[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
meantime, have a guess what we're into now?"
"Who?"
"Us...the section...Linguistics."
"What?"
Maddson took a deep breath, stared Hunt straight in the eye and proceeded to
deliver a string of utterly meaningless syllables in a deep, guttural voice.
Then he sat back and beamed proudly, his expression inviting
Hunt to accept the implied challenge.
"What the hell was that all about?" Hunt asked, as if doubting his own ears.
"Even you don't know?"
"Why should I?"
Maddson was evidently enjoying himself. "That, my friend, was Ganymean,"
he said.
"Ganymean?"
"Ganymean!"
Hunt stared at him in astonishment. "How in God's name did you learn that?"
Maddson waited a moment longer to make the most of Hunt's surprise, then
gestured toward the display unit standing on one side of his desk.
"We've got ourselves a channel through to ZORAC," he said. "There's been a
pretty fantastic demand for access into it ever since it was hooked into the
Earthnet, just as you'd imagine. But being UNSA we qualify for high priority.
That sure is one hell of a machine."
Hunt was duly impressed. "So, ZORAC's been teaching you Ganymean, eh,"
he said. "It fits. I should have guessed you wouldn't let a chance like that
slip by."
"It's an interesting language," Maddson commented. "It's obviously matured
over a long period of time and been rationalized extensively -- hardly any
irregular forms or ambiguities at all. Actually, it's pretty straightforward
to learn structure-wise, but the pitch and vocal inflections don't come
naturally to a human. That's the most difficult part." He made a throwing-away
motion in the air. "It's only of academic interest I guess...but as you say, a
chance we couldn't resist."
"How about the Lunarian texts from Tycho," Hunt asked. "Been making progress
on the rest of those too?"
Page 98
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"You bet." Maddson waved toward the piles of papers covering the desk and the
table standing against the wall on one side of his office. "We've been pretty
busy here all around."
Maddson proceeded to describe some of the details his team of linguists had
been able to fill in during Hunt's absence, concerning the Lunarian culture
and the way in which it had been organized on the Minerva of fifty thousand
years before. There was a thumbnail sketch of the war-torn history of the
Lunarian civilization; some detailed maps of parts of the planet's surface
with accounts of geographic, climatic, agricultural and industrial
characteristics; a treatise on the citizen's obligations and duties toward the
State in the totalitarian fortress-factory that was Minerva; a description of
native Minervan life forms as reconstructed from fossil remains and some
speculations on the possible causes of their abrupt extinction twenty-five
million years before. There were numerous references to the earlier race that
had inhabited the planet before the Lunarians themselves had emerged;
obviously, a civilization such as that of the Ganymeans could never have
passed away without leaving ample traces of itself behind for posterity. The
Lunarians had marveled at the ruins of Ganymean cities, examined their awesome
machines without growing much the wiser, and reconstructed a fairly
comprehensive picture of how their world had once looked. In most of their
writings, the Lunarians had referred to the Ganymeans simply as the Giants.
Then, more than an hour after they had begun talking, Maddson drew out a set
of charts from below some other papers and spread them out for Hunt's
inspection. They were views of the heavens at night, showing the stars in
groupings that were not immediately recognizable. Captions, which Hunt
identified as being written in Lunarian, were scattered across the charts and
below each caption, in smaller print, a translation appeared in English.
"These might interest you, Vic," Maddson said, still bubbling with enthusiasm.
"Star charts drawn by Lunarian astronomers fifty thousand years ago. When
you've looked at them for a little while, you'll pick out all the familiar
constellations. They're a bit distorted from the ones we see today because the
relative displacements have altered a little with time, of course.
In fact, we passed these on to some astronomers at Hale who were able to
calculate from the distortions exactly how long ago these charts were drawn.
It doesn't come out at too far off fifty thousand years at all."
