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.