"Other beings in the other universe told us," said the Engineer. "Beings that know much more in many lines of research than we shall ever know.
Beings we have been talking to for these many years.”
"Then you knew for many years that the collision would take place," said Kingsley.
"Yes, we knew," said the Engineer. "And we tried hard, the two peoples; We of this universe and those of the other universe. We tried hard to stop it, but there seemed no way. And so at last we agreed to summon, each from his own universe, the best minds we could find. Hoping they perhaps could find a way… find a way where we had failed.”
"But we aren't the best minds of the universe," said Gary. "We must be far down the scale. Our intelligence, comparatively, must be very low. We are just beginning. You know more than we can hope to know for centuries to come.”
"That may be so," agreed the Engineer, "but you have something else. Or you may have something else. You may have a courage that we do not possess. You may have an imagination that we could not summon. Each people must have something to contribute. Remember, we had no art, we could not think up a painting; our minds are different. It is so very important that the two universes do not collide.”
"What would happen," asked Kingsley, "if they did collide?”
"The laws of the five-dimensional inter-space," explained the Engineer, "are not the laws of our four-dimensional universe. Different results would occur under similar conditions. The two universes will not actually collide. They will be destroyed before they collide.”
"Destroyed before they collide?" asked Kingsley.
"Yes," said the Engineer. "The two universes will 'rub,' come so close together that they will set up a friction, or a frictional stress, in the five-dimensional inter-space. Under the inter-space laws this friction would create new energy… raw energy… stuff that had never existed before. Each of the universes will absorb some of that energy, drink it up.