I began to feel uneasy. Clearly the Morlock felt he had to convince me of something.

He continued to discuss the goals of the Constructors. “You see, a species cannot survive for long if it continues to carry around the freight of antique motivations that you bear. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said drily.

“I mean, of course, territoriality, aggression, the violent settlement of disputes… Imperialist designs and the like become unimaginable when technology advances past a certain point. With weapons of the power of die Zeitmaschine’s Carolinum Bomb — or worse — things must change. A man of your own age said that the invention of atomic weapons had changed everything — except Humanity’s way of thinking.”

“I can’t argue with your thesis,” I said, “for it does seem that — as you say — the limits of Humanity, the vestiges of old Adam, were at last enough to bring us down… But what of the goals of your metal super-men, the Constructors?”

He hesitated. “In a sense a species, taken as a whole, does not have goals. Did men have goals in common, in your day, save to keep on breathing, eating, and reproducing?”

I grunted. “Goals shared with the lowest bacillus.”

“But; despite this complexity, one can — I think — classify the goals of a species, depending on its state of advancement, and the resources it requires as a consequence.”

A Pre-Industrial civilization, Nebogipfel said — I thought of England in the Middle Ages — needs raw materials: for food, clothing, warmth and so forth.

But once Industry has developed, materials can be substituted for each other, to accommodate the shortage of a particular resource. And so the key requirements then are for capital and labor. Such a state would describe my own century, and I saw how one could indeed regard, in a generic sense, the activities of mankind in that benighted century as driven in the large by competition for those two key resources: labor and capital.

“But there is a stage beyond the Industrial,” Nebogipfel said. “It is the Post-Industrial. My own species had entered this stage — we had been there for the best part of half a million years, on your arrival — but it is a stage without an end.”

“Tell me what it means. If capital and labor are no longer the determinants of social evolution…”

“They are not, because Information can compensate for their lack. Do you see? Thus, the transmutating Floor of the Sphere by means of the knowledge invested in its structure — could compensate for any shortage of resource, beyond primal energy…”

“And so you are saying that these Constructor — given their fragmentation into a myriad complex factions — are, at base, driving for more knowledge?”

“Information — its gathering, interpretation and storage — is the ultimate goal of all intelligent life.” He regarded me somberly. “We had understood that, and had begun to translate the resources of the solar system to that goal; you men of the nineteenth century had barely begun to grope your way to that realization.”

“Very well,” I said. “So, we must ask, what is it that limits the gathering of Information?” I peered out at the enclosed stars. “These Universal Constructors have already fenced off much of this Galaxy, it seems to me.”

“And there are more Galaxies beyond,” Nebogipfel said. “A million million star systems, as large as this one.”

“Perhaps, then, even now, the Constructors’ great sail-ships are drifting out, like dandelion seeds, to whatever lies beyond the Galaxy… Perhaps, in the end, the Constructors can conquer all of this material universe, and turn it over to the storage and classification of Information which you describe. It would be a universe become a great Library — the greatest imaginable, infinite in scope and depth—”

“It is a grand project indeed — and, yes, the bulk of the energy of the Constructors is devoted to that goal: and to studies of how intelligence can survive into the far fixture — when Mind has encompassed the universe, and when all the stars have died, and the planets have drifted from their suns… and matter itself begins to decay.

“But you are wrong: the universe is not infinite. And as such, it is not enough. Not for some factions of the Constructors. Do you see? This universe is bounded in Space and Time; it began at a fixed period in the past, and it must finish with the final decay of matter, at the ultimate end of time…

“Some of the Constructors — a faction — are not prepared to accept this finitude,” Nebogipfel said. “They will not countenance any limits to knowledge. A finite universe is not enough for them! — and they are preparing to do something about it.”

That sent a chill — of pure, unadulterated awe — prickling over my scalp. I looked out at the hidden stars. This was a species which was already Immortal, which had conquered a Galaxy, which would absorb a universe — how could their ambitions stretch further still?

And, I wondered grimly, how could it involve us?

Nebogipfel, still locked to his eye-scope, rubbed his face with the back of his hand, in the manner of a cat, removing fragments of food from the hair about his chin. “I do not yet have a full understanding of this scheme of theirs,” he said. “It is to do with time travel, and Plattnerite; and — I think — the concept of the Multiplicity of Histories. The data is complex — so bright…” I thought this was an extraordinary word to use; for the first time it occurred to me what courage and intellectual strength it must take for the Morlock to descend into the Constructors’ Information Sea — to confront that ocean of blazing Ideas.

He said, “A fleet of Ships is being constructed — huge Time Machines, far beyond the capabilities of your century or mine. With these, the Constructors intend — I think — to penetrate the past. The deep past.”

“How far back? Beyond the Palaeocene?”

He regarded me. “Oh, much further than that.”

“Well. And what of us, Nebogipfel? What is this ’proposition’ you have?”

“Our patron — the Constructor here with us — is of this faction. He was able to detect our approach through time — I cannot give you details; they are very advanced — they were able to sense our coming, on our crude Time-Car, up from the Palaeocene. And so, he was here to greet us.”

Our Constructor had been able to follow our progress, up towards the surface of time, as if we were timid deep-sea fish! “Well, I’m grateful he was. After all, if he hadn’t been on hand to meet us as he did, and treat us with his molecular surgery, we’d be dead as nails.”

“Indeed.”

“And now?”

He withdrew his face from the Constructor’s eye-scope; it came loose with an obscene plop. “I think,” — he said slowly, “that they understand your significance — the fact that your initial invention propagated the changes, the explosion in Multiplicity, which led to all this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they know who you are. And they want us to come with them. In their great Ships — to the Boundary at the Beginning of Time.”