis of the decay residues enables a reliable figure to be calculated for how long the clock has been running. Many such tests had been performed on Charlie, and all the results agreed within close limits.

  Somebody had pointed out that the validity of this method rested on the assumptions that the composition of whatever Charlie ate, and the constituents of whatever atmosphere he breathed, were the same as for modern man on modern Earth. Since Charlie might not be from Earth, this assumption could not be made. It hadn't taken long, however, for this point to be settled conclusively. Although the functions of most of the devices contained in Charlie's backpack were still to be established, one assembly had been identified as an ingeniously constructed miniature nuclear power plant. The U235 fuel pellets were easily located and analysis of their decay products yielded a second, independent answer, although a less accurate one. The power unit in Charlie's backpack had been made some fifty thousand years previously. The further implication of this was that since the first set of test results was thus substantiated, it seemed to follow that in terms of air and food supply, there could have been little abnormal about Charlie's native environment.

  Now, Charlie's kind, Hunt told himself, must have evolved to their human form somewhere. That this "somewhere" was either Earth or not Earth was fairly obvious, the rules of basic logic admitting no other possibility. He traced back over what he could recall of the conventional account of the evolution of terrestrial life forms and wondered if, despite the generations of painstaking effort and research that had been devoted to the subject, there might after all be more to the story than had up until then been so confidently supposed. Several thousands of millions of years was a long time by anybody's standards; was it so totally inconceivable that somewhere in all those gulfs of uncertainty, there could be enough room to lose an advanced line of human descent which had flourished and died out long before modern man began his own ascent?

  On the other hand, the fact that Charlie was found on the Moon presupposed a civilization sufficiently advanced technologically to send him there. Surely, on the way toward developing space flight, they would have evolved a worldwide technological society, and in doing so would have made machines, erected structures, built cities, used metals, and left all the other hallmarks of progress. If such a civilization had once existed on Earth, surely centuries of exploration and excavation couldn't have avoided stumbling on at least some traces of it. But not one instance of any such discovery had ever been recorded. Although the conclusion rested squarely on negative evidence, Hunt could not, even with his tendency toward open-mindedness, accept that an explanation along these lines was even remotely probable.

  The only alternative, then, was that Charlie came from somewhere else. Clearly this could not be the Moon itself: It was too small to have retained an atmosphere anywhere near long enough for life to have started at all, let alone reach an advanced level—and of course, his spacesuit showed he was just as much an alien there as was man.

  That only left some other planet. The problem here lay in Charlie's undoubted human form, which Caldwell had stressed although he hadn't elected to go into detail. Hunt knew that the process of natural evolution was accepted as occurring through selection, over a long period, from a purely random series of genetic mutations. All the established rules and principles dictated that the appearance of two identical end products from two completely isolated families of evolution, unfolding independently in different corners of the universe, just couldn't happen. Hence, if Charlie came from somewhere else, a whole branch of accepted scientific theory
would come crashing down in ruins. So—Charlie couldn't possibly have come from Earth. Neither could he possibly have come from anywhere else. Therefore, Charlie couldn't exist. But he did.

  Hunt whistled silently to himself as the full implications of the thing began to dawn on him. There was enough here to keep the whole scientific world arguing for decades.

  * * *

  Inside the Westwood Biological Institute, Caldwell, Lyn Garland, Hunt, and Gray were met by a Professor Christian Danchekker. The Englishmen recognized him, since Caldwell had introduced them earlier by vi-phone. On their way to the laboratory section of the institute, Danchekker briefed them further.

  In view of its age, the body was in an excellent state of preservation. This was due to the environment in which it had been found—a germ-free hard vacuum and an abnormally low temperature sustained, even at Lunar noon, by the insulating mass of the surrounding rock. These conditions had prevented any onset of bacterial decay of the soft tissues. No rupture had been found in the space suit. So the currently favored theory regarding cause of death was that a failure in the life-support system had resulted in a sudden fall in temperature. The body had undergone deep freezing in a short space of time with a consequent abrupt cessation of metabolic processes; ice crystals, formed from body fluids, had caused widespread laceration of cell membranes. In the course of time most of the lighter substances had sublimed, mainly from the outer layers, to leave behind a blackened, shriveled, natural kind of mummy. The most seriously affected parts were the eyes, which, composed for the most part of fluids, had collapsed completely, leaving just a few flaky remnants in their sockets.

  A major problem was the extreme fragility of the remains, which made any attempt at detailed examination next to impossible. Already the body had undergone some irreparable damage in the course of being transported to Earth, and in the removal of the space suit; only the body's being frozen solid during these operations had prevented the situation from being even worse. That was when somebody had thought of Felix Borden at IDCC and an instrument being developed in England that could display the insides of things. The result had been Caldwell's visit to Portland.

  Inside the first laboratory it was dark. Researchers were using binocular microscopes to study sets of photographic transparencies arranged on several glass-topped tables, illuminated from below. Danchekker selected some plates from a pile and, motioning the others to follow, made his way over to the far wall. He positioned the first three of the plates on an eye-level viewing screen, snapped on the screen light, and stepped back to join the expectant semicircle. The plates were X-ray images showing the front and side views of a skull. Five faces, thrown into sharp relief against the darkness of the room behind, regarded the screen in solemn silence. At last Danchekker moved a pace forward, at the same time half turning toward them.

