Herb polished the last chicken bone methodically and sighed. "That's the best meal I ever ate," he said.
They sat at the table in the apartment the Engineers had arranged for them.
It had escaped the general destruction of the Hellhound attack, although the tower above it had been obliterated by a hydrogen bomb.
Gary filled his wineglass again and leaned back in his chair.
"I guess our job is done here," he said. "Maybe we'll be going home in just a little while.”
"Home?" asked Caroline. "You mean the Earth?”
Gary nodded.
"I have almost forgotten the Earth," she said. "It has been so long since I have seen the Earth. I suppose it has changed a great deal since I saw it last.”
"Perhaps it has," Gary told her, "although there are some things that never change. The smell of fresh-plowed fields and the scent of hayfields at harvest time and the beauty of trees against the skyline at evening.”
"Just a poet," said Herb. "Just a blasted poet.”
"Maybe there will be things I won't recognize," said Caroline. "Things that will be so different.”
"I'll show you the Earth," said Gary. "I'll set you straight on everything.”
"What bothers me," declared Kingsley, "are those people from the other universe. It's just like letting undesirable elements come in under our immigration schedule on Earth. You can't tell what sort of people they are.
They might be life forms that are inimical to us.”
"Or," suggested Caroline, "they might be possessors of great scientific accomplishments and a higher culture. They might add much to this universe.”
"There isn't much danger from them," said Gary. "The Engineers are taking care of them. They're keeping them cooped up in the hypersphere they used to cross interspace until suitable places for their settlement can be found. The Engineers will keep an eye on them.”
Metallic feet grated on the floor and Engineer 1824 came across the room toward the table.
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.
"Boy," said Herb, "you're topnotch robots, if I do say so.”
Gary snarled at him across the table. "Pipe down," he warned.
"Maybe you aren't robots anymore," Caroline was saying. "Maybe through all these years you have become real entities. Your creators must have given you electrochemical brains, and that, after all, is what the human brain amounts to. In time those brains would become real, almost as efficient, probably in some instances even more efficient than a protoplasmic brain.
And brain power, the ability to think and reason, seems to be all that counts when everything is balanced out.”
"Thank you," said the Engineer. "Thank you very much. You are so kind to say so. That is what I have tried to tell myself.”
"Look here," said Gary. "It really doesn't matter, does it? I mean, whether you are robots or independent entities. You serve the same purpose, you follow the same dictates of conscience, you create the same destiny as things that move and act through the very gift of life. In many ways, to my mind, a robotic existence might be preferable to a human existence.”
"Perhaps it doesn't really matter," agreed the Engineer. "I told you once that we were a proud people, that we had inherited a great trust, that we had carried out that trust. Pride might have kept us from telling you what we were, but now I am glad I have, for the rest will be easier to understand.”
"The rest," said Tommy in surprise. "Is there more?”
"Much more," said the Engineer.
"Wait a second," rumbled Kingsley. "Do you mean that all you Engineers were created by a race that flourished three billion years ago, that you have lived through that space of time?”
"Not all of us," said the Engineer. "My people made only a few of us, a few to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But in each new creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”
"You yourself are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?" asked Caroline.
The Engineer nodded.
"You are eternal and immortal," suggested Kingsley.
"Not eternal nor immortal," said the Engineer. "But with proper care, replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accident, I will continue to function for many more billions of years to come.”
Billions of years, thought Gary. It was something a man could not imagine.
A human mind could not visualize a billion years or a thousand years or even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the figure four.
But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how come they had been unable to create a hypersphere, why hadn't they probed out beyond the universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for the arrival of the human mind?
"I have answered that before," said the Engineer, "and I will answer it again. It is because of imagination and vision… the ability to see beyond facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then attempt to make it so. That is something that we cannot do. We are chained to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the proven fact. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact, but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your question.”
Gary looked startled. He hadn't realized that the Engineer could read his undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.
"Did you ask him something?”
"I guess I did," said Gary.
"Did you ever hear from the other Engineers?" asked Kingsley. "The ones who were in the other ships?”
