SEN. KUELL: It is imperative that I interpose a few words at this point, Senator Larch.
SEN. LARCH: Please go ahead, Senator Kuell.
SEN. KUELL: Colonel Greaves, I am of course familiar with this photograph you brought back, but, while the general trend of your reasoning is apparent to me, I cannot comprehend how so insignificant a discovery could have set so unorthodox a train of thought in motion. The fact that the photograph depicts an olive grove means absolutely nothing, even when brought into juxtaposition with the concomitant fact that the camera used in taking and developing it was shaped like a dove. How could you possibly have arrived at the conclusion you did?
LT. COL. GREAVES: Because my 'train of thought', as you call it, was already in motion and had been in motion for some time. The camera and the photograph were merely the final clues in a whole series of clues: the ship's dimensions, its obvious age, the cages, the large compartment in the officers' section, and the three smaller ones.... With the discovery of the camera and the photograph, everything fell into place.
SEN. KUELL: Everything, colonel? I can think of any number of details that your theory does not explain. What of Xithuthros, Prithu, and Ut-napishtim? What of Deucalion and Pyrrha? Would you have me believe that they were aboard this streamlined space-scow of yours?
LT. COL. GREAVES: In a sense they were. All versions of the legend are based on handed-down memories of the voyage of Spaceship X from Planet X to Earth, but the concept of space being beyond the scope of primitive minds, the two planets were made into one, and the survivors of the disaster were pictured not as fleeing from one planet to another, but as sweating out the debacle in a craft that never left Earth. The religious cosmogony which the survivors reverted to after spreading out among the early civilized sectors of the world was adapted in various ways, but the most authentic version, I believe, comes down to us through Genesis, since it was in the region that later became known as Judea that the captain of Spaceship X and his three officers settled down.
SEN. KUELL: All of this is pure conjecture, colonel. You haven't so much as a single fact to go on.
LT. COL. GREAVES: You're forgetting—are you not, senator?—that a blow-up of the photograph of the olive grove revealed several pieces of pottery in good condition that the experts agreed dated from the late Neolithic Period.
SEN. KUELL: You're forgetting—are you not, colonel?—that a vast difference exists between an olive grove and an olive leaf. And how do you explain why these ancient voyageurs of yours brought animals with them? More important, how do you explain what became of these animals? Surely if they had been landed, some evidence of them would remain, and just as surely, that evidence would have come to light by now.