"Once returned to the X Ecliptic, Cragin, I shall set the vibrokey adrift within its circumference, to set up a vibration field which will negate any form of other energy, including counter-vibrations, and which will mean complete destruction to any form of matter. I intend to activate the key from the machine-planet itself with nothing more complex than a simple radar beam, after I have restored the solar system to its original values." "That'll mean everything within the Ecliptic will be destroyed; the machine-planet; you too. You're telling me you don't mean to come back. I can't let--" It was as though she was totally deaf to each word he said. "I don't believe in the Owners as masters of all, Patrolman, despite their extreme advances in the realm of both pure and applied science. You do. You do, because they symbolize the scientific ultimate.... But science was only ever meant to be a useful tool for men. Not their God." Cragin felt funny inside. "You'll die," he said like a child. "But you shall not. You shall live. Such a thing," she said, "has been done before for the peoples of Earth. "Now go, Cragin." There was nothing else to do. He paused. His wide shoulders sagged a little; he was not given to long talk, and he had discerned the signs of restlessness among a few of the impassive assemblage. Others were more kind. Little else, perhaps, could have been expected. "As I confessed when I began," his quiet voice resumed, "I do not have many of the scientific answers you want. Hints that Lin Griffin gave me before her last trip beyond the Barrier--they are all I have to explain why the solar system is as you see it now; altered, changed, alive. "Unless, gentlemen, you would accept a better answer; one that Lin Griffin herself might have given you. She would tell you that there is more to the Universe--the macrocosmo and the microcosmo as well--than Man has yet measured. To speak of Universe means, gentlemen, to speak not only of its known contents, but of its unknown as well, for it is eternally the container of both. "Logically, I should have met death in my attempt at escape. Logically, no human woman could have endured what Lin Griffin endured, nor conceived the strategy with which the machine-planet was erased from existence. According to the logic of the last five centuries of human culture, what Lin Griffin did, how she thought, were both impossibilities. "Yet Earth is green again. "So when next you seek to plumb the Universe, gentlemen, and to equate yet one more of its myriad unknown quantities, think again of the half-gods, such as the Owners--such as we ourselves strove so mightily to be--who would equate them all. For it is always inevitable, gentlemen that soon or late, though the Universe remains, the half-gods go. "There are some, I believe, who would seek too high an office. You--you may thank God, gentlemen, for the few who will not let them."