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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eight Keys to Eden
+
+Author: Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27595]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Geoffrey Kidd, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+BY MARK CLIFTON
+
+
+ NOVELS
+       Eight Keys To Eden
+       They'd Rather Be Right*
+       The Forever Machine*
+
+ NON-FICTION BOOK
+       Opportunity Unlimited
+
+ NOVELETTES
+       Remembrance and Reflection
+       How Allied
+       What Thin Partitions**
+       Sense From Thought Divide
+       Star, Bright
+       Hide! Hide! Witch!
+       A Woman's Place
+       Clerical Error
+       What Now, Little Man?
+       Do Unto Others
+
+ SHORT STORIES
+       What Have I Done?
+       The Conqueror
+       Kenzie Report
+       Bow Down To Them
+       Reward For Valour
+       Progress Report**
+       Crazy Joey**
+       We're Civilized**
+       Solution Delayed**
+
+ ARTICLES
+       It Can't Be Done
+       The Dread Tomato Affliction
+
+ * _In collaboration with Frank Riley_
+ ** _In collaboration with Alex Apostolides_
+
+
+
+
+        EIGHT KEYS
+          TO EDEN
+
+            by
+       Mark Clifton
+
+
+ Doubleday & Company, Inc.
+   Garden City, New York
+           1960
+
+
+
+
+ _All of the characters in this book
+ are fictitious, and any resemblance
+ to actual persons, living or dead,
+ is purely coincidental._
+
+
+ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470
+ Copyright © 1960 by Mark Clifton
+ All Rights Reserved
+ Printed in the United States of America
+ First Edition
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant and
+    dialect spellings remain as printed. Bold text is shown as =bold=.
+
+
+
+
+                To
+
+        Charles Steinberg
+
+ who made writing possible for me
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT
+
+
+ =1= Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without
+       question.
+
+ =2= Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general
+       contrariness.
+
+ =3= Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to
+       account for the phenomenon?
+
+ =4= How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that
+       he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?
+
+ =5= What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the
+       obscure prevalent?
+
+ =6= What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered
+       effect is really cause?
+
+ =7= What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates
+       unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there be only
+       one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in many facets
+       because we cannot apperceive the whole, of which we have gained
+       only the most elementary glimpses, with which we can cope only at
+       the crudest level?
+
+ =And are those still other doors, yet undefined, on down the corridor?=
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was
+overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger
+hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and
+pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle,
+half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched
+over their panels.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop.
+
+"Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it
+came out sullen.
+
+The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punched
+irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second
+star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect
+there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel.
+The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include such
+blunders. But he had to check.
+
+There weren't.
+
+He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on his
+shift, never anybody else's.
+
+"Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he
+rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and
+hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.
+
+The operator looked skeptical instead.
+
+Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental
+colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, some
+unprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothing
+else apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as the
+Extrapolators.
+
+But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.
+
+"Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications by
+inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully tried out
+another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last more
+than an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using the
+E frequency, anyway.
+
+He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the other
+operators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw him
+away from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problem
+would have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewed
+on a knuckle and stared angrily at the operator who was sitting back,
+relaxed, looking at him, waiting.
+
+"You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the supervisor
+asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"
+
+The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer
+with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for
+supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the
+surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the
+supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention.
+In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly
+nagged employee over his features.
+
+"Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor muttered
+savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--their
+pants out there!"
+
+The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was about time,
+and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down.
+Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow
+three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten
+miles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring.
+
+The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the gnawing at his
+knuckles to his fingernails.
+
+He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry colonist to
+come through and scream at them to turn off that unprintable-phrases
+siren. He braced himself and worked up some choice phrases of his own to
+scream back at the colonist for neglecting his duty--getting
+Extrapolation Headquarters here on Earth all worked up over nothing. He
+wondered if he dared threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to check
+them over.
+
+He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay no attention
+to his recommendation. He knew it, and the colonist would know it too.
+
+He began to wonder what excuse the colonist would have.
+
+"Just wanted to see if you home-office boys were on your toes," the
+insolent colonist would drawl. Probably something like that.
+
+He hoped the right words wouldn't fail him.
+
+But there was no response to the siren.
+
+"Lock the key down," he told the operator. "Keep it blasting until they
+wake up."
+
+He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near operators were
+now frankly listening.
+
+"Get on with your work," he said loudly. "Pay attention to what you're
+recording."
+
+It was enough to cause several more heads to raise.
+
+"Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is nothing to
+concern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's all. Haven't you
+ever heard of a delayed report before?"
+
+He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It was like
+asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor
+edge of a precipice suddenly go slack.
+
+"But there's nothing any of you can do," he said. He tried to cover the
+plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your own messages ..."
+But he had threatened them so often that there was no longer any menace.
+
+He spent the next ten minutes hauling out the logs of Eden to see if
+they'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a fraction
+years, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit scanner didn't pick
+up a single symbol to show that Eden had been even two seconds off
+schedule. The first year daily, the second year weekly, and now monthly.
+There wasn't a single hiccough from the machine to kick out an
+Extrapolator's signal to watch for anything unusual.
+
+Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an _outré_ problem as an
+Iowa cornfield.
+
+"You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again as he
+came back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They haven't answered
+yet."
+
+The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists hadn't
+answered. And what should he do about it? Go out there personally and
+shake his finger at them--naughty, naughty?
+
+"Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface, to see?" the
+supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myself
+that you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a space
+hurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe
+some star has exploded and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it,
+man. Bounce it! What are you waiting for?"
+
+"Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for you to give
+the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can't
+just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood."
+
+"Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the supervisor
+cautioned.
+
+Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung
+out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set
+up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous
+communication, but that was only relative. It took time.
+
+The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector
+chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated
+the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting
+the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the
+forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when
+an E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to
+questions, the thrill of merely being in the same room.
+
+He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration to
+an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentary
+secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he was
+a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gone
+farther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed.
+
+"Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told him
+with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind to
+a lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice in
+full confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself before
+you hit bottom."
+
+It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself
+the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.
+
+"To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester had
+continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist.
+Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellent
+career in engineering."
+
+It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science
+said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was it
+said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, live
+with. No certainties on which to stand.
+
+He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated on the
+flashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's screen. There
+was nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing wrong with the
+communication channels between Eden and Earth.
+
+"Blasted colonists," the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam on
+their planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet they've
+let all the sets at their end get out of order."
+
+He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face hadn't
+told him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman--and there were fifty
+of them on Eden--could build a communicator. That was regulation.
+
+"You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?" he asked
+the operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering up some neglect
+in not notifying me? If you're covering up, you'd better tell me now.
+I'll find out. It'll all come out in the investigation, and ..."
+
+The operator turned around and looked at him levelly. He looked him
+over, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed feet. Then he coolly
+turned his back. There was a limit to just how much a man could stand,
+even to hold a job at E Headquarters.
+
+It was about time the supervisor got somebody with brains onto the job.
+The sector chief should be called immediately. Supervisors were supposed
+to have enough brains to think of something so obvious as that. That
+much brains at least.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayed
+report" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn't
+happen to him.
+
+To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor, his first act
+was to rush down to communications and go through all the routines for
+rousing the colonists the supervisor had tried. His worry was mounting
+so rapidly that he hardly noticed the resigned expression of the
+operator who knew he would have to go through all these useless motions
+again and again before it was all over, and somebody did something.
+
+"Well," the chief said to the supervisor. "It's my problem now." He
+sighed, and unconsciously squared his shoulders.
+
+"Yes, Chief Hayes," the supervisor agreed quickly. Perhaps too quickly,
+with too much relief? "Well, that is, I mean ..." his voice trailed off.
+After all, it was.
+
+"You understand my check of your routines was no reflection on you or
+your department," Hayes said diplomatically. "It's a heavy
+responsibility to alert E.H.Q., pull the scientists off who knows what
+delicate, critical work--maybe even hope to get the attention of an
+E--all that. I had to make sure, you know."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said, and relaxed some of his
+resentment. "Serious matter," he chattered. "Disgrace if an E, without
+half trying, put his finger on our oversight. We all understand that."
+He tried to include the nearby operators, his boys, in his eager
+agreement, but they were all busy showing how intensely they had to
+concentrate on their work.
+
+"That's probably all it is--an oversight," Hayes said with unconvincing
+reassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's face, added,
+"Beyond our control here, of course. Something it would take at least a
+scientist to spot, something we couldn't be expected ... What I mean is,
+we shouldn't get alarmed until we know, for sure. And--ah--keep it
+confidential."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said in a near whisper. He
+looked meaningfully around at the room of operators, but did manage not
+to put his finger to his lips. Those who were observing out of the
+corners of their eyes were grateful for at least that.
+
+On his way back to his own office Chief William Hayes reflected that the
+bit about keeping it confidential was on the corny side. Within fifteen
+minutes he'd start spreading it all over E.H.Q., himself. Every
+scientist, every lab assistant would know it. Every clerk, every janitor
+would know it. E.H.Q. would have to work full blast all night long, and
+some of the lesser personnel had homes down in Yellow Sands at the foot
+of the mountain.
+
+These would be calling their husbands and wives, telling them not to fix
+dinner, not to worry if they didn't come home all night. No matter how
+guarded, the news would leak out, the word spread, and the newscast
+reporters would pick it up for the delectation of the public. Eden
+colony cut off from communication. Nobody knows ... Wonder ... Fear ...
+Delicious ... Exciting....
+
+Or was this the kind of thinking that had kept him from qualifying as an
+E? What was it the examiner had asked? "Mr. Hayes, why do you feel it is
+all right for you to view, to read, to know--but that others should be
+protected from seeing, reading, knowing? What are these sterling
+qualities you have that make it all right for you to censor what would
+not be right for others?"
+
+He abruptly brought his mind back to the present. Perhaps he'd first
+better prepare a news statement before he did anything else, something
+noncommittal, reassuring. No point in getting the populace stirred up.
+
+As he sat down behind his desk, a big man in a brown suit, natural
+iron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began to realize that
+for the next twenty-four hours, at least, he would be in the spotlight.
+Well, he'd give a good account of himself. Demonstrate that he had an
+executive capacity beyond the needs of his present job. More than a mere
+requisition signer, interoffice memo initialer.
+
+For one thing the scientists would give him trouble. If he had been
+deeply hurt that they thought he couldn't open up his mind enough to
+become an E, what about scientists whose limits were reached still
+farther along? He must remember to keep his temper, use persuasion,
+maybe kid them a little. The blasted experts were almost as bad as
+E's--worse, in a way, because the E didn't have to remind anybody of his
+dignity, or how important the work was he was doing.
+
+But then, you never asked an E to drop what he was doing, and listen.
+You never asked an E to do anything. He either noticed and was
+interested, or he didn't notice, or wasn't interested.
+
+But nobody ever told an E that he must apply himself to a problem. Once
+a man became a full-fledged Extrapolator he was outside all law, all
+frameworks, all duty, all social mores. That was the essence of E
+science, that any requirement outside of his own making didn't exist. It
+had to be that way. That kind of mind could not tolerate barriers, but
+spent itself constantly in destroying them. Erect barriers of
+triviality, and it would waste its substance upon trivial matters. The
+only answer was to remove all possible barriers for the E, lest
+immersion in something trivial prevent that mind from seeking out a
+barrier to knowledge, a problem of significance.
+
+But the scientists! Hayes sighed. If only the scientists wouldn't keep
+thinking they were cut from the same cloth as the E. They had to have
+restrictions, organization imposed upon them. Yes indeed!
+
+They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble a review
+of all the known facts about Eden--a dead issue as far as their own work
+was concerned, for Eden had been assayed and filed away as solved.
+They'd moan and groan about having to drag up the facts that had been
+analyzed and settled long ago.
+
+He saw himself compared with the producer of a show, and theatrical
+performers didn't come any more temperamental than scientists. He'd be
+hearing about how much of their time he'd wasted for months to come.
+Every time any administrator asked why they hadn't produced whatever it
+was they were working on, it would be because Chief Hayes had
+interrupted them at the most crucial moment and they'd had to begin all
+over again.
+
+Oh, they'd drag their heels, all right, and he'd have to remind them,
+tactfully, that their prime duty was to serve the Extrapolators; that
+they were employed here only because someday, in some co-ordinate
+system, somebody might be able to supply a key fact that some E might
+want to know.
+
+They'd ask him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would be
+listening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex, knowing he
+could give no such guarantee.
+
+They'd drag their heels because, deep down, they carried a basic
+resentment against the E--because, experts though they were, each of
+them, somewhere along the line, had learned the bitter limits in his
+mind that prevented him from going on to become an E.
+
+They'd drag their heels because the E's, each blasted one of them, would
+regard the absolutely true facts proved beyond question by science with
+an attitude of skepticism, temporarily accepting the uncontestably
+immutable as only provisionary, and probably quite wrong.
+
+Oh, they'd grumble, and they'd drag their heels at first; but they would
+get into it. They'd get into it, not because the sector chief had babied
+them along, kidded them, coaxed them, but because, as surely as his
+name was Bill Hayes, some unprintable E would ask a question for which
+they had no answer. Or even worse, some question that made no sense, but
+left the scientist feeling that perhaps it should have!
+
+That was the E brand of thinking which gave everybody trouble--and
+without which man could never have gone on creeping outward and outward
+among the stars. Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blasted
+asteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws. Sometimes an
+entirely new co-ordinate system had to be resolved. Oh, science was
+easy, a veritable snap, while man crawled around on the muddy bottom of
+his ocean of air and concluded that throughout all the universe things
+must conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as a
+damned halibut must be of the works and thoughts of man.
+
+And often the E was unable to resolve the co-ordinate system--which was
+simply a euphemistic way of saying that he didn't come back. And without
+him, man could go no farther. An E, therefore, was the rarest and most
+valuable piece of property in the universe. Whatever else man might be,
+he will go to any lengths to protect the value of his property.
+
+All right, Bill, perhaps a part of that is true. But give the scientists
+their full due. They'd work with a will once they grew aware of the need
+of it, because they were just as concerned as anybody else with what
+might have happened to those colonists.
+
+But first they would argue.
+
+His secretary interrupted his thought by coming in from her own office.
+She had an inch-thick stack of midgit-idgit cards in her hand.
+
+"Here's that batch of scientists who worked on the original Eden
+survey," she said.
+
+"So many?" Hayes asked ruefully. "Maybe I'd better send an all-points
+bulletin."
+
+"You're the boss," she said easily. "But if I know scientists, they
+don't read bulletins."
+
+"Yeah, sure," he agreed. "You made sure this is everybody? Nobody is
+slighted? They'll scream like stuck pigs when I ask them, but they'll be
+even worse if I slight anybody by not asking."
+
+"Double checked with Personnel's own midgit-idgit," she replied. "The
+machine says if anybody is left out, it's not its fault, that it would
+only be because we stupid humans forgot to inform it in the first
+place."
+
+"Sometimes I think that machine complains more than people do," he
+answered. "Certainly it is a lot more insolent."
+
+"Gets more work done, though," she said comfortably. "You want anything
+more?"
+
+"Not right now."
+
+"Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that new
+exploration ship, and it wants service, too," she reminded him. "It's
+worse than you are," she added.
+
+He looked up at her familiarity with a twinkle.
+
+"It can't fire you," he said softly.
+
+"Oh?" she asked. "You think not? Just let me feed it a few wrong data
+and watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary." She winked at
+him, laughed, and went back to her office.
+
+Sector Chief Hayes sighed, and pulled the stack of cards toward him.
+First he must sort them out according to protocol because his diplomacy
+wouldn't be worth the breath used in it if he called the wrong man
+first. At a glance he saw that the idgit had already sorted them
+correctly according to status.
+
+"If you're so smart," he muttered to the absent machine, "why didn't you
+call them too?"
+
+He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. It
+would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....
+
+At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes
+dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key to
+open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.
+
+"How soon," the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this Eden
+matter?"
+
+"I'm setting it up now," he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning, surely.
+That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor that
+wouldn't require an E."
+
+"Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available."
+
+The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been broken. He
+sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet with
+sweat, that his shirt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that he
+was grinning joyfully.
+
+Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question of
+whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybe
+three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, the
+students.
+
+He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind it
+being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize he
+could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. He
+understood.
+
+"Hello, Dr. Mille," he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. "This
+is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration."
+
+"All right! All right!" the voice answered testily. "What is it now?"
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and
+the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved
+methodically through his preflight inspection.
+
+Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E
+wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. To
+Lynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath his
+broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He
+liked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described the
+substance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how
+they behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could
+also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to wait
+until the theorists had turned such equations into machines, controls,
+forces before he got excited.
+
+He was one who, even in childhood, had never wanted to be an E. He
+didn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told him in Personnel that
+was why he was a favorite pilot of the E's, but he discounted that. They
+didn't try to tell him how to run his ship--well, most of them
+didn't--and he didn't try to tell them how to solve their problems.
+
+The men around the hangar had another version of why the E's liked him
+to pilot them around--he was lucky. Somehow he always managed to come
+back, and bring the E with him. Well, sure. He didn't want to get stuck
+somewhere, wind up in a gulio's gullet, gassed by an atmosphere that
+turned from oxygen-nitrogen into pure methane without warning or reason,
+and against all known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of a
+dead star suddenly gone nova.
+
+But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would fiddle
+around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of the
+time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but part
+of it might be because he'd never been sent out with the wrong E.
+
+There could be a first time. Luck ran out if you kept piling your bets
+higher and higher. But until then ...
+
+He was square-jawed, a freckled man with red hair. Contrary to
+superstition, he didn't have a fiery temper. He was forty and had
+already built up a seniority of twenty years in deep space. He was
+captain of his ship and wanted nothing more. Sure, it was only a
+three-man crew--himself, a flight engineer, an astronavigator. But it
+was an E ship, which meant that he outranked even the captains of the
+great luxury liners.
+
+There was a time when the realization caused him to strut a little, but
+he'd got over it. He was single, had no ties, wanted none. He had a good
+job which he took seriously, was doing significant work which he also
+took seriously, was paid premium wages even for a space captain, which
+didn't matter except in terms of recognition. He didn't mind going
+anywhere in the known universe, or how long he would be away. He hoped
+he would get back someday, but he wasn't fanatic about it.
+
+In a routine so well-practiced that it had become ritual, he checked
+over the cruiser point by point. Of course the maintenance men had
+checked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled,
+cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after
+another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a
+gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so
+they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection
+Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there
+and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunch
+of army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war
+and, unconsciously at least, aided in expending them.
+
+Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers, that the
+ship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered such papers
+as so much garbage, and went over the entire ship himself. This might
+have had something to do with his so-called luck.
+
+He wondered if Frank and Louie had checked into the ship this morning.
+Probably had; last night's outing wasn't much to hang over about. A
+steak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands, a couple of drinks at
+Smitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few dances at the Stars and
+Moons. Big night out for his crew before they left for deep space.
+Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubby
+worked up on the hill at E.H.Q., and wifey raised super-bright kids who
+already considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that
+town was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as
+the case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louie
+was dedicated to hell-raising.
+
+When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he saw his flight
+engineer, Frank Norton, had a couple of student E's on his hands.
+
+It was one of the nuisances of being stationed here at E.H.Q. that you'd
+have swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging around, asking
+questions, disputing your answers, arguing with each other, and, if you
+didn't watch them carefully, taking things apart and putting them back
+together in different hookups to see what would happen.
+
+The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everything
+everybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody had ever
+had the sense to think about the problem before; to doubt most of all
+the opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the experts were right then
+there would be no problem. Most of them didn't have to be taught it,
+they seemed to have been born with it. Time was you batted a young smart
+aleck down, told him to go get dry behind the ears before he shot off
+his mouth. But not these days. These days you looked at him hopefully,
+and crossed your fingers. He might grow up to be an E.
+
+Tom wondered what it would be like to doubt the realities, the very
+machinery under his hands, to assume that although it had always worked
+it might not work this time. He could not conceive that state of mind,
+or how a man could live in it without going insane. Every time he saw
+these tortured kids saying, "Well, maybe, but what if ..." he was glad
+to be nothing more than a ship captain who knew his machinery was
+exactly what it was supposed to be and nothing else.
+
+But, in a way, it was nice for the lads too. After thousands of years of
+man's almost rabid determination to destroy the brightest and best of
+his young, the world had finally found a place for the bright boy.
+
+This morning, probably because of the early dawn hour, there were only
+two of them in the generator room. As expected, they were arguing over
+the space-jump band. Frank was standing over to one side, observing but
+not participating. His cap was pushed back on his blond head, his big
+face expressionless. It was common gossip throughout flight crews
+everywhere that Frank, blindfolded, could take a cruiser apart and put
+it back together without missing a motion.
+
+"The jump band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip," one
+student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field in
+the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Its
+width is as variable as we need it, up to a light-year."
+
+"Only it hasn't any width at all," the other student argued. "That's the
+whole point. The Moebius strip has only one edge, so it can't have
+width. We enter that edge, go through a line that doesn't exist, and
+come out a light-year away, without taking any longer than the time to
+pass a point."
+
+"But that's _what_ happens, not _how_," the other shouted angrily.
+"Everybody knows _what_ happens. Tell me _how_ and maybe I'll listen."
+
+Tom caught his flight engineer's eye and signaled with his head that it
+might be a good idea to get rid of the students. Any other time it would
+be all right, a part of their stand-by job, but they'd got word last
+night to have the ship in readiness from six o'clock on. They might have
+to wait all day, but then again, some E might get an idea and want to go
+shooting out to Eden right off.
+
+Frank caught the signal, grinned, and began to herd the two students
+toward the door. They were in such heated argument now, accusing one
+another of parrot repetition instead of thinking for himself, that they
+didn't realize that they were being nudged out of the ship, down its
+ramp, and out on the field.
+
+"Don't think it hasn't been educational, and all," Frank murmured to
+them as he got them off the ramp. "You get the how of it figured out,
+you let me know."
+
+The two looked at him as if he might be an interesting phenomenon,
+decided he wasn't, and wandered away, back toward the school
+dormitories, still arguing.
+
+"Sometimes I think a quiet milk run out to Saturn would have its
+brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back inside the ship.
+Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding.
+
+There was no tension between them. They had worked together so long that
+they had got over all the attraction-repulsion conflicts which operate
+far beneath the surface mind to cause likes and dislikes. Now they
+accepted one another in the way a man accepts his own hands--proud of
+them when they do something with extra skill, making allowances when
+they fumble; but never considering doing without them.
+
+"Wonder who the E will be this time?" Frank asked, without too much
+concern. It didn't really matter. An E was an E, for better or for
+worse.
+
+"Haven't heard," Tom answered. "Probably not decided yet. If the Senior
+E's think it isn't much of a problem, they might send a Junior. Or if
+they don't want to be bothered, they might send a Junior who's up for
+his solo problem."
+
+"Whoever, or whatever, I'm sure it will be interesting," Frank commented
+with a grin. Tom returned the grin. There wasn't any malice in it, nor
+any of the basic enmity and destructiveness of the stupid toward the
+bright, just a recognition that an E was an E. They had a vast respect
+for an E, but you couldn't get around it that some of them were--well,
+maybe eccentric was the word.
+
+"I hear there's trouble on that planet we're going to--Eden, isn't it?"
+Frank commented.
+
+"You think we'd be hauling an E out there if there weren't?" Tom
+countered wryly.
+
+They continued to check over each item in the generator room, their
+flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation.
+They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some
+quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their
+heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no
+subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into
+position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single
+file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was
+sitting in the astronavigator's seat, checking over his star charts and
+instruments. He glanced up at them as they came level with his cubicle.
+He was the third man of the team, as used to them as they were to him.
+
+"Fourteen hop adjustments to get us past Pluto and out of the heavy
+traffic," he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid brown eyes were
+perpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over at Traffic that they're
+going to provide a freeway out of the solar system so we can take it in
+one hop, but they don't do it. Wonder when we'll ever go modern, start
+doing things scientific?"
+
+They paid no attention to his grumbling. That was just Louie.
+
+"Then how many hops to Eden, after Pluto?" Tom asked.
