"Numbers," said Herb. "Just like a penitentiary.”
"If it is necessary for you to designate me," said the Engineer, "my number is 1824. I should have told you sooner. I am sorry I forgot.”
They halted before a massive door and the Engineer sounded a high-pitched thought-wave that beat fantastically against their minds. The great door slid back into the wall and they walked into a room that swept away in lofty reaches of vast distances, with a high-vaulted ceiling that formed a sky-like cup above them.
The room was utterly empty of any sort of furniture. Just empty space that stretched away to the dim, far walls of soaring white. But in its center was a circular elevation of that same white stone, a dais-like structure that reared ten feet or more above the white-paved floor.
Upon the dais stood several of the Engineers and around them were grouped queer, misshapen things, nightmares snatched from some book of olden horrors, monstrosities that made Gary's blood run cold as be gazed upon them.
He felt Caroline's fingers closing on his arm. "Gary," her whisper was thin and weak, "what are they?”
"Those are the ones that we have called," said the Engineer. "The ones who have come so far to help us in our fight.”
"They look like something a man would want to step on," said Herb, and there was a horrible loathing in his words.
Gary stared at them, fascinated by their very repulsiveness. Lords of the universe, he thought. These are the things that represent the cream of the universe's intelligence. These things that looked, as Herb had said, like something you would want to step on.
The Engineer was walking straight ahead, toward the wide, shallow steps that led up to the dais.