"I’ll see you there," Heller agreed and disappeared with the image of the screen.

Ten minutes later Danchekker was heartily demolishing a plate of bacon, eggs, sausage, and hash browns at McClusky while Heller talked over a sandwich from the opposite side of the table. Most of the UNSA people were busy refitting one of the other buildings to afford more permanent storage facilities, and apart from some clatterings and bangings from the adjoining kitchen there were no signs of life in their immediate vicinity.

"We’ve been analyzing the rates of development of the Lunarian civilization and Earth’s," she said. "The difference is staggering. They were into steam power and machines in a matter of a few thousand years after starting to use stone tools. We took something like ten times as long. Why do you think that was?"

Danchekker frowned while he finished chewing. "I thought that the factors responsible for the accelerated advancement of the Lunarians were already quite obvious," he replied. "For one thing, they were closer chronologically to the original Ganymean genetic experiments. Therefore they possessed a greater genetic instability, and with it a tendency to a more extreme form of mutation. The sudden emergence of the Lambians is doubtless a case in point."

"I’m not convinced that it explains it," Heller replied slowly. "You’ve said yourself a few times that tens of thousands of years isn’t enough to make a lot of difference. I got VISAR to do some calculations based on human genetic data that ZORAC acquired when the Shapieron was on Earth. The results seem to bear it out. And the pattern was already established long before the Lambians appeared. That was only two hundred years before the war."

Danchekker sniffed as he buttered a piece of toast. Politicians had no business playing at being scientists. "The Lunarians would have found a profusion of remnants of the earlier Ganymean civilization on Minerva," he suggested. "The knowledge gained from sources of that nature gave them a flying start over Earth."

"But the Cerians who came to Earth were from a civilization that was already advanced," Heller pointed out. "So that balances. What else made the difference?"

Danchekker wrinkled his nose up and scowled. Female politicians playing at being scientists were intolerable. "The Lunarian culture developed during the deteriorating environmental conditions of the approaching Ice Age," he said. "That provided additional pressures."

"The Ice Age was here when the Cerians arrived, and it lasted for a long time afterward," Heller reminded him. "So that balances too. So again-what caused the difference?"

Danchekker stabbed his fork into his meal in a show of exasperation. "If you wish to doubt my word as a biologist and an anthropologist, you have of course every right to do so, madam," he said airily. "For my part, I see no justification whatsoever for elaborating any hypothesis beyond the simple minimum required to account for the facts. And what we already know is perfectly adequate for that purpose."

Heller seemed to have been expecting something like that, and didn’t react. "Maybe you’re thinking too much like a biologist," she suggested. "Try looking at it from a sociological angle, and asking the question the other way around."

Danchekker’s expression said that there couldn’t be any other way around. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Instead of telling me what speeded the Lunarians up, try asking what slowed Earth down."

Danchekker stared darkly down at his plate for a few seconds, then raised his head and showed his teeth. "The upheavals caused by the Moon’s capture," he pronounced.

Hdller looked at him in open disbelief. "And regressed them to a point that needed tens of thousands of years to recover from? No way! A few centuries at the most, maybe, but not that much. I couldn’t buy it. Neither could Showm. Neither could Calazar."

"I see." Danchekker looked a bit taken aback. He attacked his bacon in silence for a while and then said, "And what alternative explanation, if any, are you offering, might I ask?"

"Something you haven’t mentioned so far," Heller answered. "The Lunarians developed rational, scientific thinking early on, and relied on it totally from the beginnings of their civilization. By contrast Earth went off into thousands of years of believing that magic, mysticism, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy would solve its problems. It only started to change comparatively recently, and even today there’s still a lot of that around. We got VISAR to estimate the effects, and it eclipses all the other factors put together. That’s what caused the difference!"

Danchekker thought about it for a while, then replied a trifle grudgingly, "Very well." He thrust his chin out defensively. "But I fail to see the need for any melodramatic suggestion that it poses a different question. It’s as valid to argue that the early adoption of rational methods accelerated one race as it is to say that its absence retarded the other. What point are you making?"

"I’ve been thinking a lot about it since I talked to Calazar and Showm, and asking what the reason was. Vic says everything has to have a reason, even if it takes some digging to find it. So what would the reason be for a whole planet clinging obstinately to a lot of nonsense and superstitions for thousands of years when even a little bit of observation and common sense should have shown it doesn’t work?"

"I think perhaps you underestimate the complexities of scientific method," Danchekker told her. "It takes centuries-scores of generations to evolve the techniques necessary to distinguish reliably between facts and fallacies, and truth and myth. Certainly it couldn’t happen overnight. What else did you expect?"

"So why didn’t that stop the Lunarians?"

"I have no idea. Have you?"

"That was the question I was leading up to." Heller leaned forward to look at him intently across the table. "What do you think of this for a suggestion: The reason that belief in myths and magic became so deeply rooted in Earth’s cultures and persisted for so long could be that, in the earliest stage of our first civilizations, it did work?"

Danchekker gagged over the mouthful of food that he had been about to swallow and colored visibly. "What? That’s preposterous! Are you suggesting that the laws of physics that dictate the running of the Universe could have changed in the last few thousand years?"

"No, I’m not. All I’m-"

"I’ve never heard such an absurd suggestion. This whole matter is already complicated enough without introducing attempts to explain it by astrology, ESP, or whatever other inanities you have in mind." Danchekker looked about him impatiently and sighed. "Really, it would take far too long to explain why if you are unable to distinguish between science and the banalities dispensed in adolescent magazines. Just take my word that you are wasting your time. . . . mine too, I might add."

Heller maintained her calm with some effort. "I am not suggesting anything of the kind." An edge of strain had crept into her voice. "Kindly listen for two minutes." Danchekker said nothing and eyed her dubiously across the table as he continued eating. She went on, "Think about this scenario. The Jevlenese have never forgotten that they’re Lambians, and we’re Cerians. They still see Earth as a rival and always have. Now put them in the situation where they’ve been taken to Thurien and are making the most of the opportunity to absorb all that Ganymean technology, and the rivals on Earth have just been sent back to square one by the Moon showing up. They’ve gained control of the surveillance operation, and probably by this time they can do their own instant moving of ships and whatever around the Galaxy because they’ve got their own independent computer , JEVEX, on their own independent planet. Also they’re human in form-physically indistinguishable from their rivals." Heller sat back and looked at Danchekker expectantly, as if waiting for him to fill in the rest himself. He stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth and gaped at her incredulously.