+
+"I figure twenty," Louie answered. "Can't take full light-year leaps
+every time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff in the way to
+louse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded. There'll be no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden, no trouble _getting_ there. Make it in about
+fourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven lousy little light-years.
+Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch. Wait'll the union agent
+hears you're working me fourteen hours without a relief. And are you
+letting me get my rest now, so I can work fourteen hours? Or are you
+stopping me from resting with a lot of questions?"
+
+"But you think there may be trouble _after_ we get to Eden?" Tom asked.
+
+Louie looked at him. There was no fear in the soft, brown eyes; just an
+enormous indignation that life should always treat him so dirty.
+
+"Don't you?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror
+and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should
+take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned
+forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners
+of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty
+mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth--not yet, anyway.
+Perhaps he should think about that sometime.
+
+Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....
+
+He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom door
+watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.
+
+"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There was a
+questioning note in her voice.
+
+"Want to keep handsome," he said lightly. "Never know when I might have
+to run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one of my other wives to
+catch me with stubble on my face."
+
+It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce the
+topic foremost in his mind.
+
+"This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo to
+qualify me for my big E. I'm due, you know."
+
+Linda chose to avoid coming directly to grips with it.
+
+"Yehudi is already at the door," she said, and made a face of
+exasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals the
+orderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can have you all to
+myself."
+
+"It's better if you get used to him," Cal cautioned. "Turn off the
+signal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi, you'd have
+twenty rushing in to see what was wrong."
+
+"Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take his morning
+shower without an observer standing by to see that he doesn't drown
+himself or swallow the soap," she commented with a touch of acid.
+
+"Get used to it, woman," he commanded. "There's only one observer now.
+When--if I get my Senior rating, there'll be three."
+
+She didn't say anything. Instead she stepped over to him, pressed her
+nude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm.
+
+"Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away," she said, and glittered her
+eyes at him wickedly.
+
+"He won't, but it's a good idea," Cal grinned at her.
+
+"You could tell him to go away," she whispered with a little pout.
+
+She was fighting. She was fighting with the only weapon she had to hold
+him, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown. He knew it, and
+the bitterness in her eyes, back of her teasing, showed she knew he knew
+it.
+
+He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked her
+hair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it in his
+chest. He felt her sobbing.
+
+He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom, laid her
+gently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who stood
+expressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed and held her
+head in his arms.
+
+"Don't fight it," he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has had
+to go."
+
+"It's the first time it ever happened to me," she sobbed.
+
+"You knew when you married me.... You agreed...."
+
+"It was easy to agree, then. There was the glamor of being known as the
+wife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just you, and the thought
+of losing you, never seeing you again."
+
+"I haven't gone yet," he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll get the
+job. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of them might want
+it. Even if I do get the problem, who says I won't be back? You take old
+McGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day. He's been an E for nigh on to fifty
+years. He's still around, you'll notice."
+
+She was quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair,
+blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope
+of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace
+and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty
+she might never see again, feel enfolded around her, enfold with
+herself.
+
+"I'm a little fool," she said through clenched teeth. "Of course you'll
+be back. And you'd better make it quick, or I'll come after you."
+
+He kissed her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled body on
+the bed, pulled the sheet over her.
+
+"Why don't you go back to sleep," he suggested. "Rest. I'll have
+breakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the Eden
+briefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning."
+
+Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently he
+kissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try to hold
+him.
+
+He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept her eyes
+closed. He stood up then, and signaled the orderly.
+
+"I'll take my shower now," he said.
+
+The orderly didn't speak, just followed him into the bathroom to stand
+in the doorway and watch him through the shower glass. He was rigidly
+obeying the cardinal rule of E.H.Q.
+
+Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an E. The
+whole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend on it.
+
+How much of the future of the universe depended upon his not
+interrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him to say. He
+sighed. He thought of his own wife--shrewish, fat, coarse, always
+complaining. He wondered what she would do if he picked her up, carried
+her to bed, closed her eyes with his fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'd
+be speechless.
+
+He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about fifty
+pounds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already there--McGinnis
+and Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade more cordial, a shade
+more interested than usual. They seemed, this time, to be looking at him
+as if he were a person, not merely a Junior E. When he turned away from
+them to greet the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked the
+club-room privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faces
+were frankly envious.
+
+Eden was to be his problem!
+
+He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through his
+shower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment, he'd been
+nagged with the fear he might not be considered; that the grief of Linda
+and her rise above it would lead only to anticlimax. By the time he'd
+got to the club-room door, followed by his orderly, he had already
+conditioned himself to disappointment.
+
+Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he wanted for
+breakfast.
+
+"You fellows join me in something?" he asked both Juniors and Seniors.
+
+"A second cup of coffee," Wong agreed.
+
+"A second bourbon," old McGinnis said drily.
+
+The Juniors shook their heads negatively. Yesterday they had been his
+constant companions, only a few degrees below him in accomplishment,
+pushing rapidly to become his equal competitors for the next solo.
+Today, this morning, there was already a gap between them and him, a
+chasm they would make no move to bridge until they had earned the
+right. They seated themselves at another table, apart.
+
+"Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem," McGinnis
+commented while orderlies placed food and drink in front of them. "We
+ought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?"
+
+"First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly. "Or
+perhaps Malinkoff, if he shows up."
+
+"Malinkoff is too deep in something to come to the briefing," Wong said.
+
+"Wong and I came only to help on your first solo, if we can," McGinnis
+said. "Always think a young fellow needs a little send-off. I remember,
+about fifty years ago, more or less ..."
+
+"Worst thing to guard against," Wong interrupted, "is disappointment.
+This whole thing might add up to nothing. Might not turn out to be a
+genuine solo at all, just something any errand boy could do. In that
+case it wouldn't qualify you. You know that."
+
+"Sure," Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give real
+challenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become an E.
+You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference, something
+that required original thinking, the E kind of thinking. You brought it
+off successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed what you'd done. If
+they thought it was worth something, you got your big E. If they didn't,
+you tried again. And you didn't get it by default, just because somebody
+thought there should be a given quota of Seniors on the list.
+
+"Little or big," he added, "I'd like the problem."
+
+They said no more. He knew the score. He'd had twelve years of the most
+intensive training the E's themselves could devise. He knew that
+sometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve years chasing down jobs
+which anybody on the spot could have solved if they'd used their heads a
+little before they ran on to something that challenged that training.
+He'd be lucky if this was big enough--but not too big.
+
+That was in their minds, too.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+On ordinary days there were only the usual few science reporters in the
+press room of E.H.Q. These held their jobs by the difficult compromise
+between the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and their publishers'
+equal insistence upon sensationalism.
+
+Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like television
+writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass by
+writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; since
+the facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit the open space or time
+slot; even these reporters had a difficult time of maintaining the usual
+odds--that there is only a twenty-to-one chance that anything said in
+the newspapers or on the air may be accurate.
+
+But on this morning the press room was crowded. In spite of all efforts
+of journalism to stir up old animosities to make news, or to force
+factional leaders into rashness which could not be settled without
+violence; the various states of world government insisted upon
+negotiating ethnical differences amicably, and factional leaders
+persisted in keeping their heads. There had been no world-shaking
+discoveries made in the last week or so; the public no longer believed
+that changing a screw thread was exactly a scientific "break-through";
+no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as to
+work the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another's
+aberrations.
+
+In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question
+circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong
+hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a
+summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood.
+
+EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to
+COLONY WIPED OUT.
+
+That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one in
+journalism. If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of the
+news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in the
+press of today's new hate and panic.
+
+The public, with an established addiction to ever increasing daily doses
+of sensationalism, and deprived of its shots through this dry spell,
+snapped out of its apathy to greet this new thrill with vociferous calls
+to editors, wires to congressmen, telegrams to the Administration.
+
+What are we doing about this colony that has been wiped out? Where is
+our space battle fleet? Who is going to be punished?
+
+It was an overnight sensation, and on this morning following the news
+leak there could even be seen some secretaries to the writers for top
+commentators and columnists in the crowded press room.
+
+Naturally these stood in little groups apart and associated only with
+each other to maintain the literary tradition of proper insulation from
+the realities of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviously
+no first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only
+because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own
+spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit his
+capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the
+bias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to
+maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the
+sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in
+such a position.
+
+Now two of these secretaries could be seen over in a corner of the press
+room exchanging their views, probing one another for information. No
+one thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information from
+source for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies in
+what the competition is going to say, not in what happened.
+
+"How long has it been since the first message came through, or didn't?"
+
+"Fourteen hours, about."
+
+"We could have had a rescue fleet out there by now."
+
+"To rescue 'em from what?"
+
+"Whatever's wrong."
+
+"I understand an assistant attorney general is checking into it."
+
+"So Gunderson's still gunning for the E's, eh?"
+
+"Has he ever let up since he became attorney general? Gripes his soul he
+can't arrest them for not doing what he wants, or for doing what he
+doesn't want."
+
+"How'd they ever get immune, anyhow?"
+
+"Skip class that day in history?"
+
+"Must've."
+
+"Vague, myself. Right after the insurrection. Seems there were two
+powers, Russia and America. The people of the world got fed up, gave a
+pox to both their houses, boiled over, formed a world government.
+Somehow the scientists got in their licks in the turmoil, pointed out
+that scientists who have to confine their discoveries to what suits the
+ideology of the non-scientists can only find limited solutions."
+
+"Quite a deal."
+
+"Could only happen in a world turmoil, when everything was fluid.
+Anyhow, they got away with it, for a certain group, Extrapolators, had
+to be free to extrapolate without fear of reprisal."
+
+"Boy, something. Imagine. Take any dame you want. Nobody can squawk.
+Take any money, riches you want. Nobody can stop it."
+
+"Funny thing. Nothing like that happens. Idea seems to be that when you
+don't have to fight against restrictions, they aren't important any
+more. At least not to an E."
+
+"Guess that's why one of 'em pointed out that police are the major cause
+of crime."
+
+"Whether he was right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson into a tail
+spin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped on that
+subject. He'll get 'em one of these days. Even an E can make a mistake,
+and when one of 'em does, he'll be there."
+
+"I dunno, the public has a lot of hero-worship for the E. Pretty tough
+for any politician to buck that."
+
+"The public! You know as well as I do--they think what we tell 'em to
+think, you and me."
+
+"You think that's why he's got a man out here on this Eden thing?
+Looking for a mistake?"
+
+"Maybe. Maybe not. He just never passes up the chance that maybe this
+time he can grab something."
+
+"Between Gunderson and the E's, I'll take the E's."
+
+"Your boss feel the same way?"
+
+"Far as I know."
+
+"But if your boss changed his mind, you would have an agonizing
+reappraisal."
+
+"Well, sure. A guy's got to eat."
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance of
+solidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, where
+the west wall had been, another room seemed to join this one, an office.
+A large man in a brown suit made an entrance through the door of the
+office and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness.
+
+"I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the Eden
+area. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules of
+procedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the scientists involved
+in this problem have been up all night reviewing every known fact about
+Eden. We ask the indulgence of the E's not only for the kind of
+knowledge that may prove too little, but for any strain caused by trying
+to assemble such massive data into order in so short a time.
+
+"For the press, let me say we are aware of some questions of why we
+didn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failed
+to come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle until
+he has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to get
+some idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. It
+would serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out to
+rescue, and might prove the highest folly."
+
+All over E.H.Q., in the various buildings where anybody was directly
+concerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared here in the
+club room. The tri-di screen wall would seem to join the room of the
+person speaking. A pressed button signaled the desire to speak, and like
+the chairman of a meeting, Bill Hayes decided whom to recognize. It was
+a way to conduct a meeting of two or three thousand people as intimately
+as a small conference.
+
+"The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing," Hayes
+continued formally. He faded out his own office, and was immediately
+replaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review of Eden was under
+way.
+
+With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references to
+documentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial position of
+Ceti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II--popularly called,
+he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he preferred a little less
+popularizing of scientific data, a little more exactitude. He would,
+therefore, continue to call it Ceti II.
+
+He reminded Cal of certain teachers in schools he had been asked to
+leave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, they
+clung to their exactitudes--like frightened little children in a chaotic
+world too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, something
+safe, sure, dependable.
+
+The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish the
+position of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction.
+
+In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms of
+third-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found where the
+man said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly, that the essence
+might be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closest
+attention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest he
+find his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, after
+all, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he lay
+peacefully in Linda's arms.
+
+He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little phrase,
+carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure. Didactic
+pedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, not
+vaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them.
+
+A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space to
+the surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just so
+all the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed to
+be humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance to
+chuckle with him.
+
+If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apology
+for this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worth
+breaking up the review to oblige him.
+
+After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present his
+capsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.
+
+There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands of
+islands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. The
+islands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explained
+that Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universe
+exploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientists
+could follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been left
+for future colonists to complete.
+
+He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzled
+by glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jet
+jockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solid
+sciences to keep up with the work to be done.
+
+A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with the
+injection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence,
+and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have the
+grant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to change
+the human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead toward
+humans with super-intelligence.
+
+Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that the
+Eden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get that one out
+of the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions, indicated that
+they did not appreciate being frustrated, hampered, driven--but they did
+comply.
+
+Back to Eden they went.
+
+The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area. Partly this
+was due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly,
+partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted that
+there was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over the
+globe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Some
+differential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no real
+violence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes
+here on Earth.
+
+"Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they could send
+news, then," Wong suggested in an aside to Cal.
+
+"Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because it wasn't
+supposed to happen," Cal said.
+
+Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew Wong had laid a
+little trap to see how easily he might be lulled into a premature
+conclusion.
+
+The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but only to
+the extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked with a springier
+step, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause nausea, even to the
+inexperienced. The oxygen content of the air, in fact the whole make-up
+of the air, was so close to Earth quality there were no breathing
+adaptations necessary.
+
+So much for generalities. He went on to document them with exactitudes.
+He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the distribution of
+rainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air masses. Cal's doubt
+was not appeased. Weather prediction was about on a par with race-horse
+handicapping, and easy to explain after it happened.
+
+Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed their duet
+to the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists.
+
+A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the major
+theme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion of the plant
+forms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems, roots, flowers. A
+choir of zoologists joined their voices here to point out the large
+number of small meat animals, fish, and crustaceans--with the whole
+thing sounding like a pean of thanksgiving.
+
+After two hours, the condensed information added up to a most
+interesting fact. In essence, due to quite _natural_ conditions--odd how
+much the scientists seemed to need stressing the word "natural"--Eden
+was more favorable to easy human life than Earth!
+
+Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student or apprentice
+might distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing question or so. Say
+the range of easily possible conditions on any given planet was a scale
+ten miles in length. Then that area on the scale where man could exist
+without artificial aids would still be less than a hair's breadth. And
+now to find a planet more nearly perfect for man than the one on which
+he evolved....
+
+Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention? He decided
+to nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the too obvious
+brought out things not obvious at all.
+
+"How frequently," he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do we find a
+mass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve at right angles
+to its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?"
+
+"It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of land
+and water masses, such as we have on Ceti II," the first astrophysicist
+answered.
+
+"How frequently do we find that?" Cal repeated.
+
+"I know of no other," the astrophysicist replied shortly.
+
+"Any evidence of tampering with those ocean currents to get them flowing
+so beneficially?" Cal asked.
+
+"None yet discovered," an oceanographer cut in.
+
+Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't been
+and couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself and
+spoiled the effect of open-mindedness.
+
+"There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligence
+for that," the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a feat would
+require enormous engineering works. Such works under the ocean would be
+matched by comparable works on land, and would therefore show up in our
+aerial surveys, however ancient and overgrown."
+
+Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization, yes, that
+would have left traces. But what of some other kind? Perhaps a deep-sea
+kind that had never come out upon the land? Never mind the arguments
+that such a civilization could not have developed--that was looking at
+it from the human point of view again. Had man grown so accustomed to
+not finding comparable intelligence anywhere in the universe he had
+begun to discount, or forget, there could be?
+
+The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the prevalent
+animals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in land animals higher
+than a large rodent, no sea mammals at all, no fish larger than the
+tarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of primates.
+
+A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of minute life
+forms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again expound the old
+theory of space-floating life spores to seed all favorable matter, and
+thus develop similar forms through evolution, wherever found. Quickly
+and tactfully Bill Hayes nudged him back on the track before the
+expected storm of controversy could break out.
+
+Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one. Quite aside
+from the emergency of what might be happening to the colonists, there
+was growing clamor from the people and pressure from various
+governmental bodies to get off the dime and get going--rescue those
+people, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the flood
+of telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted the pressures in favor of doing a
+workmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of a
+haphazard show, but was mindful of them nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial cannot
+help but realize that "government by law instead of man" is a mere
+political phrase without meaning in reality. The ascendancy of
+me-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in the human psyche that
+abstract idealisms must always take second place where such ascendancy
+is threatened. Thus we see that the belly-crawler, meek and subservient
+to the judge, comes off with a token sentence while the man who attempts
+to maintain his pride, his rights, his self-respect gets the book thrown
+at him.
+
+No practical attorney is unaware that the judgment of his case depends
+largely upon who presides, the whims, the prejudices, the moods, the
+viewpoint of the judge; and that the law merely provides justification
+for the imposition of those whims, moods, prejudices, and viewpoints.
+
+And ambitions.
+
+The announcement at E.H.Q. that a Junior E would be given this problem
+gave Gunderson's man the opening he had hoped to find. A hurried call to
+the capitol and a brief conversation with Gunderson himself confirmed
+his conclusions. Perhaps the E was above all law, and it might not be
+expedient to challenge that right now, but immunity did not necessarily
+extend to the Junior E.
+
+In view of the known ambitions of certain judges, it should not be
+difficult to make a test case of this--whether the E's had a right to
+jeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an unqualified man to
+the problem.
+
+A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, the
+apprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle of the E
+extend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out did the
+Administration of E.H.Q. extend to substitute for government? How much
+of a state within a state had E.H.Q. become?
+
+Now, while the public was clamoring for action, and E.H.Q. was, instead,
+droning on through a mass of inconsequential detail, now while public
+sentiment was crystallizing, or could be crystallized into placing human
+welfare over science procedures, now was the time.
+
+It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor the
+request of the attorney general.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the
+review.
+
+The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously
+favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeed
+they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly
+nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on
+Earth.
+
+Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists
+had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were
+temperamentally suited to the work.
+
+As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly as
+possible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitive
+ecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of this
+first colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do only
+what any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible.
+
+In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had been
+more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden of
+their complaint was that they found living too easy. They were
+professionals, accustomed to challenge.
+
+They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred and
+the planet given over to the second-phase colonists.
+
+They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was making
+farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft,
+ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostile
+conditions. There had even been threats that one of these days they
+would all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stopped
+them by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never got
+another assignment.
+
+He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Some
+organisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, to
+make their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until the
+second or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phase
+colonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet could
+be opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning a
+little chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredom
+might be just the very inimical condition they were having to test.
+
+Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
+colonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction from
+their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawing
+attention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps,
+but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treated
+unfairly.
+
+This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let his
+disappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrative
+hassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior.
+
+Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the whole
+of the problem.
+
+The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. In
+the center was a small mountain. It had been given the name of Crystal
+Palace Mountain because it was crested with an outcropping of
+amethystine quartz-crystal structures in _natural_ pillars, domes,
+arches, spires.
+
+Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell away
+from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleys
+watered by perpetual streams.
+
+It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain and
+the sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named the
+first settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, and
+everybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit of
+knowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to the
+planet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone was
+referring to it that way.
+
+"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course we
+still designate it as Ceti II."
+
+As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progress
+pictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they had
+started to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here they
+were converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the first
+houses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship.
+Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earth
+seed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them from
+Earth.
+
+A collection of community buildings came next in the series of
+photographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, with
+a collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it all
+as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio.
+Productive, progressive, and peaceful--from a distance.
+
+But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed normally
+also.
+
+The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. His
+department would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms
+_not_ developed. _That_ would have been an abnormality calling for
+investigation.
+
+Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the common
+temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities
+developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, each
+group considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all who
+disagreed wrong.
+
+The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember the
+classical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He stands
+upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realization
+that he can see about the same distance in all directions.
+
+"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center of
+creation!"
+
+His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was still
+at the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.
+
+"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the most
+important event in all creation!"
+
+Still later comes another realization.
+
+"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, are
+also at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are not
+with me, and not a part of me-and-mine, are not at the center of things,
+and are therefore of an inferior nature!"
+
+It could readily be seen--the psychologist was allowing a note of
+dryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy,
+religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even his
+scientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; the
+supreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the center
+of things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on the
+outside, and therefore inferior.
+
+There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist left
+the generalities behind and came back to the issue.
+
+The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, for
+there was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mine
+organism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided into
+nations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in some
+other nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been able
+to find to keep the nation from disintegrating.
+
+Another nudge.
+
+Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, as
+expected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longer
+tolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with the
+rest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the near
+ridge to settle in an adjacent valley.
+
+Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out in
+classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyone
+knew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man been
+able to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed no
+civilization at all.
+
+Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potent
+of all forces in driving him out to the stars.
+
+Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided he
+could no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cut
+him off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simple
+statement.
+
+The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance or
+not. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal course
+of E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They had been collated and
+extended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trends
+away from norm.
+
+There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as well
+have originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about as
+unusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.
+
+Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following
+the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human
+existence than Earth."
+
+He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness for
+take-off.
+
+McGinnis and Wong looked at one another.
+
+"You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?" Wong asked.
+His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was banished from an
+ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow."
+
+"Not that so much," Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept of evolution
+is haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that far off. Probably
+the colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep thinking that when
+we want to catch rats we set a trap with a better food than they can get
+normally."
+
+There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye.
+
+"You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch human
+beings?" he asked.
+
+"I don't exactly think that. I just keep wondering," Cal answered.
+
+They were interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on the door.
+This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt
+the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors,
+who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stood
+facing the door. The orderlies looked to the E's for instruction. At a
+nod from McGinnis, one of them walked over to the door and opened it.
+
+Bill Hayes was standing there, flushed with embarrassment.
+
+"Your pardon, E's," he said hurriedly. "I'm just an errand boy, under
+instruction from General Administration. We have been served with a
+court injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior to the Eden matter."
+
+Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment to have his
+chance snatched away from him. He should have gone immediately the
+review was over, without waiting for any advice McGinnis and Wong might
+care to give. Now ...
+
+McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door that opened
+on another hallway. He flashed a command with his eyes to get going,
+then turned back to Hayes.
+
+"I was unaware that the E's must heed court orders," he said frostily.
+
+"It's a question of where civil jurisdiction stops and E jurisdiction
+takes over," Hayes explained nervously. "While the colonists are
+employed by E.H.Q., and under their direction, it is held they are also
+Earth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil authority feels it must
+answer for their welfare."
+
+"I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of World Congress
+some seventy years ago," Wong said mildly.
+
+"The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the Senior
+E; just the Junior, who really isn't an E yet."
+
+"It is the decision of the E's that a Junior will handle this problem,"
+McGinnis said, and turned his back as if that settled the matter.
+
+Hayes cleared his throat nervously.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said. "If it were up to me ... Well, the argument before
+the court ran this way: That where there is no restriction upon the E in
+arriving at a solution, there is also no compulsion upon civil
+authority to adopt that solution. They cited instances ... Well, any
+number of instances. It seems ..."
+
+Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's
+perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, he
+slipped out the door.
+
+The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's request
+quickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet.
+
+"Take me out to the Eden ship," Cal said quietly. "You know where it
+is?"
+
+"Yes," the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls and Cal
+slipped into the seat beside him.
+
+They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear exit of the E
+building, down the maze of ramps and out across the landing field to the
+entrance of the ship.
+
+Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction, but
+none were in evidence. As they drew up to the open door, he saw Lynwood
+and Norton, pilot and engineer, standing just inside waiting for him.
+There was no strain in their faces to show they had received orders not
+to take off with him.
+
+He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly drove it
+back to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew would be the E's
+orderlies.
+
+Cal climbed the short ramp and entered the ship.
+
+"You have clearance to take off at once?" he asked Lynwood.
+
+Lynwood nodded. "Since early morning," he answered.
