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.”
