The Paradox of the Sets: Daedalus Mission, Book Six by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford [Stableford, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: science fiction, space opera, sci-fi, space travel, arthur c. clarke
ISBN: 9781434449658
Publisher: Ingram Distribution
Published: 2012-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

She didn’t want to play guessing games. But she’d known me a long time, and she’d learned to be patient with my little foibles. I got the impression sometimes she thought I was a bit of a pompous fool. I guess she had an arguable case, though I hope she’d have lost in the end.

“That one system—as a system—enjoys a selective advantage in this region while the other enjoys a selective advantage on the other side of the world.”

“The Sets belong to the system dominant here.”

“Obviously. This is the middle of their range.”

“But we don’t actually know that for certain, because the survey team thought the Sets were intelligent indigenes and hence left them alone. They didn’t bring back a specimen for subsequent analytical work.”

“They didn’t bring back any animal larger than a mouse.”

“But they dissected others and brought back tissue specimens. Not the Sets.”

“Where is all this leading to, Alex? We’re going round in tiny circles.”

“I think we might find that although the Sets do have coding molecules belonging to the species which is dominant hereabouts they’ll be a different variety from that of the other metazoan species.”

“Why? And so what?”

“It’s a prediction,” I said. “And it’s an unlikely one. Genetic systems are often heterogeneous to some degree at the bacterial level, but almost never at the metazoan level. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Her voice was pregnant with weary patience.

“So if the prediction’s right, it’s significant—it says a lot in favor of the hypothesis which generated it. Bear that in mind for future reference, because there might be a lot of argument about it at some later stage if Gley doesn’t manage to turn up some hard evidence.”

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