Laird amends his description from "genie in a bottle" to "ghost in a bottle." This is even more appropriate. What Laird had released was the technologically recorded personality of a long dead humanoid being. That is a respectable scientific rationale for the idea of a ghost. (In Biblical language, a humanoid being is "one like a (son of) man," but we do not go down that road here.)
Then Anderson, through Laird, casually introduces a clever sf idea that I had encountered on my first reading of this part of the story but, of course, had completely forgotten until I started to reread with a view to blogging. I suppose anyone with the right kind of imagination can do this. Start with a familiar question like "What killed the dinosaurs?" Then think of an unexpected but logical and meaningful science fictional answer.
Thus, in an Isaac Asimov short story, a drunk claims to be a time traveler although he might be a delusional drunk. Asked "What killed the dinosaurs?," he replies, "The little ones," then elucidates, "The little ones with guns killed the big ones, then each other!" (All my quotes here are from memory but the point of such a story is that its essential message can be retold in this way.)
Thus, Laird informs us that an ancient humanoid race "'...had a policy of regularly exterminating the great reptiles of terrestroid planets with an eye to later colonization...'" Well, they would do, wouldn't they?
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