“I think,” I said cautiously, “that we face an evolution of highly intelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from those through which mankind ascended. These half-human, highly developed batrachians they call the Akka prove that evolution in these caverned spaces has certainly pursued one different path than on Earth. The Englishman, Wells, wrote an imaginative and very entertaining book concerning an invasion of Earth by Martians, and he made his Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothing inherently improbable in Wells’ choice. Man is the ruling animal of Earth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under another series spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become the dominant race.