Hunt said nothing but leaned forward to peer closely at the charts. This was
fascinating -- a record of the skies as they had appeared when the
Lunarian civilization had been at its peak, immediately prior to its
catastrophic fall. As Maddson had said, all the familiar constellations were
there, but changed subtly from those seen in modern times. The other thing
that made them difficult to identify were the sets of lines drawn all over the
charts to interconnect groups of the more prominent stars into patterns and
shapes that bore no resemblance to the familiar constellations; the lines
tended to draw the eye along unfamiliar paths and obscure the better-known
patterns. Orion, for example, was there, but not connected up as a single,
intact configuration; part of it was grouped independently into a subset,
while the other part was separated from the rest of Orion and linked to the
normally distinct parallelogram of Lepus to form something else instead. The
result was that it took time to identify the two parts of Orion and mentally
fuse them back together again to reveal that Orion was there at all.
"I see," Hunt observed thoughtfully at last. "They saw pictures in the stars
just like we do, only they saw different ones. Takes a while to get used to,
doesn't it?"
"Yeah -- interesting, huh?" Maddson agreed. "They not only saw different
shapes; they grouped the stars differently too. That doesn't really come as a
surprise though; I've always said there was more dog in the mind of the
beholder than there ever was in Canis Major. Still, it's interesting to see
Page 99
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
that their minds seemed to work the same way...even if they were every bit as
susceptible to autosuggestion."
"What's this?" Hunt inquired after a few more seconds. He indicated a pattern
that lay over toward the left-hand side of the chart he had been studying. The
Lunarians had formed a large constellation by connecting together Hercules,
Serpens, Corona Borealis and part of Bootes to produce a starfish-shaped
pattern. The English translation of its name read simply The
Giant.
"I wondered if you'd spot that one," Maddson said, nodding in approval.
"Well, as we know, the Lunarians knew all about the Ganymeans having been
there before them. I guess they musta kinda named one of their
constellations...sort of in honor of them, or something like that." He swept a
hand over the chart to take in the whole extent of it. "As you can see, they
named their constellations after all kinds of things, but mainly after animals
just like we did. I suppose it must be a natural tendency in some kind of
way." He pointed back at the one Hunt had picked out. "If you're the
imaginative kind, you can see something in that which vaguely suggests the
Ganymean form...it does to me anyhow. I mean...in Hercules you can see the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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meantime, have a guess what we're into now?"
"Who?"
"Us...the section...Linguistics."
"What?"
Maddson took a deep breath, stared Hunt straight in the eye and proceeded to
deliver a string of utterly meaningless syllables in a deep, guttural voice.
Then he sat back and beamed proudly, his expression inviting
Hunt to accept the implied challenge.
"What the hell was that all about?" Hunt asked, as if doubting his own ears.
"Even you don't know?"
"Why should I?"
Maddson was evidently enjoying himself. "That, my friend, was Ganymean,"
he said.
"Ganymean?"
"Ganymean!"
Hunt stared at him in astonishment. "How in God's name did you learn that?"
Maddson waited a moment longer to make the most of Hunt's surprise, then
gestured toward the display unit standing on one side of his desk.
"We've got ourselves a channel through to ZORAC," he said. "There's been a
pretty fantastic demand for access into it ever since it was hooked into the
Earthnet, just as you'd imagine. But being UNSA we qualify for high priority.
That sure is one hell of a machine."
Hunt was duly impressed. "So, ZORAC's been teaching you Ganymean, eh,"
he said. "It fits. I should have guessed you wouldn't let a chance like that
slip by."
"It's an interesting language," Maddson commented. "It's obviously matured
over a long period of time and been rationalized extensively -- hardly any
irregular forms or ambiguities at all. Actually, it's pretty straightforward
to learn structure-wise, but the pitch and vocal inflections don't come
naturally to a human. That's the most difficult part." He made a throwing-away
motion in the air. "It's only of academic interest I guess...but as you say, a
chance we couldn't resist."
"How about the Lunarian texts from Tycho," Hunt asked. "Been making progress
on the rest of those too?"
Page 98
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"You bet." Maddson waved toward the piles of papers covering the desk and the
table standing against the wall on one side of his office. "We've been pretty
busy here all around."
