
An afternoon in a modest garden finds professor Gordon Marlow and his eager student Harold Harper trading ideas about alien life. While Gordon tends his carrots, he asks whether intelligence must leave behind pots, machines, or any tangible artifact. Harold imagines a mind that exists without limbs, powered by its environment, forever thinking. Their banter weaves philosophy with wonder, setting the stage for a deeper exploration.
Soon the dialogue expands to a realm of telepathic beings—Ont and Upt—who debate the foundations of thought itself, treating “I think, therefore I am” as a hypothesis, not a certainty. They wonder what consciousness looks like when it never needs to move, urging listeners to reconsider what counts as evidence of a mind. With a calm, scholarly voice and a subtle undercurrent of mystery, the story offers a thoughtful science‑fiction experience that rewards attentive ears.
Language
en
Duration
~20 minutes (19K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2009-12-15
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1909–1965
A prolific magazine-era science fiction writer, this Golden Age regular became closely linked with Amazing Stories and built a reputation on lively, idea-driven short fiction. Writing mainly as Rog Phillips, he also published under several other names during a busy pulp career.
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