"No," said the Engineer, "we never did. Presumably they have by now found other planets where they are doing the same work as we. We have tried to get in touch with them, but we have never been able to do it.”
"What is your work?" asked Gary.
"Why," said Caroline, "you should know that, Gary. It is to prepare a place for the Engineers' people to live. Isn't that right?" she asked the Engineer.
"It is right," said the Engineer.
"But," protested Gary, "those people are dead. There is no sign of them in our solar system and they certainly didn't start out looking for some other planet. They died off on Pluto.”
He remembered the chiseled masonry that Ted Smith had found. The hands of the Engineers' creators had cut those stones, billions of years ago… and today they still were on Pluto's surface, mute testimony to the greatness of a race that had died while the solar system's planets still were cooling off.
"They are not dead," said the Engineer, and his thoughts seemed to have a particular warmth in them.
"Not dead," said Gary. "Do you know where they are?”
"Yes," said the Engineer. "I do. Some of them are in this very room.”
"In this room,' began Caroline, and then she stopped as the significance of what the Engineer had said struck home.
"In this room," said Herb. "Hell, the only people who are in this room are us. And we aren't your people.”
"But you are," declared the Engineer. "There are differences, to be sure.
But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no doubt, your metabolism. And above all, the way your mind works.”
"That," said Caroline, "was why we could understand you and you could understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back to their homes.”
"Do you mean," asked Kingsley, "that we are the direct descendants of your people… that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no legends, no evidence pointing to such a genesis.”
"Not that," said the Engineer. "Not exactly that. But I suppose you have wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are many planetary systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets that are fully as old as yours that are barren of all life.”
"There is the spore theory," said Kingsley, and as he said the words he pounded the table with his massive fist.
"By Lord, that's it," he shouted. "The spore theory. Your people out on Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for habitation, knowing that they faced the end… couldn't they have insured life on the young planets by the development and planting of life spores?”
"That," said the Engineer, "is what I thought. That is the theory that I hold.”
"But if that were the case," objected Caroline, "why should we have developed as we did? Why should a life form almost duplicating the Engineers' people have developed? Surely they couldn't have planted determinants in the spore… they couldn't have seen or planned that far ahead. They couldn't possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race re-creating their own!”
"They were a very ancient people," said the Engineer, "and a very clever people. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”
"Interesting," said Herb. "But what does it make us?”
"It makes you the heir of my people," said the Engineer. "It means that what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live here. Also that whatever the other Engineers may have found or done is yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy and the satisfaction of knowing that we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was handed to us.”
They sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.
"You mean," asked Kingsley, "that you will rebuild this city and hand it over to the people of our solar system?”
"That is what I mean," said the Engineer. "It is yours. I have no doubt that you descended in some manner from my people. Since you came here I have studied you closely. Time and again I have seen little actions and mannerisms, little mental quirks that mark you as being in some way connected with the people who created us.”
Gary tried to reason it out. The Engineers were handing the human race a heritage from an ancient people, handing them a city and a civilization already built, a city and a civilization such as the race itself would not achieve for the next many thousand years.
But there was something wrong, something that didn't click.
He remembered Herb's comment that the city looked like a place that was waiting for someone who had never come. Herb had hit upon the exact situation. This city had been built for a greater race, for a race that probably had died long before the first stone had been laid in place. A race that must have been so far advanced that it would make the human race look savage in comparison.
He tried to imagine what effect such a city and such a civilization would have upon the human race. He tried to picture the greed and hate, the political maneuvering, the fierce trade competition, the social inequality and its resultant class struggle… all of it inherent in humanity… in this white city under the three suns. Somehow the two didn't go together.
"We can't do it," he said. "We aren't ready yet. We'd just make a mess of things. We'd have too much power, too much leisure, too many possessions.
It would smash our civilization and leave us one in its stead that we could not manage. We haven't put our own civilization upon a basis that could coincide with what is here.”
Kingsley stared at him.
"But think of the scientific knowledge! Think of the cultural advantages!”
he shouted.
"Gary is right," said Caroline. "We aren't ready yet.”
