"We're alone, Gary," she said. "The human race stands all alone. No other race has the balance that we have. Other races may be as great, but they do not have the balance. Look at the Engineers. Materialistic, mechanical to a point where they cannot think except along mechanistic lines. And the voice. It goes on the opposite tangent. No mechanics at all, just mentality. An overwhelming and an awful mentality. And the Hellhounds.
Savage killers. Bending every knowledge to the business of killing.
Egomaniacs who would destroy the universe to achieve their own supremacy.”
They stood silent, side by side. The great red sun was nearing the western horizon. The goblins scuttered through the mushrooms, chirping and hooting.
A disgusting thing, a couple of feet long, crawled out of the slimy waters of the bog, reared itself and stared at them, then lumbered around and slid into the water once again.
"I'll start a fire," said Gary. "Night will be coming soon. We'll have to keep the fire going once we get it started.
I only have a few matches.”
"Maybe we can eat the mushrooms," said Caroline. "Some of them may be poisonous," Gary told her. "We'll have to watch the goblins, eat what they eat. No absolute guarantee, of course, that what they eat wouldn't poison us, but it's the only way we have of knowing. We'll eat just a little at a time, only one of us eating…”
"The goblins! Do you think they will bother us?”
"Not likely," Gary told her, but he wasn't as confident as he made it sound.