+
+"Fine. Let's get going," Cal said. "I'm in a hurry, of course," he added
+with a grin.
+
+"Of course," the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed and
+returned it. Apparently this E was human.
+
+It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where Louie
+sat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for the ship to
+lift clear. And still no command came over the radio to halt them.
+
+Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really felt that a
+simple injunction would stop everything, that the E's would not
+challenge this encroachment? Was he playing some deeper game, allowing
+the Junior to slip through his fingers in the hope he would louse up the
+Eden rescue, add strength to the campaign to bring the E's back under
+civil control--his control?
+
+Or had someone genuinely slipped?
+
+The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not come until
+their second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit. Then it came from
+space police in charge of shipping traffic at that point.
+
+"I am under orders from E.H.Q. to proceed," Tom answered, after a quick,
+questioning look at Cal.
+
+"The attorney general's office orders you to halt," the voice commanded.
+
+Tom looked at Cal again, questioning. This was bucking the federal
+government, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on if
+he ignored the order. To say nothing of any other punishment they might
+choose to hand him.
+
+"Keep going," Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump as quickly
+as you can."
+
+"I am under orders to keep going," Tom answered the police. If he
+refused the request of an E, a lifetime of work would go down the drain.
+
+Over in his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through the
+intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were working
+as one man.
+
+"I am under orders to disable you if you refuse," the police warned.
+
+"We have an E on board," Tom answered. "You'd be risking a lot."
+
+"I am advised he is a Junior E," the voice said in clipped speech. "Not
+such a risk."
+
+"Far as I'm concerned," Tom answered laconically, "he's an E. I have to
+follow his orders."
+
+He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was an instant
+silence. They were at the approach to the asteroid belt.
+
+"They can get us here," Louie spoke up. "We have to give over controls
+so they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the microsecond on
+these asteroid movements. They have to calculate a path in short hops,
+and take us through a step at a time. I keep saying there ought to be an
+expressway out of the solar system, but ..."
+
+"What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked. "Get over it
+instead of through it?"
+
+"It's illegal," Louie complained.
+
+"Our necks are already out," Tom said quietly.
+
+"Okay, you're the boss. But I'll have to figure it. It takes time to
+figure it."
+
+"Well, get going on it."
+
+"There's stuff all over," Louie explained. "Not just a band, like most
+people think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too. Not so
+thick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a bunch of
+little jumps."
+
+"We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+The radio gave its hum of life, and a voice came through.
+
+"We have orders from space police not to escort you through, to turn you
+back."
+
+"This is an E ship, with an E on board. His command is to come through,"
+Tom said.
+
+"I just work here," the voice answered as if it were bored and tired. "I
+take my orders from Space Control."
+
+Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look out of a
+corner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to bother him. His
+other hand was speeding through the movements of manipulating the
+astrocalculator. Then he nodded his head, still not looking up, and the
+co-ordinates flashed in front of Frank. Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frank
+set up the pattern of the jump band.
+
+"I take my orders from the E's," Tom answered in a voice that matched
+the boredom, tiredness. Then with a nod from Frank, "Now!" he said.
+
+There was silence again.
+
+"It's going to add at least an hour," Louie complained. "I've got to
+pick my way through this muck."
+
+"We've got time now," Tom answered easily. "Not likely they can find us
+out here, away from the regular lanes."
+
+"Not unless we run across a prowl ship," Louie said. "You know there's
+some smuggling, and now and then a shipping company thinks it can beat
+the rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same thing we're doing. The
+prowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're not the first ones to try
+it."
+
+"Just keep figuring, Louie," Tom said.
+
+"All right, all right!" Louie quarreled back.
+
+Tom looked at Cal and grimaced.
+
+"Louie's all right," he said. "Just has to complain."
+
+"I'm sure of it," Cal answered with a grin.
+
+It took closer to two hours. They had no way of knowing how many times
+the space police had made a fix on their position only too late to catch
+them hovering there. There must have been some fix made and a pretty
+careful calculation of where they could go next, for as they neared the
+outer moons of Jupiter the radio crackled into life again.
+
+"This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take over. We
+will disintegrate your ship if you resist."
+
+Cal took the microphone in his own hand to answer.
+
+"We intend to keep going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional dispute
+between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will not allow you
+to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders to
+disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhile
+you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those orders are
+confirmed."
+
+Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed.
+
+In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders from the
+attorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say, Lynwood, what
+is this all about?"
+
+"Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who," Lynwood
+answered. "I just work here," he added tiredly.
+
+"Well," said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in the
+courts now. You understand, we had our orders."
+
+"You understand, so did I." Tom answered.
+
+"Sure," the voice answered, and cut out.
+
+Cal wondered whether the orders to disintegrate had been a bluff. Would
+the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior E
+on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one they
+didn't expect to have called.
+
+Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's hands by
+defying him, and getting that defiance on record was what the man had
+wanted.
+
+Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than merely finding
+out what had happened to some colonists. Whatever it was, he'd better
+find a successful solution, because the attorney general was counting on
+him to fail. And if he did fail, certainly the position of the Junior E
+would be altered, and possibly a deep thrust into the very heart of the
+Senior E position, as well.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating the
+globe while still in space.
+
+Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, they
+had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain at
+its center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescope
+viewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like a
+diamond set in jade.
+
+The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when they
+amplified their magnification to get a close look at the Appletree
+village before dropping down to land.
+
+Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and he
+stuck to his claim stubbornly.
+
+But there was no settlement there. No sign there had ever been.
+
+Louie could see that for himself, they told him. There was nothing but
+virgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old. There were splashes of
+rolling meadows spotted here and there by other trees, untilled meadows
+sloping downward from the ridges to the river. And not a blemish nor
+scar to show that man had ever landed there.
+
+"Fine thing," Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get us clear
+across the universe in great shape, and then you can't even find the
+landing field."
+
+But Louie was in no mood for banter. He wished Tom would go back and
+hold the manual controls of the ship instead of letting it hover on
+automatic. He wished Cal would go back to his stateroom and think. He
+wished Frank Norton would shut up. He wished they wouldn't all stand
+over him, reading his charts over his shoulder.
+
+In irritated silence he reduced the viewscope dimensions to scale, and
+snapped a picture of the whole island. He took the fresh picture, still
+moist from its self-developing camera, and laid it beside the chart.
+Wordlessly, for the benefit of them all, he traced his pencil over the
+outlines of the chart and their duplicates in the picture. As in
+comparing fingerprints, he flicked his pencil at the points of identity.
+There were far too many to ignore. He poked the point of his pencil at
+Appletree where it was located on the chart. Then he picked out the same
+location in the picture.
+
+It was not the science of navigation that was wrong.
+
+"It's just one of those dirty tricks life plays on a fellow," Tom said
+over Cal's shoulder. "You got us in the right place, Louie, but probably
+in the wrong time slot. You've warped us right out of our own time, and
+Eden hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe won't be for another million
+years. Maybe, back on Earth, man is just discovering fire."
+
+"Yeah," Norton agreed. "Or maybe in the wrong dimension. You and your
+fancy navigation. Now you take a midgit-idgit navigating machine. It
+wouldn't know how to pull such fancy short cuts. Take a little longer,
+maybe, but when we got there we'd be there."
+
+They were both talking nonsense and knew it. Time and dimensional travel
+were still purely theoretical. Louie ignored the ribbing with elaborate
+patience.
+
+"You know what I think," he asked seriously. "I think the whole thing's
+a hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there. I'll betcha
+the colonists have pulled a whingding all the way through."
+
+"There's a whole raft of pictures to show they were there," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+"Pictures!" Louie answered scornfully. "You think they couldn't fake
+pictures?" He thought for a moment. "And where's their ship, their
+escape ship?" he asked as a clincher. "They didn't like it here and have
+gone off somewhere else, and then covered up by sending reports and
+pictures on how things would have developed if they'd stayed."
+
+There was a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal let the
+talk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a modern ocean
+liner pulled into the harbor of New York--to find an untouched Manhattan
+Island in its virgin state?
+
+It couldn't happen, therefore it wasn't to be treated seriously.
+
+"Better set up communication with Earth," Cal said quietly.
+
+In E science the unpredictable, the incredible, the illogical could
+happen at any time. With a mind more open to acceptance of this, he had
+felt the run of shock sooner. For them, the shock impact was delayed
+since their minds rejected the illogical as unreal. For him the human
+shock came at once, and then, as E thinking took over, passed off.
+
+"Sure, Cal," Lynwood agreed. It was a measure of their acceptance that
+they had quite normally fallen into using his first name.
+
+On the emergency signal it took less than three minutes to clear through
+eleven light-years to E.H.Q.--and then sixteen minutes for the operator
+at base to find Bill Hayes.
+
+"Sector Chief Hayes here," the voice said at last through the speaker.
+
+"Gray here, on the Eden matter," Cal answered. "Any other E's
+available?"
+
+"Hm-m," Hayes answered. "Wong has picked up on a problem in the Pleiades
+sector, and left this morning. Malinkoff has given out word not to
+disturb him if the whole universe falls apart. That leaves McGinnis,
+who, I believe, is spending his time working on the defense against the
+injunction by Gunderson. An example of the way petty restrictions can
+bring a fine mind down to trivial problems. But he said call him if you
+need him."
+
+"Please," Cal said. "And you might stay on while I talk to him, if
+you're not busy."
+
+"Sure, E Gray, sure," Hayes answered. "I'm flashing the operator to
+locate McGinnis. Seen anything of the police ship, yet? I understand one
+is following to observe what you do."
+
+"I'm sure it will be a big help," Cal said drily. "Not that it matters,
+so long as it doesn't get in the way."
+
+McGinnis came on at that point.
+
+"I'm not yelling for help, yet," Cal told him. "But here's what it is
+like at this end." He sketched in the details, and heard a sharp gasp at
+the other end from Hayes.
+
+"Now I'd like to stay on this problem," he concluded his brief summary.
+"But somewhere there's fifty colonists in trouble because this whole
+thing is out of focus. I'm not a full E, and maybe their lives are more
+important than my ambition to do a solo job. Certainly more important.
+Then, trivial as it is, we'd be playing right into Gunderson's hands if
+we've sent out a boy to do a man's job."
+
+"Dismiss the Gunderson side of it," McGinnis said drily. "It's
+inconsequential to the main issue. As for that, I don't know any more
+than you do. There's never been anything like this. Colonists have been
+wiped out on other planets, sure; but what happened left traces. This
+one is an oddball, and I'd say you're as well equipped to handle it as
+anybody else."
+
+"I don't--I don't understand this at all," Hayes said in a worried
+voice.
+
+"Who does?" Cal asked. "I'd say set up for continuous communication.
+I'll leave it wide open here, so that everything we say will come
+through. Then, if anything should happen to us, you'll have the record
+up to that point."
+
+"It's the only thing we can do," Hayes agreed.
+
+"If you think I should come out there to stand by, I'll do it," McGinnis
+said. But the tone of his voice said he hoped Cal would shoulder the
+full responsibility, not weaken out of a chance at a real solo.
+
+"I'm not crying uncle, yet," Cal said. "But I may have to take you up on
+the offer. I hope not."
+
+"But do you _know_ anything is wrong?" Hayes asked incredulously. He was
+having the same trouble facing the reality as the ship's crew.
+
+"If you were flying to Los Angeles and found only desert where the city
+is supposed to be, you might assume something was wrong," Cal answered
+drily. "But I don't know what it is. Do you have a recorder set up, so I
+can begin trying to find out?"
+
+"Yes, yes, E Gray," Hayes said hurriedly. He was suddenly conscious that
+he had been interrupting an E conversation, not once but several times.
+"Pardon the intrusions. It was just that ..."
+
+"I understand," Cal reassured him.
+
+When Cal stood up from the communicator, the eyes of the crew were on
+him. Overhearing his conversation with Earth had sobered them, made
+reality come closer.
+
+"You think it might be a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air current
+reflecting from another island and superimposing over this one?" Then he
+answered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. There aren't enough
+discrepancies."
+
+"Let's pan down to the ground with the scanner," Cal said. "Take it slow
+over the area where the village is supposed to be."
+
+Glad to be doing something with his hands, Lynwood twisted the controls
+to take them instantly, in magnification, to a distance slightly above
+the tops of the trees. The automatic pilot caused the ship to drift with
+the rotation of the planet, keeping them in fixed relative position.
+
+They scanned the ground rod by rod. There were expanses of heavy tree
+and bush growth that they could not penetrate. Some of these trees grew
+where the pictures showed cleared fields, buildings, truck gardens,
+cattle pastures.
+
+"Those big trees didn't grow up in a month, since the last colonist
+report," Louie said positively. He still clung to his belief that it was
+all a hoax.
+
+Cal made no comment. He was intent on the scanner screen. There were
+heavy foliage spots, but there were also bare areas covered by a soft,
+springy turf and patches of wild flowers. But there was no sign of man
+or his works. There was not so much as a board, the glint of a nail, not
+a furrow, not even the scar of a campfire. And no indication that there
+had ever been.
+
+In the sandy patches along the banks of the small meandering river,
+there was not even a footprint.
+
+They swept the scanner down the valley.
+
+"Wait a minute," Cal said. "There are some cows and horses." He held the
+scanner fixed while they studied the animals. In two small herds, the
+animals grazed contentedly near a patch of woods.
+
+"We're in the right time slot, then," Tom said, with an attempt to pick
+up the spirit of treating it lightly. "They've been here. Else the cows
+and horses wouldn't be."
+
+"Funny thing about those horses," Frank commented in a puzzled voice. "I
+grew up on a farm. Those are work horses, but field horses always have
+harness marks on them where the hair gets rubbed off or the skin gets
+calloused. If they used these horses for work, there ought to be collar
+and hames rubs on their necks. There ought to be worn streaks left by
+the traces on their sides. There isn't. Far as the evidence shows, they
+might have been wild all their lives."
+
+"Whatever happened didn't seem to hurt them any," Cal agreed.
+
+He swept the scanner on down the valley to the sandy shore of the sea.
+They were close enough to pick up the brown streaks of beached seaweed.
+A flock of shore birds were busy running up the sand away from the
+gentle, beaching waves, then following the water line back down to dig
+their beaks into the soft, wet sand for food. The birds showed no alarm,
+no sign of lurking presence near them.
+
+Cal brought the scanner back up the valley and over to one of the
+ridges bordering it. High on the crest of the ridge, the undergrowth was
+less luxuriant than down in the valley.
+
+And it was here they caught their first glimpse of a human being.
+
+He was hunkered down behind some rocks at the crest, peering over them
+at the valley below. From the shape of his shoulders and back, the set
+of his head, they knew it to be a man. As far as they could tell, he had
+no clothes on. Apparently they had caught him at the moment of his
+arrival at the crest.
+
+They watched him turn his head as he looked quickly, then searchingly,
+up and down the valley. They watched his hand come up to shade his eyes
+against the light from Ceti as he attempted to see into the dark patches
+of foliage where the village ought to be.
+
+What he saw, or did not see, seemed to stun him. He squatted, as frozen
+as a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees, they saw him
+back away from the crest. Now they saw he did not wear even so much as a
+breechclout. When the height of the ridge concealed him from the other
+side, he sprang to his feet and began to run, zigzagging in the manner
+of an obstacle racer to avoid the bushes.
+
+"Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it," Lynwood
+commented.
+
+"And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people wouldn't come
+out to break it up," Louie persisted.
+
+"Then why should he be so scared?" Frank asked.
+
+"Notice that patch of bare dirt he's crossing?" Cal asked. "See the
+little spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look behind him."
+
+The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at the
+scanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus on the
+ground.
+
+"No footprints!" Lynwood exclaimed. "He doesn't leave any footprints!"
+
+The three of them looked at Cal, wide-eyed. Cal didn't like what he saw
+in Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with life's
+little petty tricks was gone.
+
+The look had been replaced with fear, and something more.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope,
+disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the other
+side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled,
+recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth of
+trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valley
+with its own stream.
+
+They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tan
+skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. It
+was their last sight of him. They watched for a while longer, but he did
+not reappear under the green canopy of forest.
+
+"Just a guess," Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope the
+casualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes. "That's
+probably one of the dissident men who broke away from the main colony
+and set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley. Apparently the same
+things have happened to him as happened to the main colony, whatever it
+was.
+
+"I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now worked up
+courage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say whatever happened
+wasn't very long ago, not more than a week. Just a guess."
+
+None of the crew answered him. It was obviously not the case of a voyeur
+spying on others--not with the kind of excitement the running man had
+shown. Running away--that is.
+
+"Let's drop down into the atmosphere," Cal suggested. "I'd assume it is
+breathable from the fact we've seen earth animals and a human being.
+Still we'd better make tests."
+
+"Yeah," Louie said unexpectedly. "If the man isn't making any footprints
+maybe he isn't breathing, either." He tried to make it a joke, to fight
+his fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody laughed. He
+swallowed hard and studied the charts again for no apparent reason.
+
+Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's face showed
+him Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the progress of shock.
+Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's sense of responsibility for
+his crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. But
+there was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of
+his jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep
+them from chattering?
+
+However experienced a man became, however dependable the reactions, one
+never knew how to predict reaction in the face of the completely
+unknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked any of the men if they
+feared to take him down it would be an insult never forgotten. It was
+their job to take an E where he wanted to go. It wouldn't be the first
+time they had gambled their lives on the judgment of an E.
+
+"Oh-oh," Tom exclaimed. "We have company." He pointed to an indicator on
+the panel.
+
+They swept the space around them with the scanner, and hovering off to
+one side they picked up another ship. They watched it for a while, as it
+hovered there. It made no move to come closer, no move to communicate
+with them.
+
+"From its markings," Tom said at last, "I think that's a special
+investigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder what
+they're doing here?"
+
+"To make first-hand observation of my failure," Cal said shortly. "Let's
+get on with our work."
+
+Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, that
+whatever might happen to them would not only be heard on the E.H.Q.
+channel back to Earth, but would also be seen by these special
+observers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that they were
+being watched, that faltering uncertainty would be noted and scorned.
+Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air sampling and testing as
+they lowered the ship by degrees.
+
+Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood handled the ship
+on manual control with ease, almost with flourish. But Louie's hands,
+gripping the edges of the chart table, still showed bloodless white at
+the knuckles. Perhaps because there was nothing for him to do at the
+moment, he alone wasn't snapping out of it.
+
+The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readings
+for this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To complete
+the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicator
+would carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not only
+McGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group of
+scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges of
+tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?
+
+To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness
+than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's
+speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.
+
+Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at
+Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made
+no comment.
+
+Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air
+sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree
+should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed
+mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of
+vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the
+ground.
+
+"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.
+
+Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.
+
+"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the
+responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so
+much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without
+question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them.
+And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less
+themselves.
+
+But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below
+them. He was frozen and unheeding.
+
+The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out
+of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.
+
+"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."
+
+Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp
+unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank,
+looked through the opening into the woods beyond.
+
+And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening protection
+of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them were
+completely naked.
+
+"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out," Cal
+instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from the
+planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to help
+me."
+
+"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own knowledge,
+heroics might do more harm than good.
+
+Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.
+
+The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward him, also
+slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces were
+breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.
+
+Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it happened.
+
+He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him. He whirled
+around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There was
+no ship. The three crewmen were completely naked.
+
+Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his own
+body. He also was nude.
+
+He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in front of him.
+Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of despair.
+
+Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet. A quick
+glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and
+uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show
+where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the
+ground and buried his face in his hands.
+
+Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield some
+wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.
+
+A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication with
+Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see the
+observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seen
+them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what it
+had seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that it
+was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical that the attorney
+general would tell E.H.Q. what had happened.
+
+Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to land.
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was
+personally involved?
+
+For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function
+rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze,
+shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind,
+there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed
+from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer.
+
+The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in
+front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still
+picture from a modernist ballet.
+
+Or a charade. Guess what this is!
+
+He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning
+of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.
+
+With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning,
+darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and
+momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with
+trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion
+picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded
+on the cutting-room floor.
+
+Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising a
+mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotent
+parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creation
+of a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, so
+that he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could now
+place responsibility outside himself.
+
+Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of
+enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, the
+first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.
+
+"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science
+if you do."
+
+In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used the
+statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E.
+The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man because
+he is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in the
+universe that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limited
+interpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to the
+ascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the sole
+basis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality.
+
+He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting these
+phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were not
+the whole of reality, what then?
+
+Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of E
+science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only one
+natural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because of
+our ignorance, because we cannot apperceive the whole, then this, too,
+is no more than another facet.
+
+Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the movement
+of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward step
+by step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read the
+knowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, had
+previously happened to them.
+
+Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought the
+shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. There
+they paused.
+
+It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportions
+of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering
+beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch,
+uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as
+small and inconspicuous as possible.
+
+In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at the
+turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the
+pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing
+men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly,
+apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his body
+against his will.
+
+The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just the
+kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into his eyes
+for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace of
+terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage swamped in funk.
+
+"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he had spoken
+in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of the
+classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him under
+the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown.
+
+As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank
+half-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legs
+behave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement of
+uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther back
+into sheltering protection of the deep forest.
+
+But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came together
+under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection? From what?
+
+Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree, as if,
+on a high place, he feared falling.
+
+"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help it."
+
+One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced,
+spare-framed one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable
+impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be made
+responsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to survive
+against all odds.
+
+"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like that
+for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin' all right.
+Better than some."
+
+Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders, fought off
+the urge to like dejection.
+
+"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and
+mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at
+himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen
+naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."
+
+To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell
+somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself.
+Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of
+responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding
+himself that he was a man.
+
+"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckon
+you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don't
+rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here is Ahmed Hussein,
+and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van Tassel. Manner of speakin',"
+he amended. "He ain't no more miserable than the rest of us."
+
+"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This is Tom
+Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just under
+the weather right now."
+
+"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I
+reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He
+spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him.
+"Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the
+job, and that's all we got left."
+
+Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar
+formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.
+
+"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a
+shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."
+
+"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him.
+Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if
+to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the
+pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."
+
+"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One
+place is good as another right now."
+
+The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the
+ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his
+legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.
+
+"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then
+cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even
+provide a cup of coffee."
+
+"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"
+
+He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began
+rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two
+sticks flew apart and out of his hands.
+
+"Try it," he invited Cal.
+
+Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started
+to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of
+his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not
+provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the
+sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together.
+Suddenly, he simply lost interest.
+
+"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His
+astonishment at himself was a shock.
+
+There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of
+gets you, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.
+
+"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant
+to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been going
+on?"
+
+"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, and
+all ..."
+
+"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning when
+everything was normal...."
+
+"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He looked at
+Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he added. "Can't
+keep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm a
+little surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation this
+long. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more that
+we'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left you
+to your own devices without interest in you. Strange."
+
+"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right now
+I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ... Well, while I'm
+in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keep
+interested.
+
+"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a week
+ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was around
+noon...."
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+It was one day around noon.
+
+Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his
+dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready
+afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch,
+all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden.
+Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and
+didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that
+had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earn
+his bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for
+it on Eden.
+
+He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees in
+the front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from the
+rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not so
+far he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still far
+enough to give a man some space.
+
+The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen window
+where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy,
+peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing the
+flowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in the
+trees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life like
+that, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be.
+
+He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because the
+committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up all
+groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn't
+afford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap out
+something that was splitting the colony right down the middle.
+
+He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetables
+were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here--plenty of rain,
+plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the crops, not even enough
+insect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures where
+the colony's community stock grazed.
+
+The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinking
+pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of some
+trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying down
+in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The green
+grass around them was so tall he could barely see their heads and backs.
+
+His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it. Martha,
+like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all you could see, as
+the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She never
+could stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked out
+this spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and some
+dim shapes of islands in the distance. Right nice.
+
+Yes, it was all very peaceful--and tame.
+
+That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got
+restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets.
+You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or
+couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while,
+maybe always.
+
+On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make
+a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right
+for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow
+death--almost as bad as living on Earth.
+
+Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe
+more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and
+see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q.
+that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy
+living.
+
+A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow
+tall.
+
+Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and
+were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the
+experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation
+so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an
+experimental colony.
+
+And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal
+to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could
+afford to lose any.
