"They can't," said Scott breathlessly. "But the bugs can. Back on Earth they are wondering why the Martians don't use their rockets to come to Earth. And that's exactly what the Martians are doing. Those rockets full of seeds aren't tokens at all. They're colonization parties!" "Wait a minute. Slow down," Hugh pleaded. "Tell me this. If the lilies are the Martians and they sent seeds to Earth twelve years ago, why hadn't they sent them before?" "Because before that it would have been useless," Scott told him. "They had to have someone to open the rockets and plant the seeds for them. We did that. They tricked us into it. "They may have sent rockets of seeds before but if they did, nothing came of it. For the seeds would have been useless if they weren't taken from the rocket. The rocket probably would have weathered away in time, releasing the seeds but by that time the seeds would have lost their germinating power." Hugh shook his head. "It seems impossible," he declared. "Impossible that plants could have real intelligence ... that flowers could hold the mastery of a planet. I'm ready to accept almost any theory but that one...." "Your mind sticks on parallel evolution," Scott argued. "There's no premise for it. On Earth animals took the spotlight, pushing the plants into a subordinate position. Animals got the head start, jumped the gun on the plants. But there's absolutely no reason why plants should not develop along precisely the same lines here that animals developed on Earth." * * * * * "But the Martian lily lives only one season ... ten months ... and then it dies," Hugh protested. "The next season's growth comes from seed. How could plants build intelligence? Each new crop would have to start all over again." "Not necessarily," declared Scott. "Animals are born with instinct, which is nothing more or less than inherited intelligence. In mankind there are strange evidences of racial memory. Why couldn't the plants do the same thing with their seed ... progress even a step further? Why couldn't the seed carry, along with its other attributes, all the intelligence and knowledge of the preceding generation? That way the new plant wouldn't have to start from scratch, but would start with all the accumulated knowledge of its immediate ancestor ... and would add to that knowledge and pass the sum total on to the generation that was to follow." Hugh kicked absent-mindedly at the sand. "There would be advantages in that sort of development," he agreed. "It might even be the logical course of survival on a planet like Mars. Some old Martian race, for all we know, might deliberately have shaped their development toward a plant existence when they realized the conditions toward which the planet was headed."