Part 2

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.

LT. COL. GREAVES: Maybe they were brought along out of compassion. More probably, they were brought along because the survivors were flesh-eaters. In either case, you can be certain that they were transported from the mother-ship to Earth. As to why no evidence of their existence has ever been found, isn't it reasonable to assume that Planet X paralleled Earth in lower, as well as higher, forms of life?

SEN. KUELL: Only if you're trying to shore up a theory that is about to collapse. But it will do you no good, Colonel Greaves: the text of Genesis confutes your entire contention.

LT. COL. GREAVES: On the contrary, the text of Genesis substantiates my contention. Let me quote one or two passages by way of illustration. '--the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.' This is race memory coming to the fore in the form of an imagery so strong that it survives translation, and with the aid of a little imagination, the passage can be interpreted to mean that all is in readiness for the launching. 'And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth: and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered'. If you will substitute 'distances' for 'waters' and 'over' for 'upon', you will obtain a fairly clear mental picture of a planet fading from sight in the viewscreen of a departing spaceship. And how about the 'stories' referred to in the building specification? '--with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it'? Those weren't 'stories', senator--they were stages. Rocket stages. The number of rocket stages that would be required to launch a ship the size of Spaceship X into space.

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SEN. KUELL: I submit, colonel, that your reasoning is defective. I submit furthermore that it is not the sort of reasoning which normal well-adjusted Americans indulge in, and I hereby recommend to this committee that both yours and Commander Perkins' qualifications be reexamined at the earliest possible opportunity and that both of you be relieved from duty until such time as it can satisfactorily be proven that both of you have recovered from your hallucinatory experience.

LT. COL. GREAVES: But the scrolls I brought back aren't hallucinatory, senator. Neither is the fragment of--of--yes, of gopherwood. And certainly the photograph is real enough.

SEN. KUELL: Granted. But I have grave doubts about some of the other items you have called to our attention. I'm afraid you're going to be in for a rather rude awakening, Colonel Greaves, when Dr. Noyes and his staff finish deciphering the scrolls. Gopherwood indeed!

SEN. LARCH: Excuse me, senator. I have just been handed a telegram from Dr. Noyes. It--it would appear that they have deciphered the scrolls already. I will read the telegram aloud: 'Deep Space Scrolls prove Spaceship X to be Noah's Ark beyond vestige of a doubt--Noyes'.

_An extended silence._

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SEN. NICHOLSON: I hereby resolve that this hearing be adjourned and that a transcript of the proceedings be made public immediately.

SEN. KUELL: Gentlemen, I implore you not to act hastily in this matter. Don't you see that if we accept Dr. Noyes' word as final, we will be obligated to accept as fact that the concept of one God did not originate on Earth, but somewhere out there in the wastes of space? We will be obligated to admit that Earth was not the purpose of all creation, but only a sort of afterthought?

SEN. HEWLETT: Gentlemen, I emphatically disagree. We are now obligated to do what we should have done before: to really accept God as the creator of the universe as we have come to know it. I hereby move that we shed our geocentric cloaks once and for all and start looking upon space not as a bête noir which circumstance and the Soviet Union have forced us to come to grips with but as a great star-flowered sea upon which we should have ventured long ago. That God is far beyond the pale of our picayune conception of Him is a fact that we have known all along but which we have refused to live with because we would have had Him be as small and as petty as we are. Let us resolve from this moment on that when we say 'Almighty' we mean 'Almighty' beyond peradventure of a doubt. Gentlemen, we have roots among the stars! Let us lift off from this dust mote on the doorstep of reality and wing our way into the majestic hall of universe and go asearching for the planet of our birth!

SEN. LARCH: Amen.

END OF TRANSCRIPT