+
+Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a Lotus
+Land, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, got
+plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailing
+it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get a
+little black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick it
+out. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to follow
+it. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth
+for a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idle
+right now because there weren't enough experimentals to go around.
+
+They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another job too.
+Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them than living here.
+
+Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half wanted to
+leave right now. That was what the committee was going to decide today.
+He'd done some checking around, and it looked like they were going to
+vote to go. He'd also checked with them who wanted to stay permanently,
+and it looked like, in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to
+be men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sure
+of it.
+
+Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was the
+trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind the
+community together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and get
+along when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves.
+
+It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his sympathies
+were with the ones who wanted to go, Jed felt there was something wrong,
+real bad, about deserting the planet. Still and all, if they voted to go
+he couldn't stop them.
+
+Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on out without
+the total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E.H.Q. would decide that
+Eden was too hard to colonize because it was too easy. Maybe they'd
+abandon the planet entirely. There'd be no more humans here, and no more
+coming.
+
+That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump!
+
+He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, and
+he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else for
+his own fault. There wasn't any hammock.
+
+At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly in
+the direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standing
+there on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not a
+stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.
+
+And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!
+
+His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to stand
+right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter with her anyhow?
+He peered quickly down toward the village to see if anybody was looking
+up in this direction.
+
+The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't any
+hammock. There wasn't any house.
+
+There wasn't any village.
+
+He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where the
+village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around as
+if they'd fallen down.
+
+And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.
+
+And so was he! He'd just realized it.
+
+It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the tree was
+still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stood
+out above all the rest. Still singing.
+
+Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind a
+tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody saw
+him standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird.
+
+The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond
+the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its
+hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong,
+real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't there.
+Nothing.
+
+For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong direction.
+He'd got turned around or something in the confusion, because there was
+a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grove
+they'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the trees
+because it had a peculiar shape.
+
+And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power saw
+for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to save
+the wood for furniture because it was real pretty. That was the tree,
+there on the edge of the grove.
+
+He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out
+where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that whole
+area of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only they
+hadn't, because that was virgin forest, too.
+
+Maybe he'd gone insane? He felt a flood of relief. Sure, that was it.
+He'd just gone insane, that was all. Everything else was all right.
+
+"The calves have got loose to the cows and they're going to take all the
+milk, Jed."
+
+He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so was she. Her
+eyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time like this to be worrying
+about them fool calves getting out. It took all the comfort away from
+him. Her face was white, her eyes were dazed.
+
+"You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha," he heard himself saying. "And
+for Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The committee's coming
+over, and you running around like that!"
+
+He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the hammock
+after all, while he was waiting for the committee, and he was dreaming.
+Of course, he ought to have known all along. This was just the way
+things happened in a dream--even him and Martha running around naked. He
+even chuckled to himself. He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow after
+all, because even in a dream it was his own wife that was next to him
+there, naked--not some other man's.
+
+The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most of it. He
+took her into his arms, and she clung to him.
+
+Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him, and he
+was dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any sheet in the
+hammock when he went to sleep.
+
+And he wasn't dreaming.
+
+"What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was shaking with
+fear, and her arms were wound around his neck so tight now he could
+hardly breathe.
+
+"Now, now, Martha," he cautioned. "Don't you go getting hysterical."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked again.
+
+"I don't know," he said. They were both talking in low tones.
+
+"It's some kind of a miracle," she whispered.
+
+"Now there's a woman's thinking for you," he chided her fondly, joshing
+her a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ... Well any
+scientist would tell you that ..." And then he stopped. He was pretty
+sure the frameworks of science, as he knew them, wouldn't be able to
+tell you.
+
+He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another, they
+both went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he guessed. You'd
+have the feeling of sinking down and down, and there'd be nothing but
+blinding, swirling chaos all around you. Then you'd kind of come to for
+a minute, and there'd be the trees, the sky, the farm animals, the sea
+in the distance.
+
+You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note, almost
+absently, that people were getting to their feet now, some of them
+clinging together the way you and Martha were--and then back down into
+mental chaos you'd go again.
+
+That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun to snap out
+of it a little.
+
+"But the funniest thing of all," Jed said, and looked at Cal quickly,
+penetratingly. "I had the feeling all the time that we were being
+watched!"
+
+Cal said nothing.
+
+"You know," Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a trap? Then
+watching it, to see what it will do?"
+
+Cal nodded, without speaking.
+
+"It was just another crazy thought, I guess," Jed said deprecatingly.
+"Plumb crazy."
+
+But, clearly, he didn't believe it was.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The operator sat
+back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance at
+the adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everything
+said--had been for hours.
+
+Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the E
+cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, all
+the way back.
+
+He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how far
+did that word experimental take you? Some experiment! He realized his
+interest was running deeper than that of a detached technician's concern
+for well-operated equipment--mechanical, that is. Well, let it. Live a
+little once in a while. At least dream.
+
+The department supervisor hovered near the back of the operator's chair,
+breathing down his neck. He gnawed at the knuckles of his hand, and
+hoped nothing would go wrong this time. That astronavigator, Louie
+LeBeau, was probably right. Those colonists had turned nudist, and were
+afraid to report what they'd done back to Earth!
+
+Well!
+
+He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud. He
+decided he hadn't.
+
+If _he_ were out there, instead of that E, _he'd_ make them put their
+clothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset, causing
+all this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E.H.Q. aroused,
+taking up the time of an E--just because they wanted to frolic around
+without any clothes on!
+
+If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should be
+spanked like irresponsible children.
+
+He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists who ought to
+be spanked.
+
+"... E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp," the pilot out there
+was reporting. "He is walking toward the three colonists. Now they have
+started walking toward him. They do not seem hostile. They seem glad to
+see us. My crew and I are still at our stations, ready for ..."
+
+Silence.
+
+The set simply didn't register anything more except that faint sigh of
+uncompleted force fields in space.
+
+"What now? What now?" the supervisor pushed the operator to one side,
+and barely restrained the impulse to cuff him on the side of the head.
+"Now what did you do? Why did you meddle with it when it was coming in
+so clear and strong? What's happened?"
+
+"I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know what's
+happened," the operator flared back. "The signal just stopped. That's
+all."
+
+There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line that
+had been rigged to give direct connection of the running report to
+Hayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped open the key, as if
+he were touching a rattlesnake.
+
+"What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly, without
+diplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!"
+
+"I don't know what happened. I don't know," the supervisor quarreled
+back. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing anything to the
+equipment."
+
+He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which made
+the far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe. "There's no
+reason for an occlusion," he said to Hayes. "And the set here is alive.
+It must be at the other end."
+
+He turned to the operator, and said loudly, "Bounce a beam on Eden's
+surface. Just see if any booster has gone out between here and there."
+Most of it was making a show of efficiency for Hayes.
+
+"Here we go again," the operator mumbled to himself, and pressed down a
+key. The returning pips showed the signal was getting through to Eden.
+
+"Pilot Lynwood! Pilot Lynwood!" the supervisor nagged into the mike.
+"Speak up! Do you hear me?"
+
+The operator sighed deeply. His panel partner grimaced something halfway
+between a grin and a sneer of disgust.
+
+"They don't answer," the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's the
+same as before."
+
+"Here we go again," Hayes groaned, but not only to himself. "All right,"
+he said wearily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the channel open.
+Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if signal resumes."
+
+But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It was too
+much of the same pattern as before. What could have happened?
+
+There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and more
+detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in
+the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to
+speculate in that first one? But in the interests of time!
+
+The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now each
+one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that
+had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew
+what a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it.
+
+It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go out
+in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be available
+in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leave
+E.H.Q. without a single E in residence.
+
+Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? It
+shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! There
+was something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only one
+in a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than one
+in a million could qualify as an E.
+
+A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believed
+what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the people
+who said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punished
+him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if they
+could. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled him
+dangerous to society.
+
+It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between
+rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were still
+of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a base. Ah,
+there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the inquisitiveness,
+the skepticism; and at the same time teach him the basics he must have
+for constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission by
+the punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by his
+teachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs.
+
+Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if a
+guy could just think. But what could have happened?
+
+He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out by the
+attorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably was--to the
+attorney general's office. Fine lot of good E.H.Q. would get out of
+that. He was no fool. He knew the attorney general would gladly
+sacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it would give him a weapon to
+fight E.H.Q.
+
+Why hadn't E.H.Q. sent along an observer ship also? These cocky E's!
+Probably hadn't thought it necessary. Always ready to assume they could
+handle the situation by themselves!
+
+He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review, get it
+on record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of playing it safe.
+Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too concerned with his own
+skin, too willing to play it safe. But an employee of E.H.Q. to make a
+public criticism of an E! No, better play it safe.
+
+He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E McGinnis
+would talk to him.
+
+He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the planet and
+wait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to have happened while E
+Gray's cruiser was out in space. It must be something connected with
+landing, being on the surface of the planet.
+
+But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists! Why hadn't
+they signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out of their bushes and
+signaled the danger? Surely they must know what it was. They were alive
+and healthy, three of them at least. Why hadn't they used their stupid
+heads?
+
+But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space, or even in
+their stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't they? Or did they?
+Sure they did. No matter what happened to the buildings, they must have
+all sorts of equipment hidden under the trees, or in caves.
+
+Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing in there
+like a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions. That's
+what came from sending out a boy to do a man's job. Maybe the attorney
+general's office had been right in its attempt to prevent a Junior from
+going. What was the use of all that E training, if the boy didn't have
+enough sense ...
+
+At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off, not go rushing
+in blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there was a _real_ product of
+E science, the veritable dean of the E's.
+
+E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be followed by a
+rescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And between an E out in
+space and another on the ground, they shouldn't have any trouble in
+working it out. He wondered if he should suggest that to E McGinnis as
+soon as the operator located him. Even if the grand, lovable old man
+thought of it for himself, he'd compliment Hayes for thinking it,
+reasoning it all out!
+
+The intercom operator came on his line.
+
+"Sir," she said, and cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp. Her
+voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted E
+McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what he
+said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could."
+
+"Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed to give
+her courage.
+
+"Sir," she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you. He
+says the foggy, rambling way that review was conducted was a disgrace.
+He says why don't you get on with what you have to do instead of
+bothering people. He says not to waste any more of his time unless you
+can come up with something he doesn't already know. He says he doubts
+you'd know what that was even if it hit you in the face. He said to tell
+you the exact words, so I took it down in shorthand, so I could.
+Because--he said to."
+
+She was all but wailing, as she finished.
+
+"All right," Hayes sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder things
+were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me your
+notes so I can follow them carefully," he told the operator.
+
+"So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the joint," she
+mumbled, but she had already thrown the key so he couldn't hear her.
+
+Resignedly, because he knew he was going to catch it from the scientists
+just as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself that he must
+always be in the middle of things, he began to arouse the scientists.
+
+He felt so sorry for himself that he dropped his tentative plan to have
+the midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the individual
+colonists out there--to see if some of them might be young, pretty,
+female--34-24-34.
+
+As if the idea were now red hot, he dropped the plan of telling General
+Administration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps he should go
+out there, personally.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was,
+indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office--to
+Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to be
+secret. All right for them to know, because they were very special
+persons, but the people should not be told.
+
+"Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He is
+starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Making
+a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the crew isn't covering
+him. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The three unclothed men are
+moving toward him, spread out a little, crouching, obviously going to
+attack. The stupid fool doesn't seem to realize it. He's ...
+
+"Wait a minute. I don't believe it...."
+
+"Well, what?" Gunderson exploded from his end.
+
+"Sir," the assistant gulped, "the ship disappeared, just like that."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"No, sir. It did. The three crewmen are sprawled on the ground. Now two
+of them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the ramp, or
+anything."
+
+"Can't be. Has to be around somewhere."
+
+"No, sir. Isn't. Sorry to contradict you, sir. It isn't anywhere."
+
+"They probably set controls to send the ship back into space, and
+jumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it. Ships don't
+just disappear."
+
+"I'll search, of course. But this ship just disappeared."
+
+"All right, what's going on? What else?"
+
+"They're naked. Naked as the day they were born. All four of them. Same
+as the colonists."
+
+"Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get the
+evidence."
+
+"Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they were
+fully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could have undressed
+inside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed--and then he wasn't. Just
+like that."
+
+"Hm-m."
+
+"Shall I land, sir? Place them under arrest?"
+
+"Wait a minute. Let's think of a good charge. Something to stand up in
+court. Have to make this airtight right from the beginning in case some
+stupid judge decides to make a show of independence."
+
+"Indecent exposure, sir? Lewd public behavior?"
+
+"Pretty weak, in view of what's involved."
+
+"A suggestion, sir. Maybe a morals charge is the most effective weapon
+we could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of bad scientific
+judgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel compelled to rise up in
+their defense--except, of course, those employed by the government. But
+on a morals charge there wouldn't be one voice raised--fear of being
+tarred with the same brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are already
+discredited. Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused against
+us, but a morals charge--think of the backing we'd get from the women's
+clubs, P.T.A., all the pressure groups determined to dictate to the rest
+of the world how it should behave. It's worked for hundreds of years,
+sir. Never fails."
+
+"Hm-m," Gunderson mused. "You may be right."
+
+"Shall I land, sir, make the arrest?"
+
+"You've got plenty of photographic evidence?"
+
+"All we'd need, sir, at least for the lewd, public indecent exposure
+charge."
+
+"Wait a minute. How about the colonists? Got pictures of them?"
+
+"The three men, sir. No others."
+
+"Let's don't rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a ship
+they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybe
+we can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, or
+at least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than just
+that. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, in case
+they've gone nudist."
+
+"You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?"
+
+"Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd been gunning
+for the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites. Hm-m, even if we
+decided not to prosecute, we'd have the pictures in their dossiers, so
+that anytime in the future, for the rest of their lives, if any of them
+gave us any trouble, we could quietly let them know what we've got, and
+they'll just fold up and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years,
+too."
+
+"Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir." The assistant knew that already
+Gunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job he'd
+better let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the idea should
+backfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly enough where it had
+originated.
+
+"Hm-m, you know," Gunderson was saying. "This could work out all right.
+If their ship's gone they're not communicating with E.H.Q. And if
+they're not communicating, E.H.Q. will send out another ship to see why.
+Maybe there'll be an E on it. I hear the only one available is
+McGinnis--that guy who's planning to fight us on that injunction.
+
+"Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could make
+pictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress sometime, take
+a bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody with a public reputation
+ever fights a charge like that, guilty or innocent. They pay up or
+knuckle under to keep it quiet. Have, for hundreds of years; always
+will, as long as a bunch of fat, old, ugly biddies, male and female, who
+nobody wants that way are viciously resentful that they can't have what
+somebody else is enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped with
+frustrations they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're even
+worse. Yeah, a morals charge is the way to get at him."
+
+"But I understood there was a law, that we couldn't charge an E for any
+offense."
+
+"We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the televiewers. That's
+the whole point. We can't charge an E now, but wait until we get things
+stirred up on a morals basis. That law'll be changed in a hurry, because
+any legislator that tried to hold out against changing it would be drawn
+and quartered by his constituents--and has enough sense to know it.
+
+"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go about it.
+Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you guys would read
+your history of how police enforcement officers got things back under
+control each time some idealist started squawking about human rights,
+you'd think of these things, too.
+
+"Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on every
+move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back under
+police control, the way scientists were before, I've got to have
+information.
+
+"And keep taking pictures!"
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship,
+everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself
+crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any
+clothes on--what then?"
+
+"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward
+his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three
+crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the
+edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said
+in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun."
+
+Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious
+emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and
+thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were
+faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and
+yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some
+special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a
+dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed
+it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now
+he could be more comfortable.
+
+One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was
+gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort.
+Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and
+perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth,
+claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were
+clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became
+less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could
+see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than
+enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea
+that clothes encouraged immorality.
+
+"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a
+natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin'
+like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at
+least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd
+hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of,
+but, believe me ..."
+
+He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of
+perplexity.
+
+"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kids
+screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--only
+scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real truthful," he said,
+"most of the yellin' came from the men. The women, by and large, was
+real swell.
+
+"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect ever
+seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she's
+tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him
+for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of
+womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make
+a jackass outta himself at the wrong time."
+
+Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh from
+Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and made
+no apology about present company being excepted.
+
+"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said, "where you
+begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up any
+pieces."
+
+They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than the
+disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of those
+that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and tools
+to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them that's hurt,
+taking care of them as much as possible, first thing they think of is
+making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.
+
+That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation
+following a cyclone or other freak of nature.
+
+Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of
+hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who
+insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down
+to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to
+help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take
+care of the needy.
+
+And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then,
+pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't
+likely to start up a passel of gossip.
+
+He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from
+behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down
+that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was
+that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.
+
+Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing
+happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was
+naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden,
+and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.
+
+By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of
+people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to
+think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She
+was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over
+their hysterics.
+
+"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as
+they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we
+need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."
+
+Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a
+pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her
+asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried
+gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd,
+scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into
+it until it boiled, Indian style.
+
+It might seem funny to city women, always protected against everything,
+that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First place, she had her
+man already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, she
+was a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, trained all her
+life to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals something
+unexpected was always happening.
+
+Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, now
+that he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began to
+settle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire or
+flood. It was all over. Now it was time to start picking up the pieces,
+rebuilding.
+
+Only it wasn't all over.
+
+That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire.
+
+Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a stick in a
+hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of
+flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a
+wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together
+will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make
+the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those
+quartz crystals from the top of the mountain to focus sun rays....
+
+But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two
+sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself
+what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a
+little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must
+have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were
+more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or
+months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came to
+building a fire.
+
+One of the men tore it then.
+
+He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over his
+shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire.
+
+Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was
+staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation of
+that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on with
+the telling.
+
+Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having the
+same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked right
+there if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the way
+a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.
+
+He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women. That it
+was in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the mistake of
+listening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged Adam into eating that
+apple because a woman was never satisfied to leave well enough alone.
+And now, he said, in this new Eden, man was being given another chance.
+If he was smart, if he's learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't
+listen to no woman.
+
+Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased the
+tension a little.
+
+A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to start
+a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves because
+in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or no
+watchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. That
+caused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was
+already half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At least
+the world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three
+hours had passed in what seemed like minutes.
+
+Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go a
+little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busy
+and knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--the
+way it often did.
+
+Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up a
+small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even without
+no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in the
+ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright in
+the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with
+vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift
+that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it
+with grass, and there you were.
+
+But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.
+
+Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled right up
+again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the
+only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried
+lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were
+like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of
+their hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up again
+straight.
+
+Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, all
+right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves would
+scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind.
+
+Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They tried
+it themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was a
+little more forgiving.
+
+A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun got
+low. People began to realize they were getting hungry, and they began to
+realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.
+
+Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd been hurt.
+Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.
+
+The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do was go
+down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it to
+their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their faces
+into the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know they
+could.
+
+The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts to
+eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to depend
+on seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it.
+
+The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage their
+supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sort
+of hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then.
+
+By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people in
+the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. The
+darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, the
+stranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people were
+starting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the dusk
+you could see the same thought in all the gleaming eyes.
+
+They couldn't have fire!
+
+Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain what had
+happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with an
+explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, looking
+back, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's a
+comfort.
+
+But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing it
+can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained. And yet,
+isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation for what's
+happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?
+
+Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some sleep.
+Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any children. That was
+one of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn't
+have children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'd
+have to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't have
+been surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than the
+grown folks.
+
+The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animals
+take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort from the presence
+and protection of the others. They bedded around on the ground, making
+themselves comfortable as possible. One thing you could say,
+experimental colonists might not be long on brains, the way scientists
+are, but they weren't picked for that. They were picked for endurance,
+and the brainy will often crack up under a strain that the enduring kind
+hardly notices. Far as endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad.
+
+Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars were as
+bright as ever--brighter because there wasn't no fire to dim their glow.
+They couldn't see Earth, of course, but everybody knew right where to
+look for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light in its
+constellation. It was still there.
+
+Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days until the
+regular monthly communication with Earth was due. That as soon as E.H.Q.
+didn't hear from them, there'd be a rescue party out here in nothing
+flat. So, at worst, it meant living this way only five or six more days.
+
+That made everybody feel better. It was a comforting thing to look up
+through the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they weren't
+forgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be buzzing around
+like a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers cocked and ready as soon
+as the message didn't get through.
+
+Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western movies
+where the U.S. cavalry always got there in time. At least they weren't
+being attacked by no Indians, somebody said.
+
+Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but nobody said
+it.
+
+Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfort
+just showed them how soft they were getting with easy living.
+Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a few
+days everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinking
+that even if there was some equivalent to the old-time Indians attacking
+them, rescue would soon be here and they would be safe.
+
+Because man always wins.
+
+Most people were wide awake by dawn. Some had slept in little bits,
+waking often enough to keep a sense of continuity. Others, those who
+slept better, awoke with a start; looked around themselves wildly,
+realized they were lying out in the open plumb naked in front of other
+people; maybe wondered for an instant what kind of party they'd been to
+the night before; and nearly bolted in panic before they remembered.
+
+Most everyone felt sort of surprised that things weren't back to normal,
+with yesterday being something soonest forgot soonest mended. It takes
+time for folks to realize--things.
+
+Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship, a
+reminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained. Seemed like
+everybody had woke with a determination to make the best of things and
+help one another do the same. Everybody was pitching in together to make
+the best of things. Once they bit into the cool fruit on the trees
+around them, even not having a hot drink to start the day didn't seem to
+matter.
+
+Some of the women got together and decided it would help things get back
+to normal if the people covered their nakedness, or least parts of it.
+It might be all right just among themselves, they said, because
+everybody was in the same fix and knew what happened--but how would they
+feel when the rescue ship landed and they had to walk out in front of
+strange men with nothing on?
+
+They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But when they
+strove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns just slipped out and
+fell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the leaves together with
+bindweed. Same thing. The bindweed slithered out and fell to the ground.
+
+One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick mud from the
+river and paste them with more mud on her body. It wouldn't stick,
+peeled right off like she was oiled. One man said he could do it without
+leaves, just cover himself with mud. He lay down in a muddy pool and got
+himself covered with wet clay.
+
+He was a sight. All at once he looked vulgar, obscene. And nobody had,
+before. That did it. Somebody said they were humans, not pigs, and if
+the men on the rescue ship had never seen a naked body before it was
+time they did. What was so wrong about the human body, anyhow?
+
+They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and gave up
+trying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to cover themselves
+was a nasty kind of thinking, something to be ashamed of.
+
+Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists who'd broken
+off from the main colony and moved across the ridge were all right.
+
+Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What fools they'd
+all been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep a man from thinking
+straight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping like animals when, all
+the while, just across the ridge there'd be houses and beds, fires and
+clothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans
+always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences
+forgotten.
+
+In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where the
+dissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of the
+ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same as
+this side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure.
+
+Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we still
+weren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and join
+forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down and
+congregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was the
+beginning of something that would come later, something Cal would see
+for himself. That they were already not thinking the way humans do.
+Thinking and behaving more the way dumb animals do.
+
+Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the next. In some
+ways it was still like a dream. The way people were just accepting
+things, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered one
+time an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man and
+the average man than there was between that average man and the ape.
+He'd resented it at the time, of course, but now he thought of it again
+and began to realize what the E had meant.
+
+Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back to nature,
+wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How stupid it was for man
+to knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing such
+hardships, when all a man could ever want was right here.
+
+Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He reminded
+them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a prime
+bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worse
+than this, and had ought to keep their wits about them.
+
+Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did it
+because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because once
+upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered, it had been his duty.
+
+It was the next day that things got real rough.
+
+Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be sure when
+the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn't
+see any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just go
+away. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe that
+you'd go away just because you didn't find our village.
+
+Anyhow, hadn't we ought to work out some kind of a message? Maybe scrape
+some kind of a message on the ground? They decided the smooth sand above
+the tide line down on the sea shore was the best place for it.
+
+Nobody had anything else to do, so the whole colony, all forty of them,
+walked the couple of miles down to the seashore. They picked out a nice
+stretch of white sand, and with a broken piece of driftwood they started
+to scratch a message, just a big SOS. The driftwood wriggled out of
+their hands like a snake. Nobody could hold it. Several men tried
+together, made no difference.
