"Logically, I should have met death in my attempt at escape. Logically, no human woman could have endured what Lin Griffin endured, nor conceived the strategy with which the machine-planet was erased from existence. According to the logic of the last five centuries of human culture, what Lin Griffin did, how she thought, were both impossibilities.
"Yet Earth is green again.
"So when next you seek to plumb the Universe, gentlemen, and to equate yet one more of its myriad unknown quantities, think again of the half-gods, such as the Owners—such as we ourselves strove so mightily to be—who would equate them all. For it is always inevitable, gentlemen that soon or late, though the Universe remains, the half-gods go.
"There are some, I believe, who would seek too high an office. You—you may thank God, gentlemen, for the few who will not let them."
Then Cragin's voice at last fell silent, and silently, he stepped from the podium.
The time was five o'clock, Sunday, June 9, 3024, and from somewhere far off there was the gentle sound of a tolling bell.