“Isn’t that always the case?” The captain’s voice was simultaneously warm and dry.
“It is often so, Captain, particularly for historians, because everyone believes that since the past has already occurred, determining what occurred is merely a process of unearthing enough facts and sifting through them until the truth spontaneously emerges, pristine and inviolable, from the broken shards and crumbled buildings and incomplete writings and records. It is even more difficult in the case of the aliens below, because, with the exception of the buildings themselves, they left no traces whatsoever, not so far as experts far more capable than I have been able to discover.” I paused for another sip of the wine before continuing. “The aliens were not from the planet below, but from somewhere other than our Galaxy. They were physically shorter than we are and probably broader. They may have had an aquatic evolution, but they were carbon-based air breathers, as we are. The structure and spacing of the towers suggests that Danann was a temporary outpost world of an extremely high-technology society, and I suspect that some of the towers were never occupied at all, and that the population density was extremely low. It may be that each tower was in fact the habitat of a single individual…” Some of what I recited came from the work of others, but it was necessary in providing some of the background for what I had decided to present.
“That sounds rather fanciful, Professor,” replied Allerde. “Some of those towers are more than a hundred meters tall. You are suggesting that individuals perhaps smaller than human beings each lived in what amounted to an individual high-technology hacienda tower.”
“That is indubitably true.” I smiled politely.
The captain leaned forward, ever so slightly, but did not speak.
“All races, aD living creatures, require nourishment and create waste products. All of more than minimal size have internal systems by which oxidation is used to create energy, and all exhale in some fashion or another. Those exhalation products do in fact circulate in the atmosphere. Likewise, there is a food chain in naturally evolved planets, and on those which have been planoformed, there are traces of the original ecology as well as the modified one. So far, our scientists have found absolutely no traces of any life-forms larger than what one might generously term microscopic, and the remnants teased from the frozen depths suggest a mechanism something like DNA—perhaps—that is carbon-based. Is that the same life-train as that of the aliens? Or was it there before they arrived and rebuilt the planet?” I shrugged.
“I had hoped for answers, Professor, not questions,” Allerde said dryly.
“I’m getting there. My answers will only be conjectures, however, until there is more hard evidence. The lack of waste products, the lack of a varied and distinct ecology, and the relatively pristine state of the single megaplex suggest a number of conclusions, First, the entire planet was modified for a single, one-time project of some sort. Second, in terms of the life span of the aliens, this was a long-term project, but not a multigenerational project. Third, they knew that whatever they did would have a deleterious effect on the planet after they finished and departed. Fourth, they had a far higher ethical standard than do human beings at present—”
“Wait a moment. How can you conclude that?”
“Because,” I said quietly, “there is absolutely no sign of any significant waste products nor that any higher-level life-form was left on the planet Both our technology and our economic system would preclude us from leaving an entire planet so waste-free, and the lack of life-forms would require either not bringing such here or removing them. We could not do that for a planet and settlement of this size, even with formulator technology.”
The Captain nodded slowly. “You are suggesting a civilization with a far higher level of technology and culture than we have attained. If that is so, where are they now?”
“I can’t answer that, Captain. I can only make my conclusions on what I’ve seen. I doubt that they ever entered our Galaxy. Even after billions of years, their materials would endure.”
“After billions of years on any geologically active planet, they’d be buried,” suggested someone.
“That is possible. It is also most likely that some isolated traces would be still found. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that, if they had entered our Galaxy, that a race that could move planets and create such an anomaly as Chronos would have left undiscovered traces.”
“Point taken,” said the captain.
“You are asserting that this… megalopolis… this megaplex… was built just as a base for a project of some sort. What sort of project? Why?” asked Allerde.
“Those are questions for which I have no answers, Minister Allerde. I can but conjecture that the project was indeed massive and major since it required this kind of support. I can also conjecture that the alien civilization was far more glorious than we can conceive of if Danann is their equivalent of an outpost or company town— something to be used and abandoned.”
“I can see that,” reflected the captain. “Your conclusions do leave one unresolved aspect, however.”
“I’m certain that they leave many, Captain. They are but conjectures based on inadequate information.”
“You point out that these aliens effectively cleaned up everything. Why didn’t they just clean up Danann and leave no traces at all?”
“My only response would be that it was not possible, but why it was not possible—for that I cannot even conjecture a possibility.”
“Could they have been wiped out by an even greater culture?” asked Allerde.
“That is always a possibility, but I would guess not There are no signs of damage, and nothing that resembles a defensive structure.” I smiled. “If they were wiped out so entirely, there is no physical record of it—and that would suggest a culture of even greater superiority.”
“There’s another question,” the captain said. “According to the astronomers… Danann has been traveling at unheard-of speeds for billions of years. So has Chronos, if in opposite directions. Yet there is absolutely no sign of anything in space—except a void—at the point from which their journeys began.”
“I would submit, Captain, that such observations merely add weight to what I have hypothecated in suggesting that Danann is the product of an exceedingly advanced technology—Type HI, I believe, is the category.”
“If it was so advanced, then, what happened to it—or them?” demanded Allerde.
“That is, I believe, one of the purposes of the expedition.” I smiled as politely as I could. I wasn’t about to enter into speculations about the hypothetical fate of vanished aliens who had left technology we could not only not duplicate, but, in many cases, not even understand. “I am but a poor historian, attempting to discern cultural patterns from the dimensions within empty buildings and from the placement of those seemingly eternal structures.”
“Eternal structures—you make these vanished aliens seem almost godlike.”
“As has been quoted so often in history, there is little difference between miracles ascribed to deities, magic, and sufficiently advanced technology.”
The captain laughed. “On that note—or quote—I’m going to suggest that the end of this discussion await further discoveries from Danann.”
Even Allerde didn’t press her on that.
As I ate, slowly, I did have to speculate on Allerde’s last observation. If human beings had discovered such structures on the back side of Old Earth’s moon at the time of the dawn of spaceflight, most would have ascribed them to an advanced technology, but not all. If they had been discovered upon an Olympian peak in the pretech era, certainly the towers would have been credited to gods. Yet Danann was more remote to us than the ancient Mount Olympus had been to the Bronze Age civilizations of early historical Earth. What was the difference? Knowledge? Arrogance?