"By Lord, that's it," he shouted. "The spore theory. Your people out on Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for habitation, knowing that they faced the end… couldn't they have insured life on the young planets by the development and planting of life spores?”
"That," said the Engineer, "is what I thought. That is the theory that I hold.”
"But if that were the case," objected Caroline, "why should we have developed as we did? Why should a life form almost duplicating the Engineers' people have developed? Surely they couldn't have planted determinants in the spore… they couldn't have seen or planned that far ahead. They couldn't possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race re-creating their own!”
"They were a very ancient people," said the Engineer, "and a very clever people. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”
"Interesting," said Herb. "But what does it make us?”
"It makes you the heir of my people," said the Engineer. "It means that what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live here. Also that whatever the other Engineers may have found or done is yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy and the satisfaction of knowing that we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was handed to us.”
They sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.
"You mean," asked Kingsley, "that you will rebuild this city and hand it over to the people of our solar system?”
"That is what I mean," said the Engineer. "It is yours. I have no doubt that you descended in some manner from my people. Since you came here I have studied you closely. Time and again I have seen little actions and mannerisms, little mental quirks that mark you as being in some way connected with the people who created us.”
Gary tried to reason it out. The Engineers were handing the human race a heritage from an ancient people, handing them a city and a civilization already built, a city and a civilization such as the race itself would not achieve for the next many thousand years.