+
+Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The furrow
+closed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody tried piling up
+sand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no difference. Sand
+smoothed right out again.
+
+Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't need to use
+a stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They had their bare
+feet, didn't they? They could tromp out the letters that way.
+Footprints, close together, would be as good as a furrow.
+
+That's when it happened.
+
+Jed tried it himself. And his footprints disappeared. They just weren't
+there. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been walking. Nobody
+was leaving any footprints.
+
+That's when they bolted in panic.
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had
+spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief.
+
+"Maybe that seems funny to you," he commented. "After taking so much
+we'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not making
+footprints."
+
+"Pretty fundamental thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware of
+spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into
+fundamental being, a thing like that."
+
+Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances, as if
+confirming their belief that an E would understand their problems. Cal
+appreciated the confidence expressed in that glance, but did not feel it
+was justified. It was now pretty obvious that this was some alien
+co-ordinate system, never before encountered by man. But how to get hold
+of it? How to reconcile with it? Coexist with it?
+
+Never before encountered by man? What if the myths of early man be true?
+And too authentic the legends of his being a pawn to the will of the
+gods? Could there have been some factual basis for the gods? And not, as
+was supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for the
+control of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control?
+
+"It's been bad since then," Jed continued. "Seems like once they got
+the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in a
+stampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They didn't even stay
+together. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes from
+each other.
+
+"You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You could
+pass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they wouldn't
+say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, not
+even breathin' lest you discover them.
+
+"After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves
+together--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us now
+have got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is to
+hide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's why you didn't see us from
+the air. We was hidin' from you.
+
+"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of
+the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't come
+themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get
+some clothes for them from the ship.
+
+"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the
+colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since the
+footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if they
+also saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don't know."
+
+"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of fifteen
+or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll know
+we didn't cut out through choice."
+
+"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in the
+middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."
+
+"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not an E.H.Q.
+ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We'll not count on
+anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with
+an E on board--McGinnis."
+
+"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently. "That ship
+might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next."
+
+"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing
+happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to the
+ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on whatever this is."
+
+"You figger to solve this one?" Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.
+
+"I'm going to try," Cal said with more confidence than he felt. "It's
+what I'm here for. Maybe I can't solve it, but I can try."
+
+"I don't know how you're going to start," Dirk spoke up. "We're just
+like animals here. We can't use tools."
+
+"But animals do use tools," Cal answered after a moment. "Materials,
+anyway. Birds build nests using sticks, grass, clay. Monkeys and apes
+throw sticks and stones. Even insects use materials. Basic difference
+between man and the rest is that man gives special shapes to tools,
+where mainly the rest use whatever falls to hand. But all higher,
+organized protoplasmic life uses tools in one form or another."
+
+"We ain't allowed to," Jed said emphatically. "Not even what's at hand.
+Somebody, or somethin', is bound and determined we ain't goin' to."
+
+At that moment Cal felt close to a solution, or at least an
+understanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first step
+toward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the corner
+of the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the concept
+disappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using materials.
+Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet the definitions of
+what constitute life? As compared with our evolution, from its earliest
+beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the
+physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it,
+the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect,
+awkward way of going about it, as compared with ...
+
+Compared with what?
+
+The concept would not yet allow him full focus upon it. He filed it away
+for future contemplation.
+
+He saw Dawkins and the other colonists looking at him defiantly, as if
+interpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about the taboo
+on tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them, to find out for
+himself.
+
+"Other than the feeling of being watched," he said carefully, "have you
+had any sign, any other evidence or indication of somebody, or
+something? I know about the feeling, because I feel it too. And very
+strongly, right now. But any specific evidence?"
+
+Jed Dawkins looked relieved at the confession.
+
+"Everything's the evidence. Everything that's happened. What more
+evidence would you want?" he said.
+
+"One of the strongest arguments in favor of something, or some kind of
+intelligence," Cal said slowly, "is that nobody's been hurt. All natural
+law hasn't been canceled. We still have light radiation, heat radiation,
+gravity, water still flows, the planet still turns. Trees still grow and
+fruit still ripens. We can talk and be understood, using our tongues and
+minds as tools. We can still eat and drink. We can still know.
+
+"This is no chaotic co-ordinate system that defies all natural law. This
+is a deliberate manipulation of some natural laws to get a result. Man
+manipulates natural laws by the use of tools and materials, but he
+doesn't suspend them. Here, apparently without tools, at least tools we
+can perceive, natural law is manipulated, but not suspended.
+
+"When the village disappeared, no one was hurt. A lot of people were
+caught in awkward positions and fell, some of them several feet. There
+should have been at least a few broken bones, pulled ligaments. There
+weren't. Our ship landed safely. We were a long time in the atmosphere
+of Eden, and for a few minutes there on the ground we were still using
+tools of a high order. It was only when danger of real harm to us was
+past that the ship disappeared."
+
+"I reckon it's comfortin' to know we ain't meant to be hurt," Jed said,
+and looked at his two companions. "I guess it is," he repeated
+doubtfully. "Maybe it ain't something as nice and familiar as a cyclone,
+or a den of rattlesnakes, something you could understand, but you got
+to admit we ain't been hurt yet." It was as if he were arguing the point
+with his companions.
+
+"Something I've been noting, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. "A discrepancy of a
+sort that has me puzzled. Sun reckoning, we've been able to keep our
+minds on this subject for over two hours now. As if, whatever this is
+manipulating natural laws can also manipulate the way our minds work."
+
+"Yeah," Jed admitted slowly, his face thoughtful. He turned to Cal.
+"Like I said at the start. Our minds have sort of wandered of late.
+Start to do something, and first thing y'know, we're doin' something
+else. Can't keep our minds on one thing very long--like animals."
+
+"That might be no more than the aftermath of deep shock," Cal said.
+
+"It's for a purpose!"
+
+Startled at the outburst, they all turned and looked at Louie.
+
+"It's for a purpose," Louie repeated in a kind of rapture. "They want us
+to understand we are being watched over, cared for. That colonist you
+all laughed at was right. This is the first Garden of Eden, where man
+lived in complete innocence. Now man has been returned to it, to live
+again in complete innocence. You do not think straight because there is
+no reason. You will be cared for. Woe unto him who seeks to despoil it
+again by seeking vain knowledge!"
+
+His eyes were wild, his face contorted with a mixture of exaltation and
+condemnation.
+
+"Shut up, Louie," Tom said in a low, firm voice.
+
+"We understand," Jed said tolerantly. "Some of the colonists are talkin'
+the same way. He's got plenty of company."
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+All the rest of that day, and throughout the following, Cal and Tom
+worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them living
+together again.
+
+By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of colonists
+that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louie
+frankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his time with the
+colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days,
+occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep the
+cows separated from their calves so the colonists would have milk to
+drink, but without ropes or corrals it was hopeless. He finally gave up
+his attempt to husband the stock, and he too seemed content then to
+mingle with the colonists.
+
+The marked change in Louie could not be ignored, for he was not idling
+away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelong
+pose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirty
+end of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little band
+of colonists. Or wandering through the forests and undergrowth calling,
+praying, comforting.
+
+Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man, seemingly
+dedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries beyond his power to
+comprehend, reverted to childlike superstitious awe for an explanation.
+In the face of mystery or catastrophe, it takes a faith beyond the
+capacity of most to continue believing that the universe has a rational
+order to its laws that can be comprehended if man persists. It is
+temptingly easy for man to revert back to the irresponsibility of
+childhood, assuming that the control of phenomena is in the hands of
+those stronger, wiser than he. It takes a strength, in the face of this
+temptation, to go on believing that man _can_ know, that it is not
+morally wrong for him to know.
+
+No blame then for Louie.
+
+Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that away from
+E.H.Q. the crew become the E's attendants, and that their first duty is
+always to the E. But separation from the other two men of his crew was
+like the loss of a part of himself. To these also he had a duty. He
+tried to solve his problem by alternating his time, spending part of it
+with Cal, the remainder with his crew.
+
+Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and
+found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They had
+seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, they
+had climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, to
+watch the ship's landing--and its disappearance.
+
+Once they were found, it took little persuasion to convince them they
+should return to the other colonists, that differences of opinion meant
+nothing now as against the need of human beings to cling together in the
+face of catastrophe.
+
+But they too were having trouble thinking in a straight line, and even
+though they first appeared eager to join the other colonists, it took
+some doing to keep them all together and moving forward to cross the
+ridge, to come down the other side, to assemble again at the site of the
+village with the others.
+
+And yet, within minutes, neither band seemed to remember that they had
+ever been separated.
+
+By the time they had returned, it was apparent that Louie was succeeding
+where Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the few hours that
+had elapsed, the nucleus had tripled in size. Louie's wandering through
+the brush, calling, pleading with them to follow him, promising there
+was no danger if they would allow him to watch over them, intercede for
+them with Those who had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them from
+their hiding places, calmed their fears.
+
+And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing them back
+into the fold, one and two and three at a time, until, at last, by Jed's
+count, all were there, no more missing.
+
+And yet, in spite of his success, there was a kind of hurt and
+disappointment in Louie's eyes. For once back, they not only forgot
+their fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced into a
+placid herd, without memory of their panic. Without memory of the
+shepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned them to the fold.
+
+They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eating
+leaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the river
+to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water to
+drink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as they
+lay on white sand or grassy slopes to dry, they slept contentedly.
+
+The phenomenon was not as startling to Cal as it might have seemed to
+others.
+
+On Earth, gradually learned through trial and error, experimental
+colonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible, incisive,
+or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary. The basic test of a successful
+colonist was endurance--the endurance of hardship, privation, the stoic
+indifference to conditions of discomfort, monotony, pain, uncleanliness,
+immodesty--conditions which would send a more imaginative or sensitive
+temperament into a downward-spiraling syndrome of failure. They were the
+kind of men and women who, on Earth in an earlier time, had been able to
+endure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease, desert
+heat; to make those first steps in taming a hostile environment, so that
+men with less endurance, but with more delicately poised and sensitive
+minds, following them might then endure.
+
+It was characteristic of such men and women, even under Earth
+conditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for these things.
+They simply went, and endured, and tamed. Even on Earth, when the taming
+had been done, they moved on. This was the stuff of the experimental
+colonist.
+
+Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in panic, but
+now they had returned to their original purpose--to endure. It was
+enough.
+
+Louie was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious about
+scientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal failure to be
+curious about philosophical implications. They listened idly to his
+exhortations, but their eyes did not light with fire nor cloud with
+doubt. They simply wandered away after a time and ate or slept.
+
+In the evening of that second day, Cal sat with Tom and Jed down by the
+bank of the river where the sky was clear and the stars beginning to
+shine. They were talking quietly of home, of Eden, of the colonists who,
+more and more, seemed to take on the character of a contented herd of
+animals. So far there had been no attempt of the old males to drive the
+young ones out of the herd, destroy them, but that might come in time;
+as surely as the old males on Earth by tacit agreement on both sides,
+were always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out and
+destroying lusty young male competition.
+
+They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed able
+to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject,
+while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to live
+from moment to moment, without concern for past or future.
+
+Except Louie. He too seemed able to hold his thinking in a straight
+line, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours, to have
+turned wholly mystical, to a stronger belief that they were being
+watched and cared for by some higher power, and that this was for a
+purpose. Yet not so tangential, for Cal had come to the same conclusion,
+although his interpretation differed.
+
+"I can't doubt that there is an intelligent direction of this peculiar
+co-ordinate system," he said to Tom and Jed. "But I must doubt it is
+supernatural in the way Louie interprets. Anything appears to be magic
+when we don't understand how it happens, and becomes science when we
+do."
+
+He paused, and looked at his companions' faces in the starshine. They
+were quiet, reposed, listening.
+
+"Ever since man got up off the bottom of his ocean of air," he said,
+"and out into space, we've been prepared to run into some form of
+intelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not prepared to do
+anything about it, you understand," he said with a shrug. "Just
+theoretically prepared that it might happen. It was a possibility. Now
+it does seem to have happened. E McGinnis asked me, before I left Earth,
+if I thought Eden was an alluring trap, especially baited to catch some
+human beings. It begins to appear that it is."
+
+"I've caught many a wild animal in my day," Jed said slowly,
+thoughtfully. "I've pinned 'em up in cages, watched how they behaved. I
+guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to hurt 'em, fact make
+'em as comfortable as they can--just want to know about 'em. Sometimes,
+after I watched them awhile I'd turn 'em aloose and watch 'em scoot back
+to their natural world. That could happen to us. Sometimes they'd die,
+and I wouldn't know why. That could happen. Some animals won't bear
+young in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever's
+holdin' us don't know that, and might turn us aloose when, after a time,
+we don't bear any young."
+
+He paused and looked even more thoughtful.
+
+"Sometimes," he added slowly, "after I studied 'em, found out how they
+would behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, because they was too
+dangerous to let run around among humans. That could happen."
+
+"I haven't done much trapping," Tom said. "But in zoos I've watched
+animals in cages. The thought always came to me that if they could think
+the way we do, they could just open their cages and walk away."
+
+"Now you take turkeys," Jed answered. "Pin 'em up with a high fence,
+they'll back up, take off and fly over it. But pin 'em with a low fence,
+and they won't. Seems like they know they have to fly over a high
+obstruction, but don't figger on it for a low one. Sometimes they
+flutter up against it, or try to push it over, but most of the time they
+just walk around and around in the yard lookin' for an opening."
+
+"Natural survival pattern," Cal commented. "In the woods, in their
+natural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it took more
+effort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it took to walk
+around the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior to walk around
+it."
+
+"That's what they do with a low fence then," Jed said. "They just keep
+tryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it like
+a high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use tryin' to tell 'em it's
+high, because they know it ain't. So they can't solve it. Seems awful
+stupid, somehow, a little low fence, all that blue sky above 'em, and
+they can't figger it out."
+
+"I suspect that's what's happening to us," Cal said. "We've always
+argued that wherever there is matter and energy in the universe, certain
+natural laws will prevail. We've learned ways to take advantage of those
+natural laws, to do certain things that will make them work for us
+instead of against us.
+
+"We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise in the
+universe it, too, would have to become aware of these natural laws; that
+it, too, would have to do these same certain things to take advantage of
+those laws; that because the laws and what to do about them would always
+be similar man would have a lot in common with that other intelligence,
+and a means of communicating because of that similarity.
+
+"We'd argue that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this wasn't
+so important as its mental evolution--because that mental evolution
+would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't be truly alien,
+because science would be a common denominator.
+
+"Now it appears we could be wrong. Maybe our concept of science is too
+narrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become so fixed in our
+pattern of solving a problem we can't change, can't back off and take
+another look, see the problem not as it appears but as it really is."
+
+"But isn't that the science of E?" Tom asked curiously. "To be able to
+extrapolate any co-ordinate system? I'm not criticizing," he added
+hastily. "Just asking."
+
+"I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too based on
+the relationship of things and forces to each other, too set in the
+notion that only physical tools can affect physical things. We may be
+looking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore not able to
+understand why we can't walk around the obstruction in the usual
+manner." He stopped, and added with a shrug. "Stupid, maybe. Or like the
+turkey, the yard is so big that he never gets a picture of it as a whole
+enclosure. By the time he's wandered down this side of the fence he's
+forgot what he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thing
+together in his mind. That's my trouble, anyhow. So far, I'm not able to
+put the whole thing together, see it all as one piece.
+
+"When I do, if I do, then maybe like a caged animal I'll see how to
+unlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is to fly."
+
+There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying natural
+law without any trouble, the three men broke off their discussion when
+they saw a bright flash high in the sky above them. All three knew what
+it meant.
+
+Another E ship had arrived.
+
+No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists in
+acknowledgment of their space flare.
+
+If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still in
+daylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship, no
+equipment for direct communication. They may even have reasoned there
+was no means of signaling with artificial light.
+
+But there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could not build a
+fire.
+
+As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men could
+anticipate what must be happening there. Right now they would be
+anxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring up like
+signal fires on a lonely island where a marooned man has, at last,
+sighted a ship on the horizon.
+
+The colonists were no longer hiding, but were freely wandering in open
+spaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk they would have seen the men
+and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might have
+spotted them in the infrared viewers which picked up the heat
+differentials and gave a fair approximation of shapes.
+
+The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their watches. How
+long, they would be asking, does it take those colonists, that E down
+there, to get a signal fire going?
+
+About five minutes passed, and another flare lighted the heavens.
+
+"Get off the dime down there!" it seemed to say. "Acknowledge us!"
+
+Cal took the chance that they might have an infrared viewscope directly
+on him, and he waved his arms above his head. But apparently they had
+not spotted him, for there was no answering flare.
+
+At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to fifteen
+minutes, throughout the long night the flares continued to light the
+sky.
+
+"Talk to us," the flares begged. "Surely you were expecting us. Surely
+you would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light could not rouse
+you."
+
+Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms, but it
+brought no answer from the ship. In the darkness perhaps the equipment
+wasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze bushes and trees also
+swayed with movement.
+
+Once there was a rustle in the brush, and in the starlight they
+recognized the figure of Louie approaching them.
+
+"This has got to stop," he said worriedly as he came up to them. "That
+light is an unnatural thing. It will anger Them. It is not meant for the
+peace of Eden to be disturbed by any artificial thing. And if They
+should turn Their wrath upon us--woe, woe!"
+
+His face was stricken in the light of a new flare, and as suddenly as he
+had come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees to seek his
+people, be beside them, comforting them when disaster struck down.
+
+After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgment
+of the flares in darkness. They watched for an hour or so, and then
+tried to sleep. The periodic flares continued to come throughout the
+long night, as if now no longer pleading for acknowledgment, but rather
+reassuring men in such deep distress that they could not answer.
+Reassuring them that help was at hand and morning would come.
+
+They tried to sleep, and although fitfully disturbed by the continuing
+flares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn, Cal awoke and
+aroused his two companions, and by the time there was enough light for
+the ship to see clear detail upon the ground, the three men were ready
+for a better attempt at answering the ship's signal.
+
+They went up to the village site, where the colonists were sleeping in
+the way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke Frank and Martha,
+Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louie, too, awoke, heard
+the plan, and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, to
+communicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath of
+Those who wanted only the natural state here--a wrath still withheld
+because of superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far.
+
+In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating with him, got
+together enough colonists to carry out his plan.
+
+Good-naturedly, the colonists did as they were told, but with the
+attitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing they'd
+rather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency about communicating
+with home seemed to have been washed from their minds.
+
+In a clear space, on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit or lie
+in certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of ancient signal
+patterns, those certain positions took the shape of space-navy patterns.
+
+Three men lay in a triangle. Next to that, six men sat in a circle, and
+last three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped someone on the
+ship would be able to read the ancient message.
+
+"Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty."
+
+The signal had no more than formed when there was a flash from the ship
+so bright that it could be seen in the morning sky. They had read his
+signal, and now they began a series of flashes, of questions. "What's
+going on down there?" was the essence of their questioning.
+
+It was well the ship had caught the first signal, for the colonists lost
+all interest in the game which had no point. They simply stood up and
+wandered away in search of their breakfasts from the trees and bushes.
+
+Louie, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge of them
+again and shepherded them to a grove of trees where the fruit seemed
+especially large and succulent.
+
+But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone. He lay
+down on the ground, himself, to move his arms in semaphore positions.
+But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he, too, could hardly
+care less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement at such
+childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one more
+message.
+
+"Keep off! No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate system."
+
+He stood up then, and made a farewell gesture toward the ship.
+
+At that instant he felt strangely that he had passed into another stage
+of growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment that
+had held him back. What the ship did, in response to his warnings, no
+longer mattered. If it landed, its personnel too would join the
+colonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might circle there
+indefinitely.
+
+Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence, unable
+to aid them, release them.
+
+He did not particularly care what they did.
+
+They could go on, spluttering out their signals, trying to question him.
+He didn't even try to read their messages. It didn't matter. Their
+science had nothing to do with him, nothing to offer him. Through it he
+could not reach a solution.
+
+Somehow he knew that already.
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness he
+could muster, "this time there must not be any interference with
+communication. There just absolutely must not be!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't my fault," the operator retorted with an exasperation
+that blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E McGinnis said--that
+they could identify E Gray, and the ship's crew, and many of the
+colonists, but that there was no sign of the ship that took them there.
+If there wasn't any ship there couldn't be any communication. It's not
+my fault. I can't receive something that wasn't sent."
+
+"I know, I know," the supervisor said, and then, worried that he may be
+giving the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, "just watch
+it, that's all!" He chewed violently at his knuckle and glared at the
+operator.
+
+"Just watch it," the operator mumbled bitterly. "Just watch it, the man
+says. And what will I watch if the message stops coming?"
+
+"Now, now, now, now," the supervisor nagged, "we'll have no
+insubordination, if you please."
+
+And upstairs this time more than Bill Hayes, sector chief, were
+monitoring the message. The top administrative brass of E.H.Q. were
+assembled in their big plush conference room used for arriving at major
+policy decisions that sometimes affected the whole course of man's
+progress and direction in occupying the universe.
+
+They sat in worried silence as E McGinnis reported the two messages he
+had received from Junior E Gray.
+
+First: Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty.
+
+Then: Keep off. No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate
+system.
+
+They looked at one another under beetled brows. They wondered, at first
+privately and then openly if that Junior E had blown his stack. They had
+looked at many a problem finally solved by the E's, but never before had
+such a ridiculous situation come up.
+
+And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided to
+place a curb on E.H.Q.'s freedom of movement, its control over the
+experimental phases of planet development. The injunction to halt a
+Junior E from taking over the Eden problem fooled none of them. They
+knew that Gunderson wasn't concerned for those colonists out there, that
+he was merely using the public furor to advance his own personal power.
+They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and
+ever to bring every phase of human activity under their control. They
+knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to
+arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law
+which seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actuality
+broadened police powers over a wide area of man's actions.
+
+Yes, there was far more at stake here than the fate of fifty colonists.
+In a sense E.H.Q. itself was the stake. The whole science of E was at
+stake.
+
+And E McGinnis had played right into Gunderson's hands. It was he who
+had been the E influence in deciding to allow a Junior to handle the
+problem in the first place. It was he who was standing off from the
+planet, not landing and taking over things as he should.
+
+There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people on Eden
+were in good health, and from their apparent actions, not even
+distressed.
+
+This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for example. Did
+the Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it? Must mean that. What
+else could prevent it? But when an E, a real E, took charge in an
+experimental colony, the colonists had nothing further to say about the
+matter. True, when the five-year experimental period was over and the
+three-generation colonists took over a planet, then it came more under
+civil control, and E.H.Q. largely withdrew with the provision that it
+could step back in at any time the problem seemed not to have been
+solved after all.
+
+But while under the five-year test ... The E was the final word, or
+should be. The colonists knew it. The E knew it, or should know it.
+Obviously then it was weakness on the part of the Junior if he allowed
+the colonists to dictate that there could be no mechanical science.
+Proof of his inability to handle the job.
+
+A perfect setup for Gunderson!
+
+They decided they were forced to take a strong hand with McGinnis.
+Ordinarily the E was the final word, not only with the colonists, but
+with the administration at E.H.Q. But maybe there were times when he
+shouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take a hand. After all, Gray
+was still a Junior, hardly more than a boy. Was it right that a mere boy
+could stop investigation by anyone except himself? Tell Earth with all
+its power and might what to do?
+
+Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E policy should
+be made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing else, they must take
+a strong hand to prevent Gunderson from moving in with his police
+powers. Protect the E science from Gunderson, or at least salvage what
+they might.
+
+Their conference over, they asked for a connection with McGinnis.
+
+"We assume you will land and take charge, E McGinnis?" the board
+chairman asked.
+
+"Certainly not," McGinnis snapped back. "An E has forbidden it."
+
+"Well now," the chairman argued, and sweat began to come out on his
+forehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his judgment isn't mature
+enough for this problem."
+
+"I have every confidence in Junior E Gray," McGinnis said acidly. "And
+every E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you have
+decided. Either the science of E means something, or it doesn't. Either
+we have complete freedom to handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remind
+you, gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E
+is a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to
+repeat past disasters?"