"Sometime," said Gary. "Sometime in the future. When we have wired out some of the primal passions. When we have solved the great social and economic problems that plague us now. When we have learned to observe the Golden Rule… when we have lost some of the lustiness of our youth. Sometime we will be ready for this city.”
He remembered the ancient man they had met on Old Earth. He had said something about the rest of the race going away, to a far star, to a place that had been prepared for them.
That place the old man had spoken of, he realized now, was this very city.
And that meant that the Old Earth they had visited had been the real Earth… no shadow planet, but the actuality existing in the future. And the old man had spoken as if the rest of the race had gone to the city but a short while earlier. He had said that he refused to go, that he couldn't leave the Earth.
The time would be long, then. Longer than he thought. A long and bitter wait for the day when the race might safely enter into a better world, into a heritage left to them by a race that died when the solar system was born.
"You understand?" he asked the Engineer.
"I understand," the Engineer replied. "It means that we must wait for the masters that we worked for… that it will be long before they come to us.”
"You waited three billion years," Gary reminded him. "Wait a few million more for us. It won't take us long. There's a lot of good in the human race, but we aren't ready yet.”
"I think you're crazy," said Kingsley, bitterly.
"Can't you see," asked Caroline, "what the human race right now would do to this city?”
"But magnetic power," wailed Kingsley, "and all those other things. Think of how they would help us. We need power and tools and all the knowledge we can get.”
"You may take certain information with you," said the Engineer. "Whatever you think is wise. We will watch you and talk with you throughout the years, and it may be there will be times that you will wish our help.”
Gary rose from the table. His hand fell on the Engineer's broad metal shoulder.
"And in the meantime there is work for you," he said. "A city to rebuild.
The development of power stations to use the fifth-dimensional energy.
Learning how to control and use that energy. Using it to control the universe. The day will come, unless we do something about it, that our universe will run down, will die the heat death. But with the eternal power of the inter-space, we can shape and control the universe, mold it to our needs.”
It seemed that the metal man drew himself even more erect.
"It will be done," he said.
"We must work, not for Man alone, but for the entire universe," said Gary.
"That is right," said the Engineer.
Kingsley heaved himself to his feet.
"We should be leaving for Pluto," he said. "Our work here is done.”
He stepped up to the Engineer. "Before we go," he said, "I would like to shake your hand.”
"I do not understand," said the Engineer.
"It is a mark of respect," Caroline explained. "Assurance that we are friends. A sort of way to seal a pact.”
"That is fine," said the Engineer. He thrust out his hand. And then his thoughts broke. For the first time since they had met him, in this same room, there was emotion in his voice.
"We are so glad," he said. "We can talk to you and not feel so alone.
Perhaps someday I can come and visit you.”
"Be sure to do that," bellowed Herb. "I'll show you all the sights.”
"Are you coming, Gary?" asked Caroline, but Gary didn't answer.
Some day Man would come home… home to this wondrous city of white stone, to marvel at its breathtaking height, at its vastness of design, at its far-flung symbol of achievement reared against an alien sky. Home to a planet where every power and every luxury and every achievement would be his. Home to a place that had grown out of a dream… the great dream of a greater people who had died, but in dying had passed along the heritage of their life to a new-spawned solar system. And more than that, had left another heritage in the hands and brains of good stewards who, in time, would give it up, in fulfillment of their charge.
But this city and this proud achievement were not for him, nor for Caroline, nor Kingsley, nor Herb, nor Tommy. Nor for the many generations that would come after them. Not so long as Man carried the old dead weight of primal savagery and hate, not so long as he was mean and vicious and petty, could he set foot here.
Before he reached this city, Man would travel long trails of bitter dust, would know the sheer triumphs of the star-flung road. Galaxies would write new alphabets across the sky, and the print of many happenings would be etched upon the tape of time. New things would come and hold their sway and die, Great leaders would stand up and have their day and shuffle off into oblivion and silence. Creeds would rise and flourish and be sifting dust between the worlds. The night watch of stars would see great deeds, applaud great happenings, witness great defeat, weep over bitter sorrows.
"Just think," said Caroline. "We are going home.”
"Yes," said Gary. "At last, we're going home.”