  "I need not, I feel, tell you who this is." His manner was somewhat stiff and formal. "A skull, fully human in every detail—as far as it is possible to ascertain by X rays, anyway." Danchekker traced along the line of the jaw with a ruler he had picked up from one of the tables. "Note the formation of the teeth—on either side we see two incisors, one canine, two pre-molars, and three molars. This pattern was established quite early in the evolutionary line that leads to our present day anthropoids, including of course, man. It distinguishes our common line of descent from other offshoots, such as the New World monkeys with a count of two, one, three, three."

  "Hardly necessary here," Hunt commented. "There's nothing apelike or monkeylike about that picture."

  "Quite so, Dr. Hunt," Danchekker returned with a nod. "The reduced canines, not interlocking with the upper set, and the particular pattern of the cusps—these are distinctly human characteristics. Note also the flatness of the lower face, the absence of any bony brow ridges . . . high forehead and sharply angled jaw . . . well-rounded braincase. These are all features of true man as we know him today, features that derive directly from his earlier ancestors. The significance of these details in this instance is that they demonstrate an example of true man, not something that merely bears a superficial resemblance to him."

  The professor took down the plates and momentarily flooded the room with a blaze of light. A muttered profanity from one of the scientists at the tables made him switch off the light hastily. He picked up three more plates, set them up on the screen, and switched on the light to reveal the side view of a torso, an arm, and a foot.

  "Again, the trunk shows no departure from the familiar human pattern. Same rib structure . . . broad chest with well-developed clavicles . . . normal pelvic arrangement. The foot is perhaps the most specialized item in the human skeleton and is responsible for man's uniquely powerful stride and somewhat peculiar gait. If you are familiar with human anatomy, you will find that this foot resembles ours in every respect."

  "I'll take your word for it," Hunt conceded, shaking his head. "Nothing remarkable, then."

  "The most significant thing, Dr. Hunt, is that nothing is remarkable."

  Danchekker switched off the screen and returned the plates to the pile. Caldwell turned to Hunt as they began walking back toward the door.

  "This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," he grunted. "An understandable reason for wanting some . . . er . . . irregular action, you would agree?"

  Hunt agreed.

  A passage, followed by a short flight of stairs and another passage, brought them to a set of double doors bearing the large red sign STERILE AREA. In the anteroom behind, they put on surgical masks, caps, gowns, gloves, and overshoes before passing out through another door at the opposite end.

  In the first section they came to, samples of skin and other tissues were being examined. By reintroducing the substance believed to have escaped over the centuries, specimens had been restored to what were hoped to be close approximations to their original conditions. In general, the findings merely confirmed that Charlie was as human chemically as he was structurally. Some unfamiliar enzymes had, however, been discovered. Dynamite computer simulation suggested that these were designed to assist in the breakdown of proteins unlike anything found in the diet of modern man. Danchekker was inclined to dismiss this peculiarity with the rather vague assertion that "Times change," a remark which Hunt appeared to find disturbing.

  The next laboratory was devoted to an investigation of the space suit and the various other gadgets and implements found on and around the body. The helmet was the first exhibit to be presented for inspection. Its back and crown were made of metal, coated dull black and extending forward to the forehead to leave a transparent visor extending from ear to ear. Danchekker held it up for them to see and pushed his hand up through the opening at the neck. They could see clearly the fingers of his rubber glove through the facepiece.

  "Observe," he said, picking up a powerful xenon flash lamp from the bench. He directed the beam through the facepiece, and a circle of the material immediately turned dark. They could see through the area around the circle that the level of illumination inside the helmet had not changed appreciably. He moved the lamp around and the dark circle followed it across the visor.

  "Built-in antiglare," Gray observed.

  "The visor is fabricated from a self-polarizing crystal," Danchekker informed them. "It responds directly to incident light in a fashion that is linear up to high intensities. The visor is also effective with gamma radiation."

  Hunt took the helmet to examine it more closely. The blend of curves that made up the outside contained little of interest, but on turning it over he found that a section of the inner surface of the crown had been removed to reveal a cavity, empty except for some tiny wires and a set of fixing brackets.

  "That recess contained a complete miniature communications station," Danchekker supplied, noting his interest. "Those grilles at the sides concealed the speakers, and a microphone is built into the top, just above the forehead." He reached inside and drew down a small retractable binocular periscope from inside the top section of th
e helmet, which clicked into position immediately in front of where the eyes of the wearer would be. "Built-in video, too," he explained. "Controlled from a panel on the chest. The small hole in the front of the crown contained a camera assembly."

  Hunt continued to turn the trophy over in his hands, studying it from all angles in absorbed silence. Two weeks ago he had been sitting at his desk in Metadyne doing a routine job. Never in his wildest fantasies had he imagined that he would one day come to be holding in his hands something that might well turn out to be one of the most exciting discoveries of the century, if not in the whole of history. Even his agile mind was having difficulty taking it all in.

  "Can we see some of the electronics that were in here?" he asked after a while.

  "Not today," Caldwell replied. "The electronics are being studied at another location—that goes for most of what was in the backpack, too. Let's just say for now that when it came to molecular circuits, these guys knew their business."