Sheffield looked up from the photographs, with instant sharpness. Life and intelligence, after all, were by way of being his province. “How do you know?”
“Look for vourself,” said the botanist. “There are the photos. No highways, no cities, no artificial waterways, no signs of anything man-made.”
“No machine civilization,” said Sheffield. “That’s all.”
“Even ape-men would build shelters and use fire,” said Fawkes, offended.
“The continent is ten times as large as Africa and you’ve been over it for two days. There’s a lot you could miss.”
“Not as much as you’d think,” was the warm response. “I followed every sizable river up and down and looked over both seacoasts. Any settlements are bound to be there.”
“In allowing seventy-two hours for two eight-thousand-mile seacoasts ten thousand miles apart, plus how many thousand miles of river, that had to be a pretty quick lookover.”
Cimon interrupted, “What’s this all about? Homo sapiens is the only intelligence ever discovered in the galaxy through a hundred thousand and more explored planets. The chances of Troas possessing intelligence is virtually nil.”
“Yes?” said Sheffield. “You could use the same argument to prove there’s no intelligence on Earth.”
“Makoyama,” said Cimon, “in his report mentioned no intelligent life.”