"The Hellhounds know," said Tommy. "They know how to navigate in the inter-space.”
"But they wouldn't tell us," said Gary. "They don't want the universe to be saved. They want it to be wrecked so they can build a new world out of the wreckage.”
"It might be light, or matter, or heat, or motion, or it might be something that's entirely different," said Caroline. "It's not impossible it would be something else, some new fearful form of energy with which we are entirely unacquainted. Conditions would be just as different out in inter-space as fourth-dimensional conditions differ from our three-dimensional world.”
"And to be able to control it we would have to have some idea as to what it is," said Kingsley.
"Or what it would become when it entered the hyperspace," said Gary. "It might be one kind of energy out there, an entirely different kind when it entered our universe.”
"The people of the other universe don't seem to know," Tommy pointed out.
"Even if they are the ones who found out about the universes drifting together. They don't seem to be able to find out too much about it.”
Gary glanced around the laboratory, a mighty vaulted room that glowed with soft, white light… a room with gleaming tiers of apparatus, with mighty machines, great engines purring with tremendous power, uncanny structures that almost defied description.
"The funniest thing about the whole business," he declared, "is why the Engineers themselves can't make any progress. Why do they have to call us in? With all of this equipment, with the knowledge they already hold, it ought to be a cinch for them to do almost anything.".
"There's something queer here," Herb declared. "I've been snooping around a bit and this city is enough to set you batty. There isn't any traffic in the streets. You can travel for hours and you don't see a single Engineer.