Kingsley's hands were clenched and the bearish rumble was rising in his throat. "What about those others?" he asked. "All those others you brought here, along with us?”
"I sent them back," declared the Engineer. "They were no help to us.”
Gary felt the cold wind from space reach out and flick his face again. Man — and Man alone — stood between the universe and destruction. Little, puny Man. Man, with a body so delicate that he would be smashed to a bloody pulp if exposed unprotected to the naked gravity of this monstrous world. Little Man, groping toward the light, groping, feeling, not knowing where he went.
And then the blast of trumpets sounded in the air — the mythical trumpets calling men to crusade. The ringing peal that for the last ten thousand years has sent Man out to war, clutching at his sword.
"But why?" Kingsley was thundering.
"Because," said the Engineer, "we could not work with them. They could not work with one another. We could hardly understand them. Their process of intelligence was so unfathomable, their thought process so twisted, that understanding was almost impossible. How we ever made them understand sufficiently to bring them here, I will never know. Many times we almost despaired. Their minds are so different from ours, so very, very different.
Poles apart in thought.”
Why, sure, thought Gary, that would be the way one would expect to find it.
There was no such thing as parallel physical evolution, why should there be parallel mental evolution?
"Not that their mentality is not as valid as our intelligence," said the Engineer. "Not that they might not have even a greater grasp of science than we. But there could have been no co-ordination, no understanding for us to work together.”