+
+"If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"--the chairman was all but pleading
+now--"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take a
+firmer control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policy
+demands it. Perhaps the whole future of E demands it."
+
+A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "this is Linda Gray. I requested that I be cut in
+on any communication concerning my husband, and E McGinnis made it an
+order before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I want
+to be with my husband."
+
+"I will not be landing on Eden, Linda," E McGinnis said firmly. "An E
+has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. No
+other E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health, and
+apparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us against
+landing. He must have a reason. We don't know, yet, what it is.
+
+"Now he has stopped communicating, we don't know why. He must have a
+reason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason. E science has been
+drilled into him until it is a part of his every mind cell, perhaps even
+every body cell.
+
+"I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him, because
+communicating with us distracts him from solving the problem. If E.H.Q.
+decides to send out a ship on its own, and risk landing in an unknown
+co-ordinate system, against the orders of two E's, which will become the
+combined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. If
+you wish to be on it, that is your decision.
+
+"I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E.H.Q. cannot connect
+with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted any
+further. I'm trying to think."
+
+The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in a
+vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination to do something,
+anything.
+
+They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it was
+their duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help,
+and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as his
+means of regaining control over the E's and E.H.Q. for civil authority.
+Didn't the stupid E see the danger? Wasn't it the same danger that men
+of science had always faced, the same mistake they had always
+made--leaving out the human element in a problem?
+
+The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man doesn't give a
+tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only that
+he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things, the inevitable,
+the only possible goal of the non-science mind. Surely the history of
+science versus non-science should have made this evident long ago!
+Surely there had been enough incidents in history....
+
+Very well, it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself. If he
+refused the see the clear danger to his whole structure--and their own
+ascendant position at the center of it--it was their clear duty to
+protect him nonetheless.
+
+They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, a
+miniature E.H.Q., at least to be there on the scene; to help in any way
+they could, perhaps to counter the moves Gunderson's police might make,
+at least to stand by.
+
+At least, in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to show
+their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully,
+without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendant
+at the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained the
+tradition of all non-science endeavors.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility not
+only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, in
+every rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only a
+Junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein lies
+Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of the
+people. A Junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affecting
+the life or death of fifty people. More than that, perhaps the future
+progress of mankind.
+
+"May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should become
+necessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in spite of
+the Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not be
+overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proved his
+capacity to merit an E.
+
+"We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson
+on that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not the
+Associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E?
+Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is extra smart?
+
+"The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over the
+individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never been
+clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but it
+has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the E
+structure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhaps
+if we concede his control over the Juniors on down, we can maintain the
+immunity of the Senior E. We must work to save at least that much."
+
+The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, left
+six hours later.
+
+Linda was on it.
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind.
+
+His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the messages
+spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in the
+semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all
+the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring.
+
+It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the
+newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who
+might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals,
+separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positions
+would do the job.
+
+Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every
+organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of others
+on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up in
+opposition.
+
+There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that Junior E, place
+him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise to
+let the colonists off easy--he could easily show that it was the
+influence of the Junior which had made a disgusting orgy develop there
+on Eden. Never mind that they were naked before the Junior arrived. The
+public could always be razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence,
+its order and meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and political
+trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good
+one; for the public never bothered to know the whole context of
+anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an
+attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all the
+public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury,
+observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence,
+only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and
+insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits he
+formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set up
+his case accordingly.
+
+His own course was clear.
+
+His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally
+clear:
+
+    _1. Proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime._
+
+    _2. Ignore any protests from the E ship already out there, or any
+        other ship E.H.Q. might have sent._
+
+    _3. Ignore any signals from the Junior E on the planet._
+
+    _4. Land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main site of
+        the lewd and obscene crime._
+
+    _5. Place Junior E Calvin Gray under arrest._
+
+    _6. Place the crew of the Junior E's ship, Thomas Lynwood, Franklin
+        Norton, Louis LeBeau, under arrest._
+
+    _7. Place any colonist who opposed the police under arrest._
+
+    _8. Place the remainder of the colonists in detention under
+        protective custody._
+
+    _9. Place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any way with
+        the police in carrying out the foregoing orders._
+
+The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final order.
+
+Place a Senior E under arrest?
+
+Certainly, a Senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to wander
+around, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing to let them
+get away with making such statements as "The police attitude toward the
+people is the major cause of crime." It was something else, and time the
+E's found it out, for them to make any overt move to interfere with the
+police in their performance of duty.
+
+Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist. It would
+strengthen his case.
+
+The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. He
+proceeded to the scene of the crime.
+
+He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis,
+received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of
+the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to
+make an arrest for an illegal act--and certainly running around stark
+naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public,
+was an illegal act--would pay any attention to the request of an
+onlooker which amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"?
+
+There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the planet's
+surface, so the third order did not apply.
+
+It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into trouble.
+
+He passed inside the orbits of the three other ships now circling the
+planet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the E.H.Q.
+floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden's
+atmosphere.
+
+The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled.
+
+And nothing happened.
+
+It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not lower the
+ship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions against
+crashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothing
+happened. They lowered not another inch.
+
+A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this
+barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the
+proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made
+their thrust with full speed and momentum.
+
+There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did not
+penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick
+ice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetration
+would not do.
+
+Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared
+to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the ship at
+full power against the surface.
+
+And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came
+to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any
+feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.
+
+What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?
+
+Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis.
+E science apparently had some kind of shield which they'd kept secret
+from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he
+released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!
+
+"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's a
+shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's
+causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the
+specimen They want. There's an E down there.
+
+"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."
+
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal
+McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known,
+that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having
+caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap
+to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with
+their experiment.
+
+From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had
+signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from
+ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the
+frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking
+out of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of
+reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his
+life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the
+consideration of a problem.
+
+His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he
+needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he
+needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led
+into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new
+concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that
+road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to
+determine his position in reality.
+
+He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder
+that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.
+He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into
+the shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with
+their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as
+many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and
+texture as food.
+
+At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness,
+awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was
+awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with
+that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of
+things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of
+things. But there was awareness of more.
+
+There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in
+all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to
+reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his
+environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something
+stronger and more important than he.
+
+To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that
+all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made
+subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not
+assume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.
+
+If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who
+could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that
+he must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he
+himself be destroyed.
+
+So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributes
+magnified.
+
+Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it
+its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and
+willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only
+answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the
+important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not
+do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher
+beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have
+driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have
+survived to remain aware.
+
+But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.
+The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops
+looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord
+with the answer.
+
+The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold
+millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve
+the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond
+the primitive one was self-evident.
+
+To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.
+Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accident
+often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he was
+endowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environment
+that heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing had
+not become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the
+foolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.
+
+Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by
+Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reason
+for its creation?
+
+He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was too
+new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the
+non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,
+to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,
+those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science
+descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to
+achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture
+and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.
+
+But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be
+erased!
+
+Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,
+as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,
+had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not
+yet been found.
+
+Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to
+doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and
+the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than
+accompanying music.
+
+The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered
+until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung
+around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always
+persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some
+subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that
+time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.
+
+As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his
+vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,
+the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of
+view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship
+to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of the
+Royal Society of London (1667)_.
+
+"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which
+can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only an
+enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a business
+of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."
+
+He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one
+arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most
+significant sentence ever written by man.
+
+"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, and
+passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain
+a dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."
+
+That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,
+for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science
+method of making its judgments prevail over all others.
+
+Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of
+all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.
+
+And now?
+
+Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial
+answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?
+Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something
+too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left
+behind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?
+
+What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still
+newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to
+reality must man now discover before he could continue his journey down
+the long road toward total comprehension?
+
+He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for it
+contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost
+as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.
+
+For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of the
+colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men had
+caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly,
+the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He lay
+back down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.
+
+Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed
+something, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, and
+had forgotten in science.
+
+These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only to
+be a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of even
+the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, was
+their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one
+with their environment--unaware.
+
+Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would they
+be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the
+clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in their
+own image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?
+
+Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.
+
+In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship with
+them. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himself
+off from the gods ...
+
+Loneliness.
+
+Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose then
+his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?
+
+Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of exploding
+exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding
+themselves woven into music, painting, literature.
+
+"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none
+other than we who are aware?"
+
+The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more
+and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, the
+recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all others
+subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The
+dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was that
+also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man,
+defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very
+willingness to live--and so died?
+
+What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--and
+lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling that
+apathy? Facing that dissolution?
+
+When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! To
+discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at least
+hope to discover it.
+
+For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation,
+the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always
+interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely
+different from the intent.
+
+Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were no
+other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that
+closed mind be made?
+
+All right.
+
+Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Their
+frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all his
+efforts?
+
+He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that
+sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist and
+his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man
+was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his
+rock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling
+faces.
+
+"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young man
+said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to
+give you one too."
+
+At least they were being impartial.
+
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the
+flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock
+again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating.
+
+He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their
+long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in
+occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to
+protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too
+would be searching for awareness.
+
+But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did not
+meet those terms.
+
+That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal
+did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws,
+the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debris
+which prevented communication of awareness as They defined it?
+
+There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon
+the tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception,
+psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had
+been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical
+tools, man stopped looking for answers other than these?
+
+Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without the
+use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude
+manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation
+without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate
+wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a
+printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result?
+
+A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to
+obtain the same result? But how?
+
+To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (for
+the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the
+current) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of that
+diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one
+thought of the diagram of a receiver? How?
+
+He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence too
+low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was
+walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless
+circle.
+
+Circle?
+
+Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare
+sand at the river's edge.
+
+In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was
+prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of
+every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the
+current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of
+planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.
+
+Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical
+science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it
+took, would know the circle.
+
+He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip of
+his finger he quickly drew a circle.
+
+The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!
+
+He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the
+invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of a
+circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you
+know?"
+
+He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the
+center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the
+perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximating
+the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wrote
+R². He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign.
+
+Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed
+all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. They
+understood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet
+there was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sand
+before he saw what it was.
+
+The = had changed to : !
+
+Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate to" for
+"equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure, without tools he
+could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It was
+pedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, without
+tools, to draw a perfect circle?
+
+Or was that running around inside his low fence?
+
+He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was now
+smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what they
+meant.
+
+He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his
+string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. They
+were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers
+could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked
+down again, and the equation was gone.
+
+Wrong track again.
+
+He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.
+
+The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a
+constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference between
+physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference
+in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an
+equation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the whole
+science of atomics was based.
+
+"E = MC²," he wrote.
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals sign?
+That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals was one of the
+possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we
+were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that
+answer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in
+unbalanced equations?
+
+He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see them erased.
+But they were still there. So he was starting on the right track. But
+wait.
+
+Before his eyes he saw the C² smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M"
+remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the low
+fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was
+the ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But so
+all-inclusive as to be too vague for use.
+
+For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's
+use of C² in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his
+time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics
+where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its
+inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work,
+had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted
+it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his
+day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things
+without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him
+entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that
+much to their superstitions.
+
+The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, but
+emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center
+of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixed
+cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the
+chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a
+fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that
+would not shift.
+
+The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?
+
+He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the track.
+
+It had changed again. Now it read "EδM": The form of the function of
+energy to matter is variable.
+
+Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and the
+independent variable of the function vary together.
+
+Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy to
+matter.
+
+And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship
+between energy and matter.
+
+He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.
+
+"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as
+much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."
+
+There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep
+sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in
+the sand.
+
+"They talked to _you_," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve
+Them, but it was to _you_ They talked."
+
+And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.
+
+Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's
+shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down
+at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an
+infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of
+forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."
+
+The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal
+felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not
+regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie,
+racked with broken sobbing.
+
+Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes
+that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in
+his youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them a
+tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to
+science--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations,
+making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of
+landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations
+again--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in
+youth.
+
+Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had
+talked.
+
+"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had
+searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have
+found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees,
+grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship?
+
+"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the
+incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more than
+conquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would be
+pleasing to another intelligence?
+
+"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another
+intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement?
+The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denial
+of it?"
+
+Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward the
+depths of the forest.
+
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had
+lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete
+retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they
+had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their
+idea-content no longer required its use.
+
+Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the
+clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always
+available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought.
+Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts of
+the herd, near the colonists but not of them. He had ceased to exhort,
+warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was
+thinking.
+
+And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering
+his own food, catching his own fish.
+
+And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.
+
+Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the
+old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night
+they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to
+four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright stars
+above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis,
+and from the E.H.Q. laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's
+attempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its
+failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and
+then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness,
+her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.
+
+McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson in
+person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable to
+believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person to
+take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to
+do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave
+it alone.
+
+Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal the
+reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away and
+unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting
+strains of a song remembered from long ago.
+
+For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given the
+key--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportion
+and you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and the
+door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it.
+
+Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had to be for his
+job as pilot.
+
+"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's
+messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some
+leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign." He scratched a
+formula in the dirt:
+
+    "2 + 2 = 4"
+
+The = changed to : . Then to δ. Then through the series of variable
+relationships.
+
+Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.
+
+"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't
+variable. It equals."
+
+Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.
+
+"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what They have to
+say than in trying to convince Them that They're wrong."
+
+"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom argued,
+"then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate
+relationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would be
+solid, dependable."
+
+"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly. "Not a
+house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of
+proportion--and they aren't there anymore."
+
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him
+the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how
+to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is
+useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door.
+
+This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical
+science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E
+science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What
+if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most bogged
+down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of
+some other answer.
+
+Everyone knew the equation E = MC², but few could implement it to build
+an atomic power plant.
+
+Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced
+equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be
+countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he
+might be to consider something else.
+
+In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and
+leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the
+stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking
+care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien
+philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their
+own weight.
+
+Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was
+too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical
+science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider
+the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact
+nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other
+side of the equation to restore balance.
+
+To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality.
+To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the
+physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X
+factor to keep reality unchanged.
+
+But how to do it still eluded him.
+
+At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a
+solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring
+was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole
+without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete
+visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the
+long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic
+signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility
+that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control
+physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a
+physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along
+the direct route toward his goal.
+
+Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet
+kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could
+only draw the right design.
+
+Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It
+seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the
+problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.
+
+One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace
+Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of
+the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown
+away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches
+and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them,
+strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of
+outside it?
+
+In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm to
+try?
+
+He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who would
+care.
+
+"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And you can't
+carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty
+purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its
+shipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not much
+in the way of food growing there. So we never went back."
+
+"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered," Cal
+said. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding.
+But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think
+I'll go."
+
+"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose
+your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water.
+Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I
+reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We
+won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you
+needn't worry about us either."
+
+"You want me to come with you, Cal?" Tom asked.
+
+"No," Cal answered, "I think better if I'm alone."
+
+He left them then, went past some colonists who were picking berries and
+eating them, and on up the valley that ran between two ridges.
+
+It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley
+floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual
+drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became a
+ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and
+ripening fruit was sweet.
+
+Before he left the ravine to begin his climb he ate some of the fruit,
+and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with a long, cool
+drink of water from one of the many springs that fed the stream.
+
+He looked up at the mountain above him, and his eye picked out the most
+likely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in terms
+of those tremendous, tortured skin folds of other planets. Hardly more
+than a high hill in terms of those. Nor, as far as he could see, would
+the climb be difficult or hazardous.
+
+The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into his mind,
+although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The
+gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they
+might not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain was
+more easily climbed, and therefore man would have been the more easily
+convinced after repeated explorations that no gods lived there after
+all.
+
+Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the site of
+heaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly, as man explored
+the earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat until
+at last the whole idea was patently ridiculous?
+
+Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet--to what may man now turn in
+rapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all physical science, filled
+the deep human need of these expressions?
+
+The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he intended
+to follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him, at
+the valley of the colonists below, and far down where the valley merged
+into the sea, and far on out at the hazy purple line of another island.
+As he started to turn back again, to resume his climb, his eye caught a
+flash of something moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown,
+bare skin.
+
+He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees. As he had
+suspected it was Louie, still trying to keep him always in sight.
+
+His first impulse was to call out, to wait for Louie, ask him to join in
+the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from all
+others. And sympathetic and compassionate though he might be, the
+confusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had his
+earlier attempts to comfort Louie met success.
+
+Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear his
+mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's tortured mind
+intended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Even
+a boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for that
+would be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodily
+attack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable.
+
+He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it swept
+upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was not
+difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and provided clear
+spaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to his
+bare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt no
+physical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from the
+branches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind into
+trivialities.
+
+Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason out
+the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality.
+
+Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, a
+merging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, and
+appreciation.
+
+Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that
+they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they were
+replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low,
+creeping growths which his feet avoided without mental direction.
+
+A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of
+crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the
+geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been broken
+away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.
+
+There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or
+colonist had ever passed this way.
+
+The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly and
+without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemed
+to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's
+star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he,
+alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it
+as he was encompassed by it.
+
+Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley
+floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any
+instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would stand
+revealed.
+
+Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way through
+higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeper
+amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted not
+only in the purples but into greens and reds and blues.
+
+As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above he
+caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles, buttresses,
+and arches of the mountain's crest.
+
+It was the crystal palace.
+
+The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below, yet
+his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor
+were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and
+rest, to gather his energy for the last steep assault upon the peak.
+
+Far below him he saw Louie toiling up a slope, then dropping with every
+appearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still he
+would rest no more than a minute, and always his head was turned to keep
+sight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to his
+feet; and slowly, step by step, begin his climb again.
+
+As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the
+self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guilt
+of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral
+sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the
+ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be
+either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's
+inadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil,
+these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance or
+threat to the ascendancy of me-and-mine at the center of things, and had
+no meaning beyond that context.
+
+He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharp
+climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near to
+the towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now he
+walked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothic
+entrance.
+
+And stood transfixed in ecstasy.
+
+Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and
+glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the
+sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where
+light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the
+air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him.
+Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended
+sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture.
+
+As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees that laced
+their limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again he stood, lost in
+time and space and being, lost in vision and in music which neither had
+nor needed form nor beginning nor end.
+
+And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of man, to
+bridge the gap between Their minds and his.
+
+Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor
+and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they
+seemed mirrored into infinity.
+
+The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down, clockwise,
+then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding him ...
+
+... the internal structure of crystals....
+
+
+
+
+25
+
+
+Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced
+from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled
+by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust
+over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases,
+tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the
+vibrating crystals one formed that was aware.
+
+Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only
+ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of
+molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on another
+planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinity
+to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked the
+distinction here as in that protoplasm.
+
+As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these
+crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold--to food.
+Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about
+them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy
+atmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavage
+into new individuals.
+
+What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does it
+appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, and
+blunders blindly through its environment in search for condition more
+favorable to its continuance.
+
+In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more than
+that.
+
+Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness of
+me-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel, know? A
+protoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all possibility of
+awareness in other kinds of growth because they are not a part of
+me-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know awareness?
+
+Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on that
+planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self.
+Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, and
+self-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of surroundings.
+
+Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time, awareness of
+self and surroundings grew into awareness of wider peripheries, to
+sensing their world, its structure, its nature.
+
+Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other worlds, of
+other stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly akin to the
+vibrating fields of force which compose the material universe, and the
+vibrations of fields of force can be altered. To change their
+surroundings to a more suitable environment through vibration rates of
+things led surely to negation of distance. To change from crystal form
+to fields of energy and back again combined with negation of
+distance--they too spread out and out among the stars.
+
+At first it was enough. But awareness is never still. Questions form.
+
+In all the universe were they the only sentient thing? Did any cry but
+theirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the nature of
+their being their search was unconcerned with the outer shape of things
+which could be changed by them at will, but rather with the inner
+vibratory rate which would signal sentience, awareness.
+
+They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces. Water runs
+down hill without knowing that it does, without the internal structure
+to provide the vibratory rate which would permit knowing.
+
+For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of a
+me-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to conceive
+that other structures than the crystalline might have a form of
+awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must be
+acknowledged.
+
+For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline
+substance, protoplasm.
+
+On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated and
+specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex of
+its organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the most
+complex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside of
+self.
+
+Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!
+
+Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience in
+communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of
+their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind,
+they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous
+pyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new life
+form that they too were aware--to communicate that the loneliness of one
+might now be softened by the presence of the other.
+
+And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the dust.
+
+His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay in
+adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the
+dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.
+
+But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought something
+which they could share with this new life form. The rock could be a
+tree! See!
+
+And lo, the rock was a tree.
+
+And the people were sore afraid.
+
+For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so. This
+mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into a
+new and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valley
+beckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not venture
+forth.
+
+The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystalline
+forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awareness
+composed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes,
+security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awareness
+composed of the inner vibration, the relationships of those vibrations,
+with outer shapes changed at will, and therefore meaningless.
+
+Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes of things.
+The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed that became root and
+stem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man that
+decomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause!
+Surely they must see that even the permanent rock changed slowly into
+dust, that the eternal sea was restless, never still; that stars moved
+in the vault of heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. How
+did they account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause?
+
+They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the seed ground
+into meal, the moving animal shot down with stick or stone and stilled
+and changed to food, the moving of the smaller rocks, erection of a
+dwelling made of poles and thatch to change environment for the man
+inside. Change, then, man knew; why fear the greater change, the easier
+one? Why tug and lift and strain to move the boulder from the path, when
+all was needed was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance the
+equation of relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone no
+longer barred the way?
+
+Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot their
+own once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine, forgot to
+credit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength to serve a
+purpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he could do. To see it
+lifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a greater strength than
+his, and purpose that he could not understand. And man fell to his knees
+in fear and awe.
+
+For man knew only one relation to all things--to conquer if he could,
+and force acknowledgment of superior strength and purpose. To kill if
+that acknowledgment was not given. To survive by giving that
+acknowledgment to a stronger one than he.
+
+Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew when
+strength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme a
+way that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The one
+invariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs to
+diplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mine
+ascendant is the aim and goal.
+
+To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy of
+me-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness lower than
+intelligence that they could meet in partnership. Instruct them, then.
+No joy or purpose in conquering them. No companionship in these
+disgusting grovelings. Show them the inner forces that controlled the
+outer shapes of things.
+
+Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer shape of
+things was no longer a consideration in their life; but for this form of
+life, still dependent for that life upon the maintenance of material
+form, no doubt the shapes and forms of things were paramount to them.
+Well then, show them the true relationship, sketch out upon the sands
+the diagram of how the forces that control the shapes of things are
+interwoven, interact.
+
+Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape, and lo, a
+spring of water flowed from dry and barren stone.
+
+But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and form. A
+sacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw with finger in
+the air or in the sand, protection from the evil forces that surrounded
+him.
+
+The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man was not
+ready for communication. Too soon, too soon.
+
+But man did not forget, the memory lived on. And fathers spoke to sons,
+and made the outer forms of gestures, drew the cabalistic signs, and
+told of magic things and powers that these signs could do. To some, one
+diagram was shown, a way to build a house of stone that better weathered
+the storms of Earth. The house of stone became a holy place, a thing
+existing in its own right, and not, as was intended, an example of one
+use to which this arrangement of forces might be put.
+
+And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time to slay an
+animal for food. And men fought wars over these differing symbols, each
+side determined to make its symbol ascendant over the other.
+
+Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the memories
+lived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams beyond their outer
+shape had gained sway. The racial memory persisted, and in the latter
+Pleistocene epoch the knowledge of altering shapes through force of mind
+became a racial memory, coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated into
+forms and phrases; but from generation to generation the memory was kept
+alive that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeed
+changed by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had pointed
+his finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped forth clad
+in jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed a mountain and a
+voice spoke unto him, and proof of this were letters cut in stone.
+Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some water into wine, and fed a
+multitude from five small loaves and fishes.
+
+A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the inner
+meanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward through the
+world.
+
+But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner meanings,
+another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shape
+and size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size and
+shape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture,
+which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the inner
+vibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged in
+the Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape and
+weight of things to make them change.
+
+It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essential
+difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as that
+between a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culture
+where everything has limit and every inch must be mapped.
