SEN. LARCH: All of which indicates, does it not, that we are dealing with a race of people scientifically superior to our own.
LT. COL. GREAVES: It does.
SEN. LARCH: Then, assuming for the moment that your theory is valid, doesn't it strike you as highly improbable that the sole survivors of so scientifically advanced a race would, immediately after landing on Earth, take up primitive husbandry?
LT. COL. GREAVES: No, it does not. I think that in undertaking the voyage to Earth, the passengers and the crew of Spaceship X meant to leave far more behind them than the natural catastrophe—probably a tectonic revolution—that had occasioned their exodus. I think that they meant to leave behind them a way of life which they had come to loathe because it had supplied them with false gods, and I think that once they landed on Earth and dispersed, they threw this way of life over their shoulders and deliberately reverted to the thoughtworld and the religious cosmogony of their remote ancestors. In other words, I think that they used the natural disaster that forced them to migrate to another planet as an excuse to begin all over again, and that they burned their bridges behind them so that they would have to begin all over again. Probably they blew up the auxiliary craft, or lifeboat, and every technological gadget it contained the very same day they landed.... Earth, in those days, must have seemed like a promised land indeed. Green, fertile, relatively unpeopled.... They had no way of knowing, probably, that inter-marriage with the natives would soon decimate their average life-expectancy.
SEN. LARCH: Wouldn't you say that you're indulging in some rather wild surmises, Colonel Greaves?
LT. COL. GREAVES: Not at all. I think that the find I made shortly after returning to the forward part of the ship justifies everything I've said.
SEN. LARCH: You're referring, no doubt, to the 'dove'. Very well—go on, Colonel Greaves.
LT. COL. GREAVES: I had some five minutes remaining when I got back to the large hall from which I had begun my explorations, and I knew that I would have to hurry if I expected to see the rest of the ship. Crossing the hall, I passed through a wide entrance and found myself at the base of a spiral companionway. I propelled myself up the metal stairs, and a few minutes later, found myself on the bridge. The first object my torch beam picked up was a huge viewscreen. When activated, it must have provided a splendid view of space, but now of course the screen was blank. Next to the screen stood a long desk, and on this desk lay the ship's log—the metallic scrolls which had been left behind (deliberately, I believe) and which are now being deciphered by Dr. Noyes and his staff. In addition to the viewscreen and the desk, the bridge contained a complex sextant, and an instrument panel so intricate that compared to it, our panel on the Camaraderie 17 seemed like a primitive abacus. To the right of the panel, a doorway opened into another sequence of compartments. As there were only four of them and as they were obviously much more spacious than the previous compartments I had found, I concluded that I had blundered into officers' country. One of the compartments appeared to be considerably larger than the other three, and believing it to be the captain's, I looked into it first. I learned nothing beyond the fact that two people, not one, had occupied it. I found this to be the case with the three remaining compartments, and concluded that the four officers had had their wives with them. Finally I returned to the bridge. I had only two minutes to go now, and I probably would have propelled myself straight back down the companionway (I had already taken possession of the scrolls) if the 'dove' hadn't caught my eye. That's exactly what I thought of when my torch beam picked up the object bracketed to the bulkhead—a dove. A dove in flight. Investigating, I learned that it was a streamlined telescopic camera the lens of which were probably located somewhere in the ventral region of the hull. The 'wings' were merely a device for centering the image and focusing the lens, while the 'body' provided the housing for the automatic developing unit and served as a receptacle for the finished photograph. The final photograph to have been taken and never been removed, and it stood out vividly in the beam of my torch. It was a photograph of an olive grove. By now, my time had just about run out, and I removed the photograph from the 'dove', returned to the boat-bay area, picking up a fragment of meteor-dislodged metal on my way, and regained the Camaraderie 17.