"Really, Dr. Allison, I don't see—I don't know what point you're trying to make, but a mouse is an animal and a man is—well, a man."
"Nothing else?"
"Well, a man is bigger than a mouse." He began to feel familiar ground under his feet. "A man is bigger more ways than physically. He is bigger spiritually, emotionally. He thinks. He has a—"
"Ben Sands told me about his talk with you. So you don't believe in evolution? You don't believe the ancestors of men and monkeys came from a common stock?"
"I do not, sir. It is inconceivable...."
"How would mice strike you, then? Would you rather believe that men descended from mice than monkeys?"
Again the bewildered Truggles found himself physically incapable of answering.
"I have done a great deal of research, with the kind assistance of Blan Forsythe," said Allison precisely. "Blan is my friend. He has been my associate, even my experimental animal. I am preparing a paper on what I consider a revolutionary contribution to the theory of evolution—that men are related directly to the genus rodentia, and only more distantly so to the primates.
"Blan Forsythe is the real originator of this theory, as a result of his very personal interest in sudden evolutionary changes through doubling of chromosomes. It is reasonable to suppose that the ancestor of man himself, with all of his survival advantages, arose through such a process. Man has 48 chromosomes. Now, Mr. Truggles, what sort of animal would you guess has half that number—24 chromosomes?"
"Mice?" hazarded Truggles thinly.