+
+But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed into
+bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown into
+tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man could
+master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxford
+definition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties of
+things.
+
+Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, led
+inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specific
+vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid to the senses,
+as a range of light vibrations translate into color through the eyes.
+
+E = MC²!
+
+It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!
+
+Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient
+fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic
+displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently
+through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his
+weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his
+strength. For here he was among the stars.
+
+Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not
+prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "Hello!"
+
+But careful, perhaps he would.
+
+There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope
+he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but
+rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either
+side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the
+planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He
+never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that
+the god Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and this
+phenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted as
+the proof the legend was correct--and do incalculable damage to
+scientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enough
+to take no chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works,
+perhaps discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further
+fuel to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds and
+seared out possibility of rational thought.
+
+So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite the fact
+that some men know how to reach the stars.
+
+To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of
+barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of
+man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a
+thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and
+clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but nevertheless
+present centers of man's mind--some certain man who might be ready to
+receive that thought.
+
+Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until man
+found it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change of
+course that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it for
+Earth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystal
+tool upon the mountaintop.
+
+The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds were
+full of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhaps
+by now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act upon
+another thing that they could not countenance the thought that thought
+could act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, and
+recorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches and
+its spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of
+force, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his
+status and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared
+admit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments.
+Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought their
+science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And to
+scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more than
+truth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth is
+paramount?
+
+Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked and
+lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today there
+are such men.
+
+So walk with care, and wait.
+
+The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled with
+measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filled
+with cabins, fields, food.
+
+Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured on
+the one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not bound
+within the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely man
+must know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thing
+through a description of its outer surface.
+
+But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical things
+to act upon other physical things, even in considering the universal
+energy as a thing, he would look no farther.
+
+All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept
+of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no
+tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that
+happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men,
+perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships,
+their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind
+trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth
+outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust
+at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because
+he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.
+
+And they would know when that mind came.
+
+The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to
+earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough.
+The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be
+undisturbed in his thought.
+
+Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it
+was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move.
+Could he respond?
+
+He drew a circle in the sand!
+
+Joy! Ecstasy!
+
+This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two
+intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to
+the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ...
+to find ...
+
+Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him
+think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things
+in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize
+that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to
+express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can
+change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he
+desires.
+
+Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself,
+for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready
+to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his
+own interpreting.
+
+Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
+conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are,
+bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that
+communication might be direct.
+
+He holds the key.
+
+He knows the lock.
+
+He finds the door.
+
+Show him the one small step remaining--the diagram, the design, the
+movement of the forces of his mind.
+
+To turn the key.
+
+Unlock the lock.
+
+Throw wide the door.
+
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his
+eyes.
+
+Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of
+yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken
+thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just
+barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,
+the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.
+
+And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and
+forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,
+to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one
+had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.
+No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.
+
+How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance
+was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or
+dead?
+
+But why wonder?
+
+A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
+test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
+amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces
+in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.
+
+He was standing outside the entrance arch.
+
+With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through
+the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then
+fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.
+
+"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know
+you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw
+you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.
+But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some
+shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.
+Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."
+
+"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.
+
+As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped
+by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,
+seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of
+relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the
+untangling, straightening of thought.
+
+Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.
+
+"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock
+and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on
+back to the rest."
+
+"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.
+
+A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush
+to approach Jed and Tom.
+
+"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked
+up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.
+Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."
+
+"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
+continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that
+everything happened a couple of weeks ago."
+
+"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him
+curiously.
+
+Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a
+difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with
+puzzlement on his face.
+
+"There's something important about it being around this time of day,
+Cal?" he asked.
+
+"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could
+restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it
+was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It
+being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had
+passed, nothing had happened."
+
+Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.
+
+"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"
+
+"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite
+a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about
+it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things
+back as they were?"
+
+In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed
+his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the
+approach of the drill.
+
+It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.
+
+The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the
+metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences with
+the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking
+on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They
+looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.
+They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked
+their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest
+dream.
+
+Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together,
+and feel the shock, and wonder.
+
+Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the
+hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.
+
+"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or
+something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had
+the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll
+dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."
+
+"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the
+people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.
+They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across
+the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing
+you know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find out
+why we didn't communicate."
+
+"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked
+curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.
+You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys
+fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"
+
+"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the
+hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of
+everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.
+
+"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front
+of everybody right along."
+
+"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been
+dreamin'," she said.
+
+"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"
+he cautioned.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.
+
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the
+aisle toward him.
+
+"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he
+said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better
+repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with
+the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite
+his face.
+
+"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the
+overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more
+insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable
+period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity
+that got the better of his desire to discipline.
+
+"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him.
+He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up
+the mountain."
+
+"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened
+for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started
+back down the aisle toward his own office.
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."
+
+Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.
+
+"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with
+your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."
+
+But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was
+everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about
+the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different
+answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance,
+and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they
+weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in
+crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's
+knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know
+what he was not meant to know.
+
+The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments,
+to listen frankly.
+
+"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a
+minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush
+to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."
+
+"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve
+miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their
+reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to
+skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to
+be complaints about this."
+
+"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I
+didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."
+
+"All right, all right."
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."
+
+The supervisor's eyes grew round.
+
+"Can't be," he exclaimed.
+
+"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator
+said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report
+it."
+
+"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have
+to be."
+
+"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those
+buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.
+
+"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the
+reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's
+doing."
+
+"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.
+
+There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.
+
+"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning
+all over, trying to find him."
+
+The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.
+
+"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this
+reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips
+and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the
+complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if
+there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.
+
+An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
+furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them
+in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some
+more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?
+
+His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a
+virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.
+
+"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up
+the aisle.
+
+"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,"
+the operator called out. "Something very important."
+
+"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."
+
+But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
+tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.
+
+"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line
+opened.
+
+"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal.
+"What now?"
+
+"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the
+Captain said without any preliminaries.
+
+"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear
+in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe
+she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."
+
+"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You
+ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out
+first."
+
+"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled
+back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"
+
+"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said.
+"A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her
+stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way
+anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.
+Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.
+Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E
+Gray on the surface of Eden."
+
+"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,"
+Hayes said accusingly.
+
+"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't
+have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like
+we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
+
+"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of
+your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's
+hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd
+to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then
+in ten days she'd ..."
+
+"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the
+ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the
+possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
+
+"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E
+McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could
+lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
+
+"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship," the captain
+said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
+
+Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes
+to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide
+direct intervention.
+
+"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator
+said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis
+will talk to him."
+
+"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
+
+"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.
+
+The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that
+testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was
+quite explicit.
+
+"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be
+disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin,
+in conference."
+
+"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil
+did they get into your ship?"
+
+"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm
+sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He
+leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E
+Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in
+there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice
+quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I
+ever do get back."
+
+"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple
+explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were
+hard to find.
+
+"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to
+hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
+communication.
+
+
+
+
+28
+
+
+Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom
+he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered
+his ship by any normal means.
+
+Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.
+He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive,
+darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of
+shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him
+to adjust to them.
+
+He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch
+of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that
+somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see
+what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared
+from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a
+shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator
+had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the
+chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have
+been made that rapidly.
+
+He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the
+E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people
+were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept
+his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to
+produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to
+that, otherwise ...
+
+He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more
+effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders
+to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two
+police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and
+take custody.
+
+But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.
+
+He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in control of
+Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs!
+Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior
+had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid
+judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there
+were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might
+have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but
+Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals
+issue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her
+nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.
+
+It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told
+him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the
+ship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in
+the vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you for
+taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."
+
+The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He
+thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any
+judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and
+maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to
+any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the
+favor returned tomorrow.
+
+Without concrete evidence ...
+
+He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship,
+confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in
+a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting
+frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and
+swallow him--perhaps wishing one would.
+
+"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly,
+ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor
+nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As
+far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately
+preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.
+
+"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of
+any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow
+until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that
+ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and
+severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that
+destroyed both the United States and Russia.
+
+"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world
+government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in
+trying to destroy you.
+
+"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have
+already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the
+major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of
+police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.
+
+"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an
+organized society without some special body to enforce that
+organization. It's a problem which the E's haven't solved, probably
+because we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behavior
+of man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, because
+science doesn't know enough yet to take hold of it.
+
+"I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and your
+organization to solving this problem of how to build an organized
+society instead of destroying it."
+
+The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.
+
+E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and immobile. But E
+science had inured him to shock. He waited because it was E Gray's show,
+and he was letting Cal handle it.
+
+"Where is he now?" McGinnis asked when he saw the empty chair.
+
+"Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth," Cal said with a grin.
+"Our boy has a few things to think about."
+
+"You've explained the theory back of all this"--McGinnis changed the
+subject--"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory."
+
+"Well," Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two, you
+first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it is
+done, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn how to
+apply the theory.
+
+"When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The whole basis
+of science is that anybody can do it, anybody who follows the
+step-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts that can't be
+trained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people, in possession
+of this theory and method before they were wise enough to use it, and
+chaos.
+
+"But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods of science
+are also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most prefer their
+frustrations and their miseries to making the effort which will solve
+them. For centuries the libraries containing all the accumulated
+knowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free and open to anybody who
+wants to read, but few have bothered to absorb that knowledge and that
+wisdom.
+
+"This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista of
+knowledge, another point of view whereby we can change material things
+to suit our desire, is merely another advance of science. For science,
+after all, is no more than organized knowledge of reality. You can't
+multiply six times six until you've learned how to add two and two. Most
+people won't bother.
+
+"It will be a long, long time before any significant number will
+graduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become ready
+for the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know how few E's
+there are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom, and selflessness
+to use this new knowledge for the benefit of man instead of his
+detriment.
+
+"I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to make
+me-and-mine ascendant over others before he can absorb this knowledge."
+
+"Maybe that's my trouble," McGinnis said slowly. "I've been thinking,
+all along, of how much power this gives the E's. Wondering if even the
+E's should have that much power over others."
+
+Linda spoke up.
+
+"E McGinnis," she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what happened to
+the colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you think this will
+qualify him for his big E?"
+
+Both men burst into laughter.
+
+"No question of it, Linda," E McGinnis said with a chuckle. "But I doubt
+it really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things none of the rest of
+us can do, and the real question now is whether we have the right to
+call ourselves Seniors until we can match his ability."
+
+"I think," Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E.H.Q. that the
+colonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere else. I've left the
+shield around the planet so none can enter or leave without the eighth
+key. I can unlock the door and close it again. Perhaps Eden should
+become the next step for the E, the next hurdle he must cross.
+
+"When I've sent my ship and crew back to Earth, and we've removed all
+the colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden to what it was
+when I arrived--a place where no tools will work, no physical tools. To
+qualify for E, a man will be put on the island, where he can live as we
+lived, to work out the step-by-step method. When he's ready, he can go
+into the thought-amplifier on top of the mountain, and if his mind is
+open enough to the potentials he'll receive the final step of
+instruction--as I did.
+
+"One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they can
+take this next step."
+
+"I'm not working on any project right now," E McGinnis said hopefully.
+
+"I'll be right back," Cal said with a grin, "and we'll get started on
+it."
+
+The chair where he had been sitting was empty.
+
+
+
+
+29
+
+
+Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watched
+the interplay of lights until he felt communion come.
+
+Rapture! Joy!
+
+Question?
+
+"Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more.
+
+"You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with a
+crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible in
+protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way.
+
+"But we have come up.
+
+"You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives every
+inch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries, millennia.
+It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept has dominated all
+our thought, and does still. Without it, we'd not have survived at all.
+
+"It takes time to outgrow it, to learn we can survive without it. Five
+hundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high school students in
+the United States revealed that a third of them still rejected his
+knowledge, still believed the Earth to be at the center of the universe
+and man was the reason why the universe had been created at all. But two
+thirds had adjusted.
+
+"More important, there _was_ a Copernicus.
+
+"Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are impatient
+for fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality. He has much to
+offer you, as you to him. Competition for survival has given him
+ingenuity.
+
+"Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of the
+universe, but there _was_ a Copernicus who asked the question, 'What if
+it isn't so?'
+
+"Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one _did_ ask if
+this might not be the key to the structure of the universe, the balance
+of the stars.
+
+"Billions watched the stars, but finally one _did_ ask, 'What if the
+light be curved instead of straight?'
+
+"There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to learn an
+ingenuity which might surpass even yours.
+
+"This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still other
+doors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may need
+these special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed this new room
+of thought.
+
+"Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the method
+that can change things to fit the equation of desire, before one comes
+who asks a question even you have not conceived.
+
+"But someday he _will_ come--and ask."
+
+The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
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diff --git a/27595-8.txt b/27595-8.txt
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+++ b/27595-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eight Keys to Eden
+
+Author: Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27595]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Geoffrey Kidd, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+BY MARK CLIFTON
+
+
+ NOVELS
+       Eight Keys To Eden
+       They'd Rather Be Right*
+       The Forever Machine*
+
+ NON-FICTION BOOK
+       Opportunity Unlimited
+
+ NOVELETTES
+       Remembrance and Reflection
+       How Allied
+       What Thin Partitions**
+       Sense From Thought Divide
+       Star, Bright
+       Hide! Hide! Witch!
+       A Woman's Place
+       Clerical Error
+       What Now, Little Man?
+       Do Unto Others
+
+ SHORT STORIES
+       What Have I Done?
+       The Conqueror
+       Kenzie Report
+       Bow Down To Them
+       Reward For Valour
+       Progress Report**
+       Crazy Joey**
+       We're Civilized**
+       Solution Delayed**
+
+ ARTICLES
+       It Can't Be Done
+       The Dread Tomato Affliction
+
+ * _In collaboration with Frank Riley_
+ ** _In collaboration with Alex Apostolides_
+
+
+
+
+        EIGHT KEYS
+          TO EDEN
+
+            by
+       Mark Clifton
+
+
+ Doubleday & Company, Inc.
+   Garden City, New York
+           1960
+
+
+
+
+ _All of the characters in this book
+ are fictitious, and any resemblance
+ to actual persons, living or dead,
+ is purely coincidental._
+
+
+ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470
+ Copyright © 1960 by Mark Clifton
+ All Rights Reserved
+ Printed in the United States of America
+ First Edition
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant and
+    dialect spellings remain as printed. Superscript text is preceded by
+    the ^ symbol, bold text is shown as =bold=, and {d} represents the
+    Greek letter _delta_.
+
+
+
+
+                To
+
+        Charles Steinberg
+
+ who made writing possible for me
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT
+
+
+ =1= Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without
+       question.
+
+ =2= Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general
+       contrariness.
+
+ =3= Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to
+       account for the phenomenon?
+
+ =4= How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that
+       he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?
+
+ =5= What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the
+       obscure prevalent?
+
+ =6= What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered
+       effect is really cause?
+
+ =7= What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates
+       unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there be only
+       one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in many facets
+       because we cannot apperceive the whole, of which we have gained
+       only the most elementary glimpses, with which we can cope only at
+       the crudest level?
+
+ =And are those still other doors, yet undefined, on down the corridor?=
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was
+overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger
+hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and
+pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle,
+half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched
+over their panels.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop.
+
+"Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it
+came out sullen.
+
+The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punched
+irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second
+star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect
+there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel.
+The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include such
+blunders. But he had to check.
+
+There weren't.
+
+He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on his
+shift, never anybody else's.
+
+"Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he
+rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and
+hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.
+
+The operator looked skeptical instead.
+
+Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental
+colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, some
+unprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothing
+else apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as the
+Extrapolators.
+
+But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.
+
+"Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications by
+inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully tried out
+another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last more
+than an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using the
+E frequency, anyway.
+
+He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the other
+operators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw him
+away from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problem
+would have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewed
+on a knuckle and stared angrily at the operator who was sitting back,
+relaxed, looking at him, waiting.
+
+"You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the supervisor
+asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"
+
+The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer
+with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for
+supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the
+surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the
+supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention.
+In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly
+nagged employee over his features.
+
+"Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor muttered
+savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--their
+pants out there!"
+
+The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was about time,
+and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down.
+Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow
+three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten
+miles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring.
+
+The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the gnawing at his
+knuckles to his fingernails.
+
+He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry colonist to
+come through and scream at them to turn off that unprintable-phrases
+siren. He braced himself and worked up some choice phrases of his own to
+scream back at the colonist for neglecting his duty--getting
+Extrapolation Headquarters here on Earth all worked up over nothing. He
+wondered if he dared threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to check
+them over.
+
+He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay no attention
+to his recommendation. He knew it, and the colonist would know it too.
+
+He began to wonder what excuse the colonist would have.
+
+"Just wanted to see if you home-office boys were on your toes," the
+insolent colonist would drawl. Probably something like that.
+
+He hoped the right words wouldn't fail him.
+
+But there was no response to the siren.
+
+"Lock the key down," he told the operator. "Keep it blasting until they
+wake up."
+
+He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near operators were
+now frankly listening.
+
+"Get on with your work," he said loudly. "Pay attention to what you're
+recording."
+
+It was enough to cause several more heads to raise.
+
+"Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is nothing to
+concern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's all. Haven't you
+ever heard of a delayed report before?"
+
+He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It was like
+asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor
+edge of a precipice suddenly go slack.
+
+"But there's nothing any of you can do," he said. He tried to cover the
+plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your own messages ..."
+But he had threatened them so often that there was no longer any menace.
+
+He spent the next ten minutes hauling out the logs of Eden to see if
+they'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a fraction
+years, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit scanner didn't pick
+up a single symbol to show that Eden had been even two seconds off
+schedule. The first year daily, the second year weekly, and now monthly.
+There wasn't a single hiccough from the machine to kick out an
+Extrapolator's signal to watch for anything unusual.
+
+Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an _outré_ problem as an
+Iowa cornfield.
+
+"You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again as he
+came back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They haven't answered
+yet."
+
+The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists hadn't
+answered. And what should he do about it? Go out there personally and
+shake his finger at them--naughty, naughty?
+
+"Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface, to see?" the
+supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myself
+that you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a space
+hurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe
+some star has exploded and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it,
+man. Bounce it! What are you waiting for?"
+
+"Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for you to give
+the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can't
+just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood."
+
+"Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the supervisor
+cautioned.
+
+Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung
+out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set
+up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous
+communication, but that was only relative. It took time.
+
+The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector
+chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated
+the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting
+the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the
+forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when
+an E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to
+questions, the thrill of merely being in the same room.
+
+He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration to
+an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentary
+secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he was
+a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gone
+farther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed.
+
+"Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told him
+with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind to
+a lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice in
+full confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself before
+you hit bottom."
+
+It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself
+the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.
+
+"To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester had
+continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist.
+Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellent
+career in engineering."
+
+It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science
+said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was it
+said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, live
+with. No certainties on which to stand.
+
+He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated on the
+flashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's screen. There
+was nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing wrong with the
+communication channels between Eden and Earth.
+
+"Blasted colonists," the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam on
+their planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet they've
+let all the sets at their end get out of order."
+
+He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face hadn't
+told him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman--and there were fifty
+of them on Eden--could build a communicator. That was regulation.
+
+"You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?" he asked
+the operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering up some neglect
+in not notifying me? If you're covering up, you'd better tell me now.
+I'll find out. It'll all come out in the investigation, and ..."
+
+The operator turned around and looked at him levelly. He looked him
+over, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed feet. Then he coolly
+turned his back. There was a limit to just how much a man could stand,
+even to hold a job at E Headquarters.
+
+It was about time the supervisor got somebody with brains onto the job.
+The sector chief should be called immediately. Supervisors were supposed
+to have enough brains to think of something so obvious as that. That
+much brains at least.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayed
+report" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn't
+happen to him.
+
+To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor, his first act
+was to rush down to communications and go through all the routines for
+rousing the colonists the supervisor had tried. His worry was mounting
+so rapidly that he hardly noticed the resigned expression of the
+operator who knew he would have to go through all these useless motions
+again and again before it was all over, and somebody did something.
+
+"Well," the chief said to the supervisor. "It's my problem now." He
+sighed, and unconsciously squared his shoulders.
+
+"Yes, Chief Hayes," the supervisor agreed quickly. Perhaps too quickly,
+with too much relief? "Well, that is, I mean ..." his voice trailed off.
+After all, it was.
+
+"You understand my check of your routines was no reflection on you or
+your department," Hayes said diplomatically. "It's a heavy
+responsibility to alert E.H.Q., pull the scientists off who knows what
+delicate, critical work--maybe even hope to get the attention of an
+E--all that. I had to make sure, you know."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said, and relaxed some of his
+resentment. "Serious matter," he chattered. "Disgrace if an E, without
+half trying, put his finger on our oversight. We all understand that."
+He tried to include the nearby operators, his boys, in his eager
+agreement, but they were all busy showing how intensely they had to
+concentrate on their work.
+
+"That's probably all it is--an oversight," Hayes said with unconvincing
+reassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's face, added,
+"Beyond our control here, of course. Something it would take at least a
+scientist to spot, something we couldn't be expected ... What I mean is,
+we shouldn't get alarmed until we know, for sure. And--ah--keep it
+confidential."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said in a near whisper. He
+looked meaningfully around at the room of operators, but did manage not
+to put his finger to his lips. Those who were observing out of the
+corners of their eyes were grateful for at least that.
+
+On his way back to his own office Chief William Hayes reflected that the
+bit about keeping it confidential was on the corny side. Within fifteen
+minutes he'd start spreading it all over E.H.Q., himself. Every
+scientist, every lab assistant would know it. Every clerk, every janitor
+would know it. E.H.Q. would have to work full blast all night long, and
+some of the lesser personnel had homes down in Yellow Sands at the foot
+of the mountain.
+
+These would be calling their husbands and wives, telling them not to fix
+dinner, not to worry if they didn't come home all night. No matter how
+guarded, the news would leak out, the word spread, and the newscast
+reporters would pick it up for the delectation of the public. Eden
+colony cut off from communication. Nobody knows ... Wonder ... Fear ...
+Delicious ... Exciting....
+
+Or was this the kind of thinking that had kept him from qualifying as an
+E? What was it the examiner had asked? "Mr. Hayes, why do you feel it is
+all right for you to view, to read, to know--but that others should be
+protected from seeing, reading, knowing? What are these sterling
+qualities you have that make it all right for you to censor what would
+not be right for others?"
+
+He abruptly brought his mind back to the present. Perhaps he'd first
+better prepare a news statement before he did anything else, something
+noncommittal, reassuring. No point in getting the populace stirred up.
+
+As he sat down behind his desk, a big man in a brown suit, natural
+iron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began to realize that
+for the next twenty-four hours, at least, he would be in the spotlight.
+Well, he'd give a good account of himself. Demonstrate that he had an
+executive capacity beyond the needs of his present job. More than a mere
+requisition signer, interoffice memo initialer.
+
+For one thing the scientists would give him trouble. If he had been
+deeply hurt that they thought he couldn't open up his mind enough to
+become an E, what about scientists whose limits were reached still
+farther along? He must remember to keep his temper, use persuasion,
+maybe kid them a little. The blasted experts were almost as bad as
+E's--worse, in a way, because the E didn't have to remind anybody of his
+dignity, or how important the work was he was doing.
+
+But then, you never asked an E to drop what he was doing, and listen.
+You never asked an E to do anything. He either noticed and was
+interested, or he didn't notice, or wasn't interested.
+
+But nobody ever told an E that he must apply himself to a problem. Once
+a man became a full-fledged Extrapolator he was outside all law, all
+frameworks, all duty, all social mores. That was the essence of E
+science, that any requirement outside of his own making didn't exist. It
+had to be that way. That kind of mind could not tolerate barriers, but
+spent itself constantly in destroying them. Erect barriers of
+triviality, and it would waste its substance upon trivial matters. The
+only answer was to remove all possible barriers for the E, lest
+immersion in something trivial prevent that mind from seeking out a
+barrier to knowledge, a problem of significance.
+
+But the scientists! Hayes sighed. If only the scientists wouldn't keep
+thinking they were cut from the same cloth as the E. They had to have
+restrictions, organization imposed upon them. Yes indeed!
