>A 120,000-foot-tall visitor from another world comes to Earth and initially believes our planet must be devoid of life. But he keeps looking and when he eventually sees a moving speck in the Baltic Sea, he picks it up with his little finger and puts it on his thumbnail. He discovers it's a whale.
>He eventually spots another speck, similar in size, and with his magnifying glass, he realizes it's a boat filled with Arctic explorers... "after having commiserated [with] them for being so small, he asked if they had always been in that pitiful condition little better than annihilation, what they found to do on a globe that appeared to belong to whales, if they were happy if they increased and multiplied, whether they had souls, and a hundred other questions."
"The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another Planet" — Sarah Stewart Johnson (2020) p.150
>He eventually spots another speck, similar in size, and with his magnifying glass, he realizes it's a boat filled with Arctic explorers... "after having commiserated [with] them for being so small, he asked if they had always been in that pitiful condition little better than annihilation, what they found to do on a globe that appeared to belong to whales, if they were happy if they increased and multiplied, whether they had souls, and a hundred other questions."
"The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another Planet" — Sarah Stewart Johnson (2020) p.150