When human observers descend on a foreign planet, they may find it inhabited by organisms in an oven more advanced stage of social cooperation. Perhaps its moving and parts will be entirely secondary, like the machines of man. Perhaps the parts that are really alive will be even more helpless mere clots of nerve tissue lying motionless and sedentary far underground. Perhaps this organic stuff. having served its creative purpose will have withered away, leaving the machines that it has created in possession of the planet.