“You’re an odd one,” he said.
“To you,” Elmer said, “the word is ‘alien.’”
“Not exactly,” declared Harper. “We had things like you back on Earth, only no one except old women believed in them. They were just something to talk about on stormy nights when the wind whistled down the chimney. We called them ghosts, but we never would admit that they were real. Probably ours, weren’t really real, sort of feeble ghosts, just the beginning of ghosts.”
“They never had a chance,” said Elmer.
“That’s right,” Harper agreed. “As a race, we haven’t lived long enough. We seldom stay in one place long enough to allow it to soak up the necessary personality. There are a few rather shadowy ghosts in some of the old castles and manor houses in Europe, maybe a few in Asia, but that’s about all. The Americans were apartment dwellers, moved every little while or so. A ghost would get started in one pattern and then would have to change over again. I suspect that was at least discouraging, if not fatal.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Elmer.
“With the Martians, of course, it was different,” went on Harper. “Your people lived in their cities for thousands of years, perhaps millions of years. The very stones of the place fairly dripped with personality — the accumulated personality of billions of people — that whatever-you-call-it that stays behind. No wonder the Martian Ghosts got big and tough—”
Metallic feet clicked along the corridor outside. A door opened and Buster rolled in.
“Dr. Carter is here,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said Elmer, “he wants to see me about a manuscript.”