"James P. Hogan - Giants 5 - Mission to Minerva" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

and industries that had once served a bloated defense sector, the program was
seen as a triumph of the unifying power of technology and reason, and a
prelude to reaching outward toward the stars. As permanent bases appeared on
the Moon and Mars, and manned mission ships reached the outer planets, it was
confidently assumed that the sciences responsible for such spectacular success
were thereby shown to form a solidly based foundation for the continuing
expansion of human knowledge. The basic belief structure was secure. While the
universe undoubtedly had more revelations and surprises to deliver, the body
of fact that had been established was impregnable to any major need in the way
of revision.

Such moments of blissful self-assurance invariably come immediately before the
biggest tumbles. In just a few short years, a series of stupefying discoveries
not only added an entire new dimension to the history of the Solar System, but
uncovered a strange, totally unanticipated story of the origins of the human
race itself.
Twenty-five million years before the present time, a race of nonviolent,
eight-foot-tall giants had flourished across the Solar System and surpassed
everything that humankind had achieved. The "Ganymeans"тАФso-called when the
first indication of their existence was discovered in the form of a wrecked
spacecraft buried under the ice of Ganymede, largest of the Jovian moonsтАФhad
originated on a planet christened Minerva, that had once occupied the position
between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the Ganymean civilization reached an
advanced stage, climatic conditions on Minerva were deteriorating. As would be
expected, their voyages of discovery had brought them to Earth, from where
they transported large numbers of plant and animal forms from the late
OligoceneтАУearly Miocene period back to their own world as part of a
large-scale bioengineering research project to combat the problem. Terran life
enjoyed a generally greater toxic resistance than that possessed by the
Ganymeans, and their hope was to incorporate the appropriate genetic
structures into their own makeup in order to render themselves tolerant to
altering Minerva's atmosphere in a way that would enhance its natural
greenhouse mechanism. These efforts failed, however, and the Ganymeans
migrated to what would later come to be called the Giants' Star, located
twenty light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Taurus.

In the millions of years that followed, the imported terrestrial animals left
on Minerva replaced most of the native Minervan forms, which owing to a
peculiarity of early Minervan biology that precluded the emergence of
land-dwelling carnivores, were unable to compete effectively. The terrestrial
forms included a population of primates as advanced as anything existing on
Earth at the time, which in addition had undergone genetic modification in the
course of the Ganymean experimental program. Fifty thousand years before the
present time, while the various hominid lines developing on Earth were still
at stone-using stages of culture, a second advanced, spacegoing race had
already appeared on Minerva as the first version of modern Man. They were
given the name "Lunarians," after evidence of their existence came to light in
the course of twenty-first century lunar exploration. (See Inherit the Stars.)

At the time of the emergence of the Lunarians, varying solar conditions were