I’ve already given you the whole explanation of how that came about. It happened because it was going to happen. All other explanations for anything … - James Blish

A common thief with a gun in his hand isn’t half as dangerous as an engineer with a stick of dynamite.

Actually, there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming—and, since it cannot avert the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...or ascribes it to the malice of God or man.

Yet the closer he came to it, the more alert he felt; it was as though he were paying more and more attention to fewer and fewer things, so that at the heart of the mystery he would paradoxically be totally intent upon nothing at all.