"Mr. Cameron, I'm not trying to ridicule what you have suggested. I am just trying to review all the implications of what you're asking for me to believe—asking yourself to believe—and we must restrict ourselves to directly pertinent information. Your vision of your father's death could or could not be relevant. There are, I admit, fairly well authenticated cases of clairvoyance. But with reference to your recent experiences, that earlier vision is inconclusive and subject to varying interpretations."
He shifted in his chair and sucked vigorously at his pipe until the bowl glowed red. As I waited in the stillness of his office for him to continue, my eyes strayed past him to the cabinets along one entire wall. Behind glass doors was the famous collection of Martian crystal and fossil formations, to the study of which the scientist had devoted his life. Surely these must have revealed something of the nature of Martian life. If some kind of intelligent parasite had existed there, wouldn't it leave traces detectible to a man like Temple?
"This alien form of life you postulate could exist," Dr. Temple said. "Grant that. There is no reason why life, intelligent life, on other planets would have to be recognizable to us. What you postulate is essentially a form of parasite, and the idea of a parasitical being which is also intelligent is not completely beyond the evidence of life we know even on earth. Let us concede that it could happen. An intelligent being, evolving under vastly different environmental conditions, might discover early in the progress of evolution that it could use a material host with a more highly developed physical organism but an undeveloped intelligence. And through the eons of change and self-improvement such an intelligent being might evolve physically only along those lines which would be necessary to its survival and its mental development. If it could use the body of a host, it would tend not to improve its own self-sufficient physical organism, as man has developed his body, but rather to perfect the ability to seize and to control its varied hosts."
I nodded eagerly, feeling hope stir and unfold. It was possible!
"However," the scientist said slowly, "it's rather a difficult step to accept the idea that such a parasitical life form could live in any host—even one from another planet and with a totally strange organism, such as man."
"But it is conceivable," I said doggedly, unable to relinquish the blossoming hope.
"Perhaps. We know so little of life, of the living organism. We know, or at least we think we know, that any highly developed being would have cells, and that it would be constructed ultimately of the same limited number of atoms from which everything in our universe is manufactured. But the forms which life could take are infinite. And the possibility which you suggest has one interesting facet." He paused and I leaned forward, feeling sweat on my palms. "An intelligent parasite," Dr. Temple said thoughtfully, "controlling and living within its host, feeding upon its host or upon what the host consumed, is one form of life which could easily survive space travel—providing its host could survive. For the parasite's own environment within the host would not substantially be altered."
He glanced at me sharply, as if a sudden thought had occurred to him. "But why wouldn't such an intelligent being, its mental capacities presumably far beyond man's if your experience is any indication, have mastered space travel long before us? Why should it be dependent upon an inferior intelligence?"
"Because it didn't have a host like man to use," I said quickly. "That seems to be one main reason for coming here—and for wanting to bring other aliens here. They've never known a physical organism like man. They haven't developed one themselves because they didn't need to—or possibly because it wouldn't have been able to exist under Martian conditions of life. Their hosts never developed the perfection of usefulness man's body has reached with his arms and hands and fingers. What's more, we know that Mars is almost a dead planet. Wouldn't a parasite eagerly seize upon any new organism that came along—especially one that was physically far superior to anything that had evolved on Mars?"
Dr. Temple nodded slowly. "Yes, that is a plausible explanation." He sighed. "It's all possible, Mr. Cameron, all plausible—up to a point. The existence of extra-sensory powers in such an intelligence would be quite natural—even inevitable. But—"