I

Dr. Holdman Stedding lay awake that night thinking about the state of mind of Mr. Davis and about the queer idea of a genetic invasion of Martian qualities that he had propounded. There was something provocative about the idea; something that made his intelligence bristle defensively. 'Pure balderdash!' he said aloud, but as a matter of fact what made it so irritating was that it was not pure balderdash. There was an attenuated but not unbreakable thread of silly plausibility about the suggestion that prevented him from throwing it altogether out of his mind. He threw words like 'balderdash' at it as one might throw stones at a dog that persists in following one, and presently there was the damned thing back again.

'If it should chance that something of the sort was going on….'

He found himself asking himself whether there was any sort of evidence that some new type or perhaps even new types of human being were appearing in the world. Can there be such things as Martianized minds? 'Silly phrase,' he said. 'But somehow a contagious phrase.'

He ran his mind over its collection of facts about the subject. He knew most of what was known and he realized that, for the purpose of getting a conclusive answer, it amounted to hardly anything at all. He reviewed the question methodically. The most confident statements, he reflected, are made that man has not changed since Neolithic times, that he has degenerated since the days of Pericles, that he is larger or smaller, healthier, less healthy, than his ancestors, that he has become finer and subtler or anything else that suits the private convictions, stated or implicit, of the 'authority' who flings out this sort of stuff to the public. When you came to think it oyer as he was doing, it was all without exception opinionated rubbish. No one has yet devised the means of getting the confused and irregular records available into any sort of order. No one has been able to do that work. People like J. B. S. Haldane and suchlike pioneer biologists were trying to form a research society now. Even the men most in contact with the facts have nothing better than 'impressions' and 'persuasions,' and some, thought Dr. Holdman Stedding with righteous self–applause, know that that is so, and some do not let their prejudices rip. Dr. Holdman Stedding's private and unproven 'impression' was just the impression most favourable to Mr. Davis's wild surmise. His unproven belief was that a considerable change in the human mind was going on. He thought that heavy and clumsy types were not so abundant in the population as they used to be and that certain new mental types were on the increase.

'But what has that to do with Martians and cosmic rays?' his common sense protested, and his common sense answered: 'Nothing.'

After which he continued to pursue the subject.