Woodin finally knocked his pipe out on his boot-heel and sat up.
“All right,” he said, “now we’ll settle this argument we were having.”
Ross looked a little shamefaced. “I guess I got too hot about it,” he said subduedly. Then added, “But all the same, you fellows do more than half disbelieve me.”
Woodin shook his head calmly. “No, we don’t, Ross. When you told us that you’d seen creatures unlike anything ever heard of while flying over this wilderness, Gray and I both believed you.
“If we hadn’t, do you think two busy biologists would have dropped their work to come up here with you into these unending woods and look for the things you saw?”
“I know, I know,” said the aviator unsatisfiedly. “You think I saw something queer and you’re taking a chance that it will be worth the trouble of coming up here after.
“But you don’t believe what I’ve told you about the look of the things. You think that sounds too queer to be true, don’t you?”
For the first time Woodin hesitated in answering. “After all, Ross,” he said indirectly, “one’s eyes can play tricks when you’re only glimpsing things for a moment from a plane a mile up.”
“Glimpsing them?” echoed Ross. “I tell you, man, I saw them as clearly as I see you. A mile up, yes, but I had my big binoculars with me and was using them when I saw them.
“It was near here, too, just east of the fork of the McNorton and the Little Whale. I was streaking south in a hurry for I’d been three weeks up at that government mapping survey on Hudson’s Bay. I wanted to place myself by the river fork, so I brought my plane down a little and used my binoculars.
“Then, down there in a clearing by the river, I saw something glisten and saw—the things. I tell you, they were incredible, but just the same I saw them clear! I forgot all about the river fork in the moment or two I stared down at them.
“They were big, glistening things like heaps of shining jelly, so translucent that I could see the ground through them. There were at least a dozen of them and when I saw them they were gliding across that little clearing, a floating, flowing movement.
“Then they disappeared under the trees. If there’d been a clearing big enough to land in within a hundred miles, I’d have landed and looked for them, but there wasn’t and I had to go on. But I wanted like the devil to find out what they were, and when I took the story to you two, you agreed to come up here by canoe to search for them. But I don’t think now you’ve ever fully believed me.”
WOODIN LOOKED THOUGHTFULLY into the fire. “I think you saw something queer, all right, some queer form of life. That’s why I was willing to come up on this search.
“But things such as you describe, jelly-like, translucent, gliding over the ground like that—there’s been nothing like that since the first protoplasmic creatures, the beginning of life on earth, glided over our young world ages ago.”
“If there were such things then, why couldn’t they have left descendants like them?” Ross argued.
Woodin shook his head. “Because they all vanished ages ago, changed into different and higher forms of life, starting the great upward climb of life that has reached its height in man.
“Those long-dead, single-celled protoplasmic creatures were the start, the crude, humble beginnings of our life. They passed away and their descendants were unlike them. We men are their descendants.”
Ross looked at him, frowning. “But where did they come from in the first place, those first living things?”
Again Woodin shook his head. “That is one thing we biologists do not know and can hardly speculate upon, the origin of those first protoplasmic forms of life.
“It’s been suggested that they rose spontaneously from the chemicals of earth, yet this is disproved by the fact that no such things rise spontaneously now from inert matter. Their origin is still a complete mystery. But, however they came into existence on earth, they were the first of life, our distant ancestors.”
Woodin’s eyes were dreaming, the other two forgotten, as he stared into the fire, seeing visions.
“What a glorious saga it is, that wonderful climb up from crude protoplasm creatures to a man! A marvelous series of changes that has brought us from that first low form to our present splendor.
“And it might not have occurred on any other world but earth! For science is now almost sure that the cause of evolutionary mutations is the radiations of the radioactive deposits inside the earth, acting upon the genes of all living matter.”
He caught a glimpse of Ross’s uncomprehending face, and despite his raptness smiled a little.
“I can see that means nothing to you. I’ll try to explain. The germ-cell of every living thing on earth contains in it a certain number of small, rod-like things which are called chromosomes. These chromosomes are made up of strings of tiny particles which we call genes. And each of these genes has a potent and different controlling effect upon the development of the creature that grows from that germ-cell.
“Some of these genes control the creature’s color, some control his size, some the shape of his limbs, and so on. Every characteristic of the creature that grows from that germ-cell will be greatly different from the fellow-creatures of its species. He will be, in fact, of an entirely new species. That is the way in which new species come into existence on earth, the method of evolutionary change.
“Biologists have known this for some time and they have been searching for the cause of these sudden great changes, these mutations, as they are called. They have tried to find out what it is that affects the genes so radically. They have found experimentally that X-rays and chemical rays of various kinds, when turned upon the genes of a germ-cell, will change them greatly. And the creature that grows from that germ-cell will thus be a greatly changed creature, a mutant.
“Because of this, many biologists now believe that the radiation from the radioactive deposits inside earth, acting upon all the genes of every living thing on earth, is what causes the constant change of species, the procession of mutations, that has brought life up the evolutionary road to its present height.
“That is why I say that on any other world but earth, evolutionary progress might never have happened. For it may be that no other world has similar radioactive deposits within it to cause by gene-effect the mutations. On any other world, the first protoplasmic things that began life might have remained forever the same, down through endless generations.
“How thankful we ought to be that it was not so on earth! That mutation after mutation has followed, life ever changing and progressing into new and higher species, until the first crude protoplasm things have advanced through countless changing forms into the supreme achievement of man!”
WOODIN’S ENTHUSIASM HAD carried him away as he talked, but now he stopped, laughing a little as he relit his pipe.
“Sorry that I lectured you like a college freshman, Ross. But that’s my chief subject of thought, my idée fixe, that wonderful upward climb of life through the ages.”
Ross was staring thoughtfully into the fire. “It does seem wonderful the way you tell it. One species changing into another, going higher all the time—”
Gray stood up by the fire and stretched. “Well, you two can wonder over it, but this crass materialist is going to emulate his remote invertebrate ancestors and return to a prostrate position. In other words, I’m going to bed.”
He looked at Ross, a doubtful grin on his young blond face, and said, “No hard feelings now, feller?”
“Forget it.” The aviator grinned back. “The paddling was hard today and you fellows did look mighty skeptical. But you’ll see! Tomorrow we’ll be at the fork of the Little Whale and then I’ll bet we won’t scout an hour before we run across those jelly-creatures.”