Kingsley leaped to his feet.
"They are like the voices I heard before," she said. "But different, somehow. More kindly… but terrifying, even so. They think they are talking to someone else. To a people they talked to here on Pluto many years ago… I can't know how many, but it was a long, long time ago.”
Gary shook his head in bewilderment and Kingsley rumbled in his throat.
"At first," Caroline whispered, "they referred to us by some term that had affection in it… actual kinfolk affection, as if there were blood ties between them and the things they were trying to talk to here. The things that must have disappeared centuries ago.”
"Longer ago than that," Kingsley told her. "That the thought bombardment is directed at this spot would indicate the things they are trying to reach had established some sort of a center, perhaps a city, on this site. There are no indications of former occupancy. If anyone was ever here, every sign of them has been swept away. And here there is no wind, no weather, nothing to erode, nothing to blow away. A billion years would be too short a time — ”
"But who are they?" asked Gary. "These ones you were talking to. Did they tell you that?”
She shook her head. "I couldn't exactly understand. As near as I could come, they called themselves the Cosmic Engineers. 'That's a very poor translation. Not sufficient at all. There is a lot more to it.”
She paused as if to marshal a definition. "As if they were self-appointed guardians of the entire universe," she explained. "Champions of all things that live within its space-time frame. And something is threatening the universe. Some mighty force out beyond the universe out where there's neither space nor time.”
"They want our help," she said.
"But how can we help them?" asked Herb.