Maddson proceeded to describe some of the details his team of linguists had
been able to fill in during Hunt's absence, concerning the Lunarian culture
and the way in which it had been organized on the Minerva of fifty thousand
years before. There was a thumbnail sketch of the war-torn history of the
Lunarian civilization; some detailed maps of parts of the planet's surface
with accounts of geographic, climatic, agricultural and industrial
characteristics; a treatise on the citizen's obligations and duties toward the
State in the totalitarian fortress-factory that was Minerva; a description of
native Minervan life forms as reconstructed from fossil remains and some
speculations on the possible causes of their abrupt extinction twenty-five
million years before. There were numerous references to the earlier race that
had inhabited the planet before the Lunarians themselves had emerged;
obviously, a civilization such as that of the Ganymeans could never have
passed away without leaving ample traces of itself behind for posterity. The
Lunarians had marveled at the ruins of Ganymean cities, examined their awesome
machines without growing much the wiser, and reconstructed a fairly
comprehensive picture of how their world had once looked. In most of their
writings, the Lunarians had referred to the Ganymeans simply as the Giants.
Then, more than an hour after they had begun talking, Maddson drew out a set
of charts from below some other papers and spread them out for Hunt's
inspection. They were views of the heavens at night, showing the stars in
groupings that were not immediately recognizable. Captions, which Hunt
identified as being written in Lunarian, were scattered across the charts and
below each caption, in smaller print, a translation appeared in English.
"These might interest you, Vic," Maddson said, still bubbling with enthusiasm.
"Star charts drawn by Lunarian astronomers fifty thousand years ago. When
you've looked at them for a little while, you'll pick out all the familiar
constellations. They're a bit distorted from the ones we see today because the
relative displacements have altered a little with time, of course.
In fact, we passed these on to some astronomers at Hale who were able to
calculate from the distortions exactly how long ago these charts were drawn.
It doesn't come out at too far off fifty thousand years at all."
Hunt said nothing but leaned forward to peer closely at the charts. This was
fascinating -- a record of the skies as they had appeared when the
Lunarian civilization had been at its peak, immediately prior to its
catastrophic fall. As Maddson had said, all the familiar constellations were
there, but changed subtly from those seen in modern times. The other thing
that made them difficult to identify were the sets of lines drawn all over the
charts to interconnect groups of the more prominent stars into patterns and
shapes that bore no resemblance to the familiar constellations; the lines
tended to draw the eye along unfamiliar paths and obscure the better-known
patterns. Orion, for example, was there, but not connected up as a single,
intact configuration; part of it was grouped independently into a subset,
while the other part was separated from the rest of Orion and linked to the
normally distinct parallelogram of Lepus to form something else instead. The
result was that it took time to identify the two parts of Orion and mentally
fuse them back together again to reveal that Orion was there at all.
"I see," Hunt observed thoughtfully at last. "They saw pictures in the stars
just like we do, only they saw different ones. Takes a while to get used to,
doesn't it?"
"Yeah -- interesting, huh?" Maddson agreed. "They not only saw different
shapes; they grouped the stars differently too. That doesn't really come as a
surprise though; I've always said there was more dog in the mind of the
beholder than there ever was in Canis Major. Still, it's interesting to see
Page 99
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
that their minds seemed to work the same way...even if they were every bit as
susceptible to autosuggestion."
"What's this?" Hunt inquired after a few more seconds. He indicated a pattern
that lay over toward the left-hand side of the chart he had been studying. The
Lunarians had formed a large constellation by connecting together Hercules,
Serpens, Corona Borealis and part of Bootes to produce a starfish-shaped
pattern. The English translation of its name read simply The
Giant.
"I wondered if you'd spot that one," Maddson said, nodding in approval.
"Well, as we know, the Lunarians knew all about the Ganymeans having been
there before them. I guess they musta kinda named one of their
constellations...sort of in honor of them, or something like that." He swept a
hand over the chart to take in the whole extent of it. "As you can see, they
named their constellations after all kinds of things, but mainly after animals
just like we did. I suppose it must be a natural tendency in some kind of
way." He pointed back at the one Hunt had picked out. "If you're the
imaginative kind, you can see something in that which vaguely suggests the
Ganymean form...it does to me anyhow. I mean...in Hercules you can see the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]