They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. But which of their experiments would succeed they could not know for at least a million years. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on land and in the ocean. When they had learned all that they could, they began to modify. For years they studied, collected, catalogued. Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life.
It swept past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, and presently looked down on Earth. The great dinosaurs had long perished when the survey ship entered the Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. They became farmers in the fileds of the stars they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.Īnd sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.Īnd because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men - or even remotely human. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. In its making, a moon had been shattered, and the debris of its creation orbited still. But here's the relevant part (found here ):įor three million years, it had circled Saturn, wating for a moment of destiny that might never come. Okay, that name might be the chapter name from 2010 (where its pretty much reproduced from 2001).
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