things are
just thoughts in God's Mind. That makes us both the same then and there
is no argument about who is God!"

* * * * *

Harold kicked a lump of moist earth absently.

"It seems to me, Gordon," he said cautiously, "that you are biting the
air with your teeth. If there are intelligent beings on Mars they will
be aware of us, and make themselves known. If for no other reason they
will do that to keep us from destroying them."

Gordon stood up and arched his back. He placed the garden trowel and
gloves in the hip pocket of his coveralls and tapped his pipe on the
heel of his shoe.

"You are assuming," he said, "that such beings can find a way to
communicate with us. But have you thought of the possibility that if
their abilities to reason are undetectable to us, by the same token they
might not be aware we are intelligent? A mad bull in a pasture can think
after a fashion, but would you try to reason with him? You would run if
he charged you, and if he caught up with you and mauled you it would
never occur to you to say, 'Look here, old boy. Let's talk this thing
over first.'"

Both men laughed. Gordon started walking along the row he was standing
in, toward the house. Harold kept pace.

"I see your point," he agreed.

"There are so many things we assume unconsciously when we speculate on
the possibilities of intelligent life on Mars," Gordon went on, stooping
over to pull a weed he had missed in his earlier weeding. "Rate of
thinking is most probably a function of the material organism. Some
other thinking creature might think faster or slower--perhaps so much so
that we couldn't follow them even if we could tune in on their thoughts
directly. Imagine a mind so ponderous that it takes a year for it to
think as much as we do in a minute! Speed wouldn't necessarily have to
be a function of size, either. Something incredibly small might take
ages to think a simple thought. Have you ever heard the German tale
called The Three Sleepers, Harold?"

"No, I haven't," Harold replied.

* * * * *

"Well, in a small town in Germany there were three men so fat that they
could barely walk. They spent nearly all their time sleeping. The only
trouble was that every day or so someone would disturb them by singing
or walking by, or some other trivial thing that is always happening in a
small town, no matter how dead it is.

"One time when they were distur