"Not dead," said Gary. "Do you know where they are?”
"Yes," said the Engineer. "I do. Some of them are in this very room.”
"In this room,' began Caroline, and then she stopped as the significance of what the Engineer had said struck home.
"In this room," said Herb. "Hell, the only people who are in this room are us. And we aren't your people.”
"But you are," declared the Engineer. "There are differences, to be sure.
But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no doubt, your metabolism. And above all, the way your mind works.”
"That," said Caroline, "was why we could understand you and you could understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back to their homes.”
"Do you mean," asked Kingsley, "that we are the direct descendants of your people… that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no legends, no evidence pointing to such a genesis.”
"Not that," said the Engineer. "Not exactly that. But I suppose you have wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are many planetary systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets that are fully as old as yours that are barren of all life.”
"There is the spore theory," said Kingsley, and as he said the words he pounded the table with his massive fist.