"James P. Hogan - Giants 2 - The Gentle Giants of Ganymede" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

were shipping all the animals in?" He spread his arms wide. "There had to be a
reason. How far are we getting on that one? I don't know, but the enzyme might
have something to do with it."
"Very well, let's recapitulate briefly what we think we already know
about the subject," Danchekker suggested. He moved away from the screen and
perched on the edge of the table. "Paul. Would you like to tell us your answer
to Henri's question." Carpenter scratched the back of his head for a second
and screwed up his face.
"Well..." he began, "first there's the fish. They're established as
being native Minervan and give us our link between Minerva and the Ganymeans."
"Good," Danchekker nodded, mellowing somewhat from his earlier crotchety
mood. "Go on."
Carpenter was referring to a type of well-preserved canned fish that had
been positively traced back to its origin in the oceans of
Minerva. Danchekker had shown that the skeletons of the fish correlated
in general arrangement to the skeletal remains of the Ganymean occupants of
the ship that lay under the ice deep below Pithead Base; the relationship was
comparable to that existing between the architectures of, say, a man and a
mammoth, and demonstrated that the fish and the Ganymeans belonged to the same
evolutionary family. Thus if the fish were native to Minerva, the Ganymeans
were, too.
"Your computer analysis of the fundamental cell chemistry of the fish,"
Carpenter continued, "suggests an inherent low tolerance to a group of toxins
that includes carbon dioxide. I think you also postulated that this basic
chemistry could have been inherited from way back in the ancestral line of the
fish -- right from very early on in Minervan history."
"Quite so," Danchekker approved. "What else?"
Carpenter hesitated. "So Minervan land-dwelling species would have had a
low CO2 tolerance as well," he offered.
"Not quite," Danchekker answered. "You've left out the connecting link
to that conclusion. Anybody...?" He looked at the German. "Wolfgang?"
"You need to make the assumption that the characteristics of low CO2
tolerance came about in a very remote ancestor -- one that existed before any
land-dwelling types appeared on Minerva." Fichter paused, then continued.
"Then you can postulate that this remote life form was a common ancestor to
all later land dwellers and marine descendants -- for example, the fish. On
the basis of that assumption you can say that the characteristic could have
been inherited by all the land-dwelling species that emerged later."
"Never forget your assumptions," Danchekker urged. "Many of the problems
in the history of science have stemmed from that simple error. Note one other
thing too: If the low-CO2-tolerance characteristic did indeed come about very
early in the process of Minervan evolution and survived right down to the time
that the fish was alive, then suggestions are that it was a very stable
characteristic, if our knowledge of terrestrial evolution is anything to go by
anyway. This adds plausibility to the suggestion that it could have become a
common characteristic that spread throughout all the land dwellers as they
evolved and diverged, and has remained essentially unaltered down through the
ages -- much as the basic design of terrestrial vertebrates has remained
unchanged for hundreds of millions of years despite superficial differences in
shape, size and form." Danchekker removed his spectacles and began polishing