The three of them stood and watched the play of dreams across Hanlon's sleeping face with something like awe in their eyes.
"I was just wondering," Lowe said, "if something like this may have happened before? If the whole thing may not be like one of those old parchment writings the archaeologists dig up, where an earlier story has been erased and a newer one written over it? A palimpsest, I think it's called.... How do we know where we came from, in the beginning?"
Geddes stooped and shook Hanlon awake. "You'll find the boat by the river," he said. "You're starting out fresh with a new world, Hanlon. Take care of it."
They had climbed the personnel ladder and were closing the port behind them when they heard the splashing of water as Hanlon swam the river. A moment later his high, ringing yell drifted back and was lost without echo on the plain.
"He didn't waste time on the boat," Hovic said, enviously.
They were strapping themselves in for the Terra IV's final flight when Geddes laughed for the first time since the blast-off.
"I think Lowe's right," he said when they stared at him. "I wish I could come back again, after a few hundred generations. I wonder what a whole planet of Hanlons would look like?"
"... and therefore we can say with certainty that we did not descend from Earthmen," Mach Bren concluded his report to the Venusian Archaeological Society. "For how can we possibly conceive of kinship with a people whose skin and hair are black?"