"Not all of us," said the Engineer. "My people made only a few of us, a few to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But in each new creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”
"You yourself are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?" asked Caroline.
The Engineer nodded.
"You are eternal and immortal," suggested Kingsley.
"Not eternal nor immortal," said the Engineer. "But with proper care, replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accident, I will continue to function for many more billions of years to come.”
Billions of years, thought Gary. It was something a man could not imagine.
A human mind could not visualize a billion years or a thousand years or even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the figure four.
But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how come they had been unable to create a hypersphere, why hadn't they probed out beyond the universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for the arrival of the human mind?
"I have answered that before," said the Engineer, "and I will answer it again. It is because of imagination and vision… the ability to see beyond facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then attempt to make it so. That is something that we cannot do. We are chained to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the proven fact. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact, but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your question.”
Gary looked startled. He hadn't realized that the Engineer could read his undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.