The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

Copper, not iron, carried oxygen in their blood cells. Or so they said. So far they had refused to allow the Haijac to take blood samples. But they had promised that they might give permission within the next four or five weeks. Their reluctance, so they had stated, was caused by certain religious taboos. If, however, they couid be assured that the Earthmen would not be drinking the blood, they might let them have it.

Macneff thought they were lying, but he had no good reasons for this. It was impossible for the Ozagenians to know just why their blood was wanted.

That their blood cells used copper instead of iron should have made the Ozagenians considerably less strong and less enduring in physical exertion than the Terrans. Their corpuscles would not transport oxygen as efficiently. But Nature had made certain compensations. Fobo had two hearts, which beat faster than Hal's and drove blood through arteries and veins larger than Hal's.

Nevertheless, the fastest sprinter or marathon runner of this planet would be left behind by his Terrestrial counterpart.

Hal had borrowed a book on evolution. But, since he could read very little of it, he had so far had to content himself with looking at the many illustrations. The wog, however, had explained what they represented.

Hal had refused to believe Fobo.

'You say that mammalian life originated from a primeval sea worm! That has to be wrong! We know that the first land lifeform was an amphibian. Its fins developed into legs; it lost its ability to get oxygen from sea water. It evolved into a reptile, then a primitive mammal, then an insectivorous creature, then a pre-simian, then a simian, and eventually into the sapient bipedal stage, and then into modern man!'

'Is that so?' Fobo had said calmly. 'I don't doubt that things went just as you said. On Earth. But here evolution took a different course. Here there were three ancestral se"ba'takufu, that is, motherworms. One had hemoglobin-bearing blood cells; one, copper-bearing; one, vanadium-bearing. The first had a natural advantage over the other two, but for some reason it dominated this continent but not the other. We have some evidence that the first also split early into two lines, both of which were notochords but one of which wasn't mammalian.

'Anyway, all the motherworms did have fins, and these evolved into limbs. And–'

'But,' Hal had said, 'evolution can't work that way! Your scientists have made a serious, a grievous, error. After all, your paleontology is just beginning; it's only about a hundred years old.'

'Ah!' Fobo had said.