"Wait," counseled Gary. "Let us wait a while. We can always go. These things are intelligent. They have to be, since they were among the ones the Engineers called in.”
He stepped out from the ship two slow paces and called.
"Hello," he called.
They stopped their clucking and their running and stood and looked at him out of slitted eyes.
"We are friends," said Gary. They didn't move a muscle.
Gary held up his empty hands, palms outward in the human gesture of peace.
"We are friends," he said.
The silence was on the world again — the dreadful, empty silence. The goblins were gone.
Slowly Gary came back to the ship.
"It doesn't work," he said. "I had no reason to believe it would.”