He stopped before the table and folded his arms across his chest.
"Everything is all right?" he asked. "The food is good and you are comfortable.”
"I'll say we are," said Herb.
"We are glad," said the Engineer. "We have tried so hard to make it easy for you. We are grateful that you came. Without you we never would have saved the universe. We never would have gone to Old Earth to find the secret of the energy, because we are not driven by restless imagination…
an imagination that will not let one rest until all has been explained.”
"We did what we could," rumbled Kingsley. "But all of the credit goes to Caroline. She was the one who worked out the mathematics for the creation of the hypersphere. She is the only one of us who would have been able to understand the equations relating to the energy and the inter-space.”
"You are right," said the Engineer, "and we thank Caroline especially. But the rest of you had your part to do and did it. It has made us very proud.”
"Proud," thought Gary. "Why should he be proud of anything we've done?”
The Engineer caught his thought.
"You ask why we should be proud," he said, "and I shall tell you why. We have watched and studied you closely since you came, debating whether you should be told what there is to tell. Under different circumstances we probably would allow you to depart without a word, but we have decided that you should know.”
"Know what?" thundered Kingsley.
The rest of them were silent, waiting.
"You are aware of how your solar system came into being?" asked the Engineer.
"Sure," said Kingsley. "There was a dynamic encounter between two stars.
Our Sun and an invader. About three billion years ago.”
"That invader," said the Engineer, "was the Sun of my people, a sun upon whose planets they had built a great civilization. My people knew well in advance that the collision would take place. Our astronomers discovered it first and after that our physicists and other scientists worked unceasingly in a futile effort either to avert the collision or to save what could be salvaged of our civilization when the encounter came. But century after century passed, with the two stars swinging closer and closer together.
There seemed no chance to save anything. We knew that the planets would be destroyed when the first giant tide from your Sun lashed out into space, that the resultant explosion would instantly destroy all life, that more than likely some of the planets would be totally destroyed.
"Our astronomers told us that our Sun would pass within two million miles of your star, that it would grip and drag far out in space some of the molten mass which your Sun would eject. In such a case we could see but little hope for the continuance of our civilization.”
His thoughts broke off, but no one said a word. All eyes were staring at the impassive metal face of the Engineer, waiting for him to continue.
"Finally, knowing that all their efforts were hopeless, my people constructed vast spaceships. Spaceships designed for living, for spending many years in space. And long before the collision occurred these ships were launched, carrying select groups of our civilization. Representative groups. Men of different sciences, with many records of our civilization.”
"The Ark," said Caroline, breathlessly. "The old story of the Ark.”
"I do not understand," said the Engineer.
"It doesn't matter," Caroline said. "Please go on.”
"From far out in space my people watched the two stars sweep past each other," said the Engineer. "It was as if the very heavens had exploded.
Great tongues of gas and molten matter speared out into space for millions of miles. They saw their own Sun drag a great mass of this stellar material for billions of miles out into space, strewing fragments of it en route.
They saw the gradual formation of the matter around your Sun and then, in time, they lost sight of it, for they were moving far out into space and the eruptive masses were settling down into a quieter state.
"For generation after generation, my people hunted for a new home. Men died and were given burial in space. Children were born and grew old in turn and died. For century after century the great ships voyaged from star to star, seeking a planetary system on which they might settle and make their homes.
One of the ships ran too close to a giant sun and was drawn to its death.
Another was split wide open when it collided with a dark star. But the rest braved the dangers and uncertainties of space, hunting, always hunting for a home.”
Another pause and still there were no questions. The Engineer went on:
"But no planetary system could be found. Only one star in every ten thousand has a planetary system, and they might have hunted for thousands of years without finding one.
"Finally, tired out with searching, they decided to return to your Sun. For while there was as yet no planetary system there, they knew that in ages to come there would be.”
The cold wind from space was flicking Gary in the face again. Could this tale the Engineer was telling be the truth? Was this why the Engineers had been signaling to Pluto?
The Engineer's thoughts were coming again.
"After many years they reached your Sun, and as they approached it they saw that planets were beginning to form around the centers of relatively dense matter. But there was something else. Swinging in a great, erratic orbit on the very edge of this nebula-like mass of raw planetary matter was a planet which they recognized. It was one of the planets of their old home star, fourth out from their Sun. It had been stolen from their Sun, now was swinging in an orbit of its own around its adopted star.
"My people had found a home at last. They descended to the surface of the planet to find that its atmosphere was gone, that all life had vanished, that all signs of civilization had been utterly wiped out.
"But they settled there and tried to rebuild, in part at least, the civilization that was their heritage. But it was a heart-rending task. For years and centuries they watched the slow formation of your solar system, saw the planets take on shape and slowly cool, waiting against the day when the race might occupy them. But the process was too slow. The work of building their civilization anew, the lack of atmosphere, the utter cold of space, were sapping the strength of my people. They foresaw the day when they would perish, when the last one of the race would die. But they planned for the future. They planned very carefully.
"They created us and gave us great ships and sent us out to try to find them new homes, hoping against hope that we would be able to find them a better home before it was too late. For out in space our ships separated, each traveling its own way, bent on a survey of the entire universe if such were necessary.”
"They created you?" asked Gary. "What do you mean? Aren't you direct descendants of that other race, the race of the invading star?”
"No," said the Engineer. "We are robots. But so carefully made, so well endowed with a semblance of life that we cannot be distinguished from authentic life forms. I sometimes think that in all these years we may have become life in all reality. I have thought about it a great deal, have hoped so much that we might in time become something more than mere machines.”
In the silence, Gary wondered why he had not guessed the truth before. It had been there to see. The form, the very actions of the Engineers were mechanistic. Once the Engineer had told them that he was bound by mechanistic precepts, that he and his fellows possessed almost no imagination. And machines, of course, would have no imagination.
But they had seemed so much like people, almost like human beings, that he had thought of them as actual life, but cast in metallic rather than protoplasmic form.
"Well, I'll be damned," said Kingsley.