"I do think so," he said, his voice steelly. "Grant discovered the existence of the evolution vibrations--he alone of men knew all concerning them. Do you remember what he said when they refused to let him explain his theory even at that meeting? He said: 'I will give you proof of this. I will give you proof yet of this theory, and such a proof as the world has never seen before!'" My mind was reeling. "Then you think that when Grant disappeared--that he----" "I think that that great proof that Grant promised in his rage to give the world is the world atavism that is upon humanity now! I think that Grant in some inconceivable way has used his knowledge and his power to deflect or dampen the evolution vibrations coming toward earth from the sun, and that it is because of the absence of those vibrations that earth's life is slipping backward!" "But where will it stop?" I exclaimed. "It will not stop, Harker--this tremendous change has only begun. Man, the most recently evolved of all animals, is changing first, and will go back through troglodyte and ape to the forms before them, back through changing beast-forms. By then the other animals of earth will be changing also, thrown back along the evolutionary road, and that great atavism will continue until earth's life has all changed back into the first crude protoplasmic forms from which eons ago it sprung!" "But what can we do?" I cried. "There must be some way of stopping this!" "There is only one way," he said. "Grant is causing this great world atavism, is shutting off the sun's evolution vibrations from earth by projecting toward the sun, no doubt, a great dampening or neutralizing vibration that stifles them, annihilates them, at their source. We must find Grant's whereabouts, must destroy whatever apparatus he is using to do that!" "Yet if all are changing--we two also must be changing!" I exclaimed, and he nodded. "We two are already a little affected as all men are, more or less. Our lapses of memory, the difficulties we have in our work now, these things in the last days are the result of this world atavism in us, just as the crimes and accidents filling earth are. And we two must protect ourselves against this tremendous change, whatever we do, for on us depends the one chance of halting Grant's terrible work. The world will never believe that that dread work is really going on until it is too late, so you and I must not change!"