developed on Mars. Signs of a whole civilization should be far more obvious than signs of visits to a place like Earth's Moon—therefore the Lunarians should have been detected a lot sooner on Mars. Answer: Think about the rate of erosion on the Martian surface. The signs could be largely wiped out or buried. At least that could account for there not being any signs on Earth. Somebody then pointed out that this did not solve the problem—all it did was shift it to another place. If the Lunarians came from Mars, evolutionary theory was still in just as big a mess as ever.
So the discussion went on.
Hunt wondered how Rob Gray was getting on back at Westwood. They now had a training schedule to fit in on top of their normal daily data-collection routine. A week or so before, Caldwell had informed them that he wanted four engineers from Navcomms fully trained as Trimagniscope operators. His explanation, that this would allow round-the-clock operation of the scope and hence better productivity from it, had not left Hunt convinced; neither had his further assertion that Navcomms was going to buy itself some of the instruments but needed to get some in-house expertise while they had the opportunity.
Maybe Caldwell intended setting up Navcomms as an independent and self-sufficient scope-operating facility. Why would he do that? Was Forsyth-Scott or somebody else exerting pressure to get Hunt back to England? If this was a prelude to shipping him back, the scope would obviously stay in Houston. That meant that the first thing he'd be pressed into when he got back would be a panic to get the second prototype