He had said a weapon. He had said there was a weapon…
"They could make themselves better than they were originally," said Trevor. "They could improve upon the model. They could build a super-race, a mutant race, call it what you will…"
Only one weapon, he had said. And you can't fight with just one cannon.
Sutton put a hand up to his forehead, rubbed hard against his brow.
"Sure," said Trevor. "You can go nuts thinking about it. I have. You can conjure up all sorts of possibilities. They could push us out. The new pushing out the old."
"The race would be human still," said Sutton.
"We built slowly, Sutton," Trevor said. "The old race. The biological race. We came up from the dawn of Man, we came up from chipped flints and fist ax, from the cave and the tree top nest. We've built too slowly and painfully and bloodily to have our heritage taken from us by something to which that slowness and the pain and blood would mean not a thing at all."
One gun, Sutton thought. But he had been wrong. There were a thousand guns, a million guns, wheeling into line. A million guns to save destiny for all life that was or would be. Now or a million billion years from now.
"I suppose," he said, shakily, "that you feel now I should throw in with you."
"I want you," said Trevor, "to find out for me where the Cradle is."