Page 138 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Sorting the Sexes on Dulup

structure in different terrestrial organisms by proposing that evolution
on Earth (and elsewhere) began with the arrival of proto-DNA
molecules from outer space. Supposedly a dying race in a distant star
system wished to perpetuate itself, but lacked the means to search the
galaxies for another planet similar to its own doomed world. Instead,
it launched large numbers of stripped-down chromosomal packages
toward regions of space likely to contain planets hospitable to some
form of life. A certain percentage, after lightyears of perilous travel,
would land intact on target and begin replicating and adapting by
natural selection.
Predictably, none of the more complex organisms to arise would
resemble the ones who had directed the seeding eons before, but that
would not deter the organizers of such a last-ditch scheme to
postpone their collective mortality. No matter how the new species
evolved down different paths, however, their elementary genetic
blueprint would remain the same. The most fundamental event in
ontogeny had to reflect the beginnings of phylogeny. That provided an
explanation for the common configurations found in all cell nuclei on
Earth.
The argument’s main flaw, of course, was that it could not be
proved. Experiments with naturally-occurring compounds indicated
that life could easily have begun as a random chemical event in the
primeval oceans of a wide variety of planetary types. Scientists
regarded the theory of directed panspermia as an unnecessary and
complex speculation about a process much more simply accounted
for.
Along with Occam’s Razor, the argument of reductio ad absurdum was
applied by the theory’s critics. How, they asked, did life then originate
on the home world? By another, earlier dispersion of intergalactic
genetic code? The question was unanswerable, begging infinite
regression. The final blow came with the first discoveries of
extraterrestrial life. Kaga had glanced through a biochemical report
from one of these early expeditions. There, as a footnote to a
description of the alien cell structure, the author stated, “…and the
presence of fifty-two chromosomes provides a definitive disproof, if
one were still needed, of the old theory of directed panspermia.”
After that, the Great Index gave a rapidly-dwindling number of
references to the subject. Kaga had returned to his lecture preparation,

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