"We killed them?" Doc said. "You're crazy!"
"You'd better explain yourself, Hotaling," the skipper said. "Stop talking in riddles."
"Aye, aye, sir. When I say we killed them, I don't mean directly or deliberately. And of course I don't mean killed, since they were all androids. But we de-activated them by triggering some mechanism when our ship came to the planetoid their masters had left."
"Hold on," the skipper said. "Now you're going too fast. Since they were androids, and were created, the important thing is to find out where these creators went—and whether it was last month or ten thousand years ago."
Ernest spoke to the couple.
"It was a long time before we came," he translated. "They don't know how long—their feeling of time is vague. They kept no records of their own and because there were no children they have no conception of generations. They were created adults, in various stages of maturity. As for who the others were—they were the Masters, with a capital M; gods, almost, in their view, with absolute power over them."
"Where did they go?" the skipper asked. "And why? Let's try to get more facts and less philosophy."
"They went looking for a better world, where conditions for life would be more favorable. Whether that means for the Masters or for their creations isn't clear. Nobody consulted them. They'd been given experimental life, only it was more a loan than a gift, to be foreclosed if they displeased the Masters or in any way threatened their experiment.
"The Masters were like themselves in appearance. Whether they were air breathers isn't clear because these two have no conception of what breathing is. The Masters did wear elaborate costumes but whether these were breathing suits or merely the trappings of their superiority is a question.
"I asked if the Masters were trying to create a new set of bodies for themselves, possibly because their own were breaking down or were diseased. The answer to that, like the answer to so many other questions, is that they simply don't know."