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.
