"James P. Hogan - Giants 3 - Giant's Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

The buildings ahead grew to take on the smooth, clean lines of the Westwood Biological
Institute of UNSA's Life Sciences Division. The vehicle slowed to a halt and hovered fifty feet
above the roof of the Biochemistry building, which with Neurosciences and Physiology formed a trio
facing the elongated bulk of Adminis
tration and Central Facilities across a plaza of colorful mosaic paving broken up by lawns
and a bevy of fountains playing in the sun. Hunt checked the landing area visually, then cleared


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the computer to complete the descent sequence. Minutes later he and Lyn were checking in at the
reception desk in the building's top-floor lobby.
"Professor Danchekker isn't in his office," the receptionist in-formed them as she
consulted her screen. "The route-through code entered against his number is for one of the
basement labs. I'll try there." She keyed in another code, and after a short delay the characters
on the screen vanished in a blur of colors which immediately assembled themselves into the
features of a lean, balding man wearing a pair of anachronistic gold-rimmed spectacles perched at
the top of a thin, somewhat aquiline nose. His skin gave the impression of having been stretched
over his bones as an afterthought, with barely enough left over to cover his defiant, outthrust
chin. He didn't seem too pleased at the interruption.
"Yes?"
"Professor Danchekker, top lobby here. I have two visitors for you."
"I am extremely busy," he replied curtly. "Who are they and what do they want?"
Hunt sighed and pivoted the flatscreen display around to face him. "It's us, Chris-Vic and
Lyn. You're expecting us."
Danchekker's expression softened, and his mouth compressed itself into a thin line that
twitched briefly upward at the ends. "Oh, of course. I do apologize. Come on down. I'm in the
dissecting lab on Level E."
"Are you working alone?" Hunt asked.
"Yes. We can talk here."
"We'll see you in a couple of minutes."
They walked on through to the elevator bank at the rear of the lobby. "Chris must be
working with his animals again," Lyn remarked as they waited.
"I don't think he's come up for air since we got back from Ganymede," Hunt said. "I'm
surprised he hasn't started looking like some of them."
Danchekker had been with Hunt on Ganymede when the Shapieron reappeared in the solar
system. In fact Danchekker had made the major contribution to piecing together what was proba
bly the most astounding part of the whole story, the more sensitive details of which still
had not been cleared for publication to an unsuspecting and psychologically unprepared world.
Not surprisingly, the Ganymeans had made visits to Earth during the period that their
civilization had flourished on Minerva- twenty-five million years before. Their scientists had
predicted an epoch of deteriorating environmental conditions on Minerva in the form of an
increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, for which they had only a low inherent
tolerance, so one of the reasons for their interest in Earth had been to assess it as a possible
candidate for migration. But they soon abandoned the idea. The Ganymeans had evolved from
ancestors whose biochemistry had precluded the emergence of carnivores, thus inhibiting the
development of aggressiveness and ruthlessness together with most of the related traits that had
characterized the survival struggle on Earth. The savagery that abounded in the environment of
late-Oligocene, early-Miocene Earth made it altogether too inhospitable for the placid Ganymean