+
+They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble a review
+of all the known facts about Eden--a dead issue as far as their own work
+was concerned, for Eden had been assayed and filed away as solved.
+They'd moan and groan about having to drag up the facts that had been
+analyzed and settled long ago.
+
+He saw himself compared with the producer of a show, and theatrical
+performers didn't come any more temperamental than scientists. He'd be
+hearing about how much of their time he'd wasted for months to come.
+Every time any administrator asked why they hadn't produced whatever it
+was they were working on, it would be because Chief Hayes had
+interrupted them at the most crucial moment and they'd had to begin all
+over again.
+
+Oh, they'd drag their heels, all right, and he'd have to remind them,
+tactfully, that their prime duty was to serve the Extrapolators; that
+they were employed here only because someday, in some co-ordinate
+system, somebody might be able to supply a key fact that some E might
+want to know.
+
+They'd ask him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would be
+listening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex, knowing he
+could give no such guarantee.
+
+They'd drag their heels because, deep down, they carried a basic
+resentment against the E--because, experts though they were, each of
+them, somewhere along the line, had learned the bitter limits in his
+mind that prevented him from going on to become an E.
+
+They'd drag their heels because the E's, each blasted one of them, would
+regard the absolutely true facts proved beyond question by science with
+an attitude of skepticism, temporarily accepting the uncontestably
+immutable as only provisionary, and probably quite wrong.
+
+Oh, they'd grumble, and they'd drag their heels at first; but they would
+get into it. They'd get into it, not because the sector chief had babied
+them along, kidded them, coaxed them, but because, as surely as his
+name was Bill Hayes, some unprintable E would ask a question for which
+they had no answer. Or even worse, some question that made no sense, but
+left the scientist feeling that perhaps it should have!
+
+That was the E brand of thinking which gave everybody trouble--and
+without which man could never have gone on creeping outward and outward
+among the stars. Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blasted
+asteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws. Sometimes an
+entirely new co-ordinate system had to be resolved. Oh, science was
+easy, a veritable snap, while man crawled around on the muddy bottom of
+his ocean of air and concluded that throughout all the universe things
+must conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as a
+damned halibut must be of the works and thoughts of man.
+
+And often the E was unable to resolve the co-ordinate system--which was
+simply a euphemistic way of saying that he didn't come back. And without
+him, man could go no farther. An E, therefore, was the rarest and most
+valuable piece of property in the universe. Whatever else man might be,
+he will go to any lengths to protect the value of his property.
+
+All right, Bill, perhaps a part of that is true. But give the scientists
+their full due. They'd work with a will once they grew aware of the need
+of it, because they were just as concerned as anybody else with what
+might have happened to those colonists.
+
+But first they would argue.
+
+His secretary interrupted his thought by coming in from her own office.
+She had an inch-thick stack of midgit-idgit cards in her hand.
+
+"Here's that batch of scientists who worked on the original Eden
+survey," she said.
+
+"So many?" Hayes asked ruefully. "Maybe I'd better send an all-points
+bulletin."
+
+"You're the boss," she said easily. "But if I know scientists, they
+don't read bulletins."
+
+"Yeah, sure," he agreed. "You made sure this is everybody? Nobody is
+slighted? They'll scream like stuck pigs when I ask them, but they'll be
+even worse if I slight anybody by not asking."
+
+"Double checked with Personnel's own midgit-idgit," she replied. "The
+machine says if anybody is left out, it's not its fault, that it would
+only be because we stupid humans forgot to inform it in the first
+place."
+
+"Sometimes I think that machine complains more than people do," he
+answered. "Certainly it is a lot more insolent."
+
+"Gets more work done, though," she said comfortably. "You want anything
+more?"
+
+"Not right now."
+
+"Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that new
+exploration ship, and it wants service, too," she reminded him. "It's
+worse than you are," she added.
+
+He looked up at her familiarity with a twinkle.
+
+"It can't fire you," he said softly.
+
+"Oh?" she asked. "You think not? Just let me feed it a few wrong data
+and watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary." She winked at
+him, laughed, and went back to her office.
+
+Sector Chief Hayes sighed, and pulled the stack of cards toward him.
+First he must sort them out according to protocol because his diplomacy
+wouldn't be worth the breath used in it if he called the wrong man
+first. At a glance he saw that the idgit had already sorted them
+correctly according to status.
+
+"If you're so smart," he muttered to the absent machine, "why didn't you
+call them too?"
+
+He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. It
+would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....
+
+At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes
+dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key to
+open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.
+
+"How soon," the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this Eden
+matter?"
+
+"I'm setting it up now," he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning, surely.
+That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor that
+wouldn't require an E."
+
+"Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available."
+
+The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been broken. He
+sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet with
+sweat, that his shirt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that he
+was grinning joyfully.
+
+Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question of
+whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybe
+three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, the
+students.
+
+He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind it
+being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize he
+could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. He
+understood.
+
+"Hello, Dr. Mille," he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. "This
+is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration."
+
+"All right! All right!" the voice answered testily. "What is it now?"
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and
+the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved
+methodically through his preflight inspection.
+
+Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E
+wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. To
+Lynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath his
+broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He
+liked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described the
+substance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how
+they behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could
+also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to wait
+until the theorists had turned such equations into machines, controls,
+forces before he got excited.
+
+He was one who, even in childhood, had never wanted to be an E. He
+didn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told him in Personnel that
+was why he was a favorite pilot of the E's, but he discounted that. They
+didn't try to tell him how to run his ship--well, most of them
+didn't--and he didn't try to tell them how to solve their problems.
+
+The men around the hangar had another version of why the E's liked him
+to pilot them around--he was lucky. Somehow he always managed to come
+back, and bring the E with him. Well, sure. He didn't want to get stuck
+somewhere, wind up in a gulio's gullet, gassed by an atmosphere that
+turned from oxygen-nitrogen into pure methane without warning or reason,
+and against all known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of a
+dead star suddenly gone nova.
+
+But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would fiddle
+around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of the
+time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but part
+of it might be because he'd never been sent out with the wrong E.
+
+There could be a first time. Luck ran out if you kept piling your bets
+higher and higher. But until then ...
+
+He was square-jawed, a freckled man with red hair. Contrary to
+superstition, he didn't have a fiery temper. He was forty and had
+already built up a seniority of twenty years in deep space. He was
+captain of his ship and wanted nothing more. Sure, it was only a
+three-man crew--himself, a flight engineer, an astronavigator. But it
+was an E ship, which meant that he outranked even the captains of the
+great luxury liners.
+
+There was a time when the realization caused him to strut a little, but
+he'd got over it. He was single, had no ties, wanted none. He had a good
+job which he took seriously, was doing significant work which he also
+took seriously, was paid premium wages even for a space captain, which
+didn't matter except in terms of recognition. He didn't mind going
+anywhere in the known universe, or how long he would be away. He hoped
+he would get back someday, but he wasn't fanatic about it.
+
+In a routine so well-practiced that it had become ritual, he checked
+over the cruiser point by point. Of course the maintenance men had
+checked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled,
+cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after
+another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a
+gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so
+they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection
+Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there
+and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunch
+of army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war
+and, unconsciously at least, aided in expending them.
+
+Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers, that the
+ship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered such papers
+as so much garbage, and went over the entire ship himself. This might
+have had something to do with his so-called luck.
+
+He wondered if Frank and Louie had checked into the ship this morning.
+Probably had; last night's outing wasn't much to hang over about. A
+steak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands, a couple of drinks at
+Smitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few dances at the Stars and
+Moons. Big night out for his crew before they left for deep space.
+Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubby
+worked up on the hill at E.H.Q., and wifey raised super-bright kids who
+already considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that
+town was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as
+the case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louie
+was dedicated to hell-raising.
+
+When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he saw his flight
+engineer, Frank Norton, had a couple of student E's on his hands.
+
+It was one of the nuisances of being stationed here at E.H.Q. that you'd
+have swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging around, asking
+questions, disputing your answers, arguing with each other, and, if you
+didn't watch them carefully, taking things apart and putting them back
+together in different hookups to see what would happen.
+
+The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everything
+everybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody had ever
+had the sense to think about the problem before; to doubt most of all
+the opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the experts were right then
+there would be no problem. Most of them didn't have to be taught it,
+they seemed to have been born with it. Time was you batted a young smart
+aleck down, told him to go get dry behind the ears before he shot off
+his mouth. But not these days. These days you looked at him hopefully,
+and crossed your fingers. He might grow up to be an E.
+
+Tom wondered what it would be like to doubt the realities, the very
+machinery under his hands, to assume that although it had always worked
+it might not work this time. He could not conceive that state of mind,
+or how a man could live in it without going insane. Every time he saw
+these tortured kids saying, "Well, maybe, but what if ..." he was glad
+to be nothing more than a ship captain who knew his machinery was
+exactly what it was supposed to be and nothing else.
+
+But, in a way, it was nice for the lads too. After thousands of years of
+man's almost rabid determination to destroy the brightest and best of
+his young, the world had finally found a place for the bright boy.
+
+This morning, probably because of the early dawn hour, there were only
+two of them in the generator room. As expected, they were arguing over
+the space-jump band. Frank was standing over to one side, observing but
+not participating. His cap was pushed back on his blond head, his big
+face expressionless. It was common gossip throughout flight crews
+everywhere that Frank, blindfolded, could take a cruiser apart and put
+it back together without missing a motion.
+
+"The jump band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip," one
+student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field in
+the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Its
+width is as variable as we need it, up to a light-year."
+
+"Only it hasn't any width at all," the other student argued. "That's the
+whole point. The Moebius strip has only one edge, so it can't have
+width. We enter that edge, go through a line that doesn't exist, and
+come out a light-year away, without taking any longer than the time to
+pass a point."
+
+"But that's _what_ happens, not _how_," the other shouted angrily.
+"Everybody knows _what_ happens. Tell me _how_ and maybe I'll listen."
+
+Tom caught his flight engineer's eye and signaled with his head that it
+might be a good idea to get rid of the students. Any other time it would
+be all right, a part of their stand-by job, but they'd got word last
+night to have the ship in readiness from six o'clock on. They might have
+to wait all day, but then again, some E might get an idea and want to go
+shooting out to Eden right off.
+
+Frank caught the signal, grinned, and began to herd the two students
+toward the door. They were in such heated argument now, accusing one
+another of parrot repetition instead of thinking for himself, that they
+didn't realize that they were being nudged out of the ship, down its
+ramp, and out on the field.
+
+"Don't think it hasn't been educational, and all," Frank murmured to
+them as he got them off the ramp. "You get the how of it figured out,
+you let me know."
+
+The two looked at him as if he might be an interesting phenomenon,
+decided he wasn't, and wandered away, back toward the school
+dormitories, still arguing.
+
+"Sometimes I think a quiet milk run out to Saturn would have its
+brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back inside the ship.
+Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding.
+
+There was no tension between them. They had worked together so long that
+they had got over all the attraction-repulsion conflicts which operate
+far beneath the surface mind to cause likes and dislikes. Now they
+accepted one another in the way a man accepts his own hands--proud of
+them when they do something with extra skill, making allowances when
+they fumble; but never considering doing without them.
+
+"Wonder who the E will be this time?" Frank asked, without too much
+concern. It didn't really matter. An E was an E, for better or for
+worse.
+
+"Haven't heard," Tom answered. "Probably not decided yet. If the Senior
+E's think it isn't much of a problem, they might send a Junior. Or if
+they don't want to be bothered, they might send a Junior who's up for
+his solo problem."
+
+"Whoever, or whatever, I'm sure it will be interesting," Frank commented
+with a grin. Tom returned the grin. There wasn't any malice in it, nor
+any of the basic enmity and destructiveness of the stupid toward the
+bright, just a recognition that an E was an E. They had a vast respect
+for an E, but you couldn't get around it that some of them were--well,
+maybe eccentric was the word.
+
+"I hear there's trouble on that planet we're going to--Eden, isn't it?"
+Frank commented.
+
+"You think we'd be hauling an E out there if there weren't?" Tom
+countered wryly.
+
+They continued to check over each item in the generator room, their
+flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation.
+They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some
+quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their
+heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no
+subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into
+position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single
+file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was
+sitting in the astronavigator's seat, checking over his star charts and
+instruments. He glanced up at them as they came level with his cubicle.
+He was the third man of the team, as used to them as they were to him.
+
+"Fourteen hop adjustments to get us past Pluto and out of the heavy
+traffic," he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid brown eyes were
+perpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over at Traffic that they're
+going to provide a freeway out of the solar system so we can take it in
+one hop, but they don't do it. Wonder when we'll ever go modern, start
+doing things scientific?"
+
+They paid no attention to his grumbling. That was just Louie.
+
+"Then how many hops to Eden, after Pluto?" Tom asked.
+
+"I figure twenty," Louie answered. "Can't take full light-year leaps
+every time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff in the way to
+louse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded. There'll be no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden, no trouble _getting_ there. Make it in about
+fourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven lousy little light-years.
+Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch. Wait'll the union agent
+hears you're working me fourteen hours without a relief. And are you
+letting me get my rest now, so I can work fourteen hours? Or are you
+stopping me from resting with a lot of questions?"
+
+"But you think there may be trouble _after_ we get to Eden?" Tom asked.
+
+Louie looked at him. There was no fear in the soft, brown eyes; just an
+enormous indignation that life should always treat him so dirty.
+
+"Don't you?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror
+and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should
+take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned
+forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners
+of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty
+mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth--not yet, anyway.
+Perhaps he should think about that sometime.
+
+Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....
+
+He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom door
+watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.
+
+"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There was a
+questioning note in her voice.
+
+"Want to keep handsome," he said lightly. "Never know when I might have
+to run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one of my other wives to
+catch me with stubble on my face."
+
+It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce the
+topic foremost in his mind.
+
+"This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo to
+qualify me for my big E. I'm due, you know."
+
+Linda chose to avoid coming directly to grips with it.
+
+"Yehudi is already at the door," she said, and made a face of
+exasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals the
+orderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can have you all to
+myself."
+
+"It's better if you get used to him," Cal cautioned. "Turn off the
+signal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi, you'd have
+twenty rushing in to see what was wrong."
+
+"Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take his morning
+shower without an observer standing by to see that he doesn't drown
+himself or swallow the soap," she commented with a touch of acid.
+
+"Get used to it, woman," he commanded. "There's only one observer now.
+When--if I get my Senior rating, there'll be three."
+
+She didn't say anything. Instead she stepped over to him, pressed her
+nude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm.
+
+"Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away," she said, and glittered her
+eyes at him wickedly.
+
+"He won't, but it's a good idea," Cal grinned at her.
+
+"You could tell him to go away," she whispered with a little pout.
+
+She was fighting. She was fighting with the only weapon she had to hold
+him, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown. He knew it, and
+the bitterness in her eyes, back of her teasing, showed she knew he knew
+it.
+
+He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked her
+hair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it in his
+chest. He felt her sobbing.
+
+He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom, laid her
+gently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who stood
+expressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed and held her
+head in his arms.
+
+"Don't fight it," he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has had
+to go."
+
+"It's the first time it ever happened to me," she sobbed.
+
+"You knew when you married me.... You agreed...."
+
+"It was easy to agree, then. There was the glamor of being known as the
+wife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just you, and the thought
+of losing you, never seeing you again."
+
+"I haven't gone yet," he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll get the
+job. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of them might want
+it. Even if I do get the problem, who says I won't be back? You take old
+McGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day. He's been an E for nigh on to fifty
+years. He's still around, you'll notice."
+
+She was quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair,
+blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope
+of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace
+and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty
+she might never see again, feel enfolded around her, enfold with
+herself.
+
+"I'm a little fool," she said through clenched teeth. "Of course you'll
+be back. And you'd better make it quick, or I'll come after you."
+
+He kissed her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled body on
+the bed, pulled the sheet over her.
+
+"Why don't you go back to sleep," he suggested. "Rest. I'll have
+breakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the Eden
+briefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning."
+
+Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently he
+kissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try to hold
+him.
+
+He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept her eyes
+closed. He stood up then, and signaled the orderly.
+
+"I'll take my shower now," he said.
+
+The orderly didn't speak, just followed him into the bathroom to stand
+in the doorway and watch him through the shower glass. He was rigidly
+obeying the cardinal rule of E.H.Q.
+
+Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an E. The
+whole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend on it.
+
+How much of the future of the universe depended upon his not
+interrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him to say. He
+sighed. He thought of his own wife--shrewish, fat, coarse, always
+complaining. He wondered what she would do if he picked her up, carried
+her to bed, closed her eyes with his fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'd
+be speechless.
+
+He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about fifty
+pounds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already there--McGinnis
+and Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade more cordial, a shade
+more interested than usual. They seemed, this time, to be looking at him
+as if he were a person, not merely a Junior E. When he turned away from
+them to greet the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked the
+club-room privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faces
+were frankly envious.
+
+Eden was to be his problem!
+
+He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through his
+shower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment, he'd been
+nagged with the fear he might not be considered; that the grief of Linda
+and her rise above it would lead only to anticlimax. By the time he'd
+got to the club-room door, followed by his orderly, he had already
+conditioned himself to disappointment.
+
+Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he wanted for
+breakfast.
+
+"You fellows join me in something?" he asked both Juniors and Seniors.
+
+"A second cup of coffee," Wong agreed.
+
+"A second bourbon," old McGinnis said drily.
+
+The Juniors shook their heads negatively. Yesterday they had been his
+constant companions, only a few degrees below him in accomplishment,
+pushing rapidly to become his equal competitors for the next solo.
+Today, this morning, there was already a gap between them and him, a
+chasm they would make no move to bridge until they had earned the
+right. They seated themselves at another table, apart.
+
+"Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem," McGinnis
+commented while orderlies placed food and drink in front of them. "We
+ought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?"
+
+"First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly. "Or
+perhaps Malinkoff, if he shows up."
+
+"Malinkoff is too deep in something to come to the briefing," Wong said.
+
+"Wong and I came only to help on your first solo, if we can," McGinnis
+said. "Always think a young fellow needs a little send-off. I remember,
+about fifty years ago, more or less ..."
+
+"Worst thing to guard against," Wong interrupted, "is disappointment.
+This whole thing might add up to nothing. Might not turn out to be a
+genuine solo at all, just something any errand boy could do. In that
+case it wouldn't qualify you. You know that."
+
+"Sure," Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give real
+challenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become an E.
+You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference, something
+that required original thinking, the E kind of thinking. You brought it
+off successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed what you'd done. If
+they thought it was worth something, you got your big E. If they didn't,
+you tried again. And you didn't get it by default, just because somebody
+thought there should be a given quota of Seniors on the list.
+
+"Little or big," he added, "I'd like the problem."
+
+They said no more. He knew the score. He'd had twelve years of the most
+intensive training the E's themselves could devise. He knew that
+sometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve years chasing down jobs
+which anybody on the spot could have solved if they'd used their heads a
+little before they ran on to something that challenged that training.
+He'd be lucky if this was big enough--but not too big.
+
+That was in their minds, too.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+On ordinary days there were only the usual few science reporters in the
+press room of E.H.Q. These held their jobs by the difficult compromise
+between the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and their publishers'
+equal insistence upon sensationalism.
+
+Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like television
+writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass by
+writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; since
+the facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit the open space or time
+slot; even these reporters had a difficult time of maintaining the usual
+odds--that there is only a twenty-to-one chance that anything said in
+the newspapers or on the air may be accurate.
+
+But on this morning the press room was crowded. In spite of all efforts
+of journalism to stir up old animosities to make news, or to force
+factional leaders into rashness which could not be settled without
+violence; the various states of world government insisted upon
+negotiating ethnical differences amicably, and factional leaders
+persisted in keeping their heads. There had been no world-shaking
+discoveries made in the last week or so; the public no longer believed
+that changing a screw thread was exactly a scientific "break-through";
+no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as to
+work the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another's
+aberrations.
+
+In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question
+circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong
+hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a
+summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood.
+
+EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to
+COLONY WIPED OUT.
+
+That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one in
+journalism. If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of the
+news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in the
+press of today's new hate and panic.
+
+The public, with an established addiction to ever increasing daily doses
+of sensationalism, and deprived of its shots through this dry spell,
+snapped out of its apathy to greet this new thrill with vociferous calls
+to editors, wires to congressmen, telegrams to the Administration.
+
+What are we doing about this colony that has been wiped out? Where is
+our space battle fleet? Who is going to be punished?
+
+It was an overnight sensation, and on this morning following the news
+leak there could even be seen some secretaries to the writers for top
+commentators and columnists in the crowded press room.
+
+Naturally these stood in little groups apart and associated only with
+each other to maintain the literary tradition of proper insulation from
+the realities of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviously
+no first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only
+because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own
+spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit his
+capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the
+bias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to
+maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the
+sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in
+such a position.
+
+Now two of these secretaries could be seen over in a corner of the press
+room exchanging their views, probing one another for information. No
+one thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information from
+source for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies in
+what the competition is going to say, not in what happened.
+
+"How long has it been since the first message came through, or didn't?"
+
+"Fourteen hours, about."
+
+"We could have had a rescue fleet out there by now."
+
+"To rescue 'em from what?"
+
+"Whatever's wrong."
+
+"I understand an assistant attorney general is checking into it."
+
+"So Gunderson's still gunning for the E's, eh?"
+
+"Has he ever let up since he became attorney general? Gripes his soul he
+can't arrest them for not doing what he wants, or for doing what he
+doesn't want."
+
+"How'd they ever get immune, anyhow?"
+
+"Skip class that day in history?"
+
+"Must've."
+
+"Vague, myself. Right after the insurrection. Seems there were two
+powers, Russia and America. The people of the world got fed up, gave a
+pox to both their houses, boiled over, formed a world government.
+Somehow the scientists got in their licks in the turmoil, pointed out
+that scientists who have to confine their discoveries to what suits the
+ideology of the non-scientists can only find limited solutions."
+
+"Quite a deal."
+
+"Could only happen in a world turmoil, when everything was fluid.
+Anyhow, they got away with it, for a certain group, Extrapolators, had
+to be free to extrapolate without fear of reprisal."
+
+"Boy, something. Imagine. Take any dame you want. Nobody can squawk.
+Take any money, riches you want. Nobody can stop it."
+
+"Funny thing. Nothing like that happens. Idea seems to be that when you
+don't have to fight against restrictions, they aren't important any
+more. At least not to an E."
+
+"Guess that's why one of 'em pointed out that police are the major cause
+of crime."
+
+"Whether he was right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson into a tail
+spin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped on that
+subject. He'll get 'em one of these days. Even an E can make a mistake,
+and when one of 'em does, he'll be there."
+
+"I dunno, the public has a lot of hero-worship for the E. Pretty tough
+for any politician to buck that."
+
+"The public! You know as well as I do--they think what we tell 'em to
+think, you and me."
+
+"You think that's why he's got a man out here on this Eden thing?
+Looking for a mistake?"
+
+"Maybe. Maybe not. He just never passes up the chance that maybe this
+time he can grab something."
+
+"Between Gunderson and the E's, I'll take the E's."
+
+"Your boss feel the same way?"
+
+"Far as I know."
+
+"But if your boss changed his mind, you would have an agonizing
+reappraisal."
+
+"Well, sure. A guy's got to eat."
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance of
+solidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, where
+the west wall had been, another room seemed to join this one, an office.
+A large man in a brown suit made an entrance through the door of the
+office and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness.
+
+"I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the Eden
+area. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules of
+procedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the scientists involved
+in this problem have been up all night reviewing every known fact about
+Eden. We ask the indulgence of the E's not only for the kind of
+knowledge that may prove too little, but for any strain caused by trying
+to assemble such massive data into order in so short a time.
+
+"For the press, let me say we are aware of some questions of why we
+didn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failed
+to come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle until
+he has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to get
+some idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. It
+would serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out to
+rescue, and might prove the highest folly."
+
+All over E.H.Q., in the various buildings where anybody was directly
+concerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared here in the
+club room. The tri-di screen wall would seem to join the room of the
+person speaking. A pressed button signaled the desire to speak, and like
+the chairman of a meeting, Bill Hayes decided whom to recognize. It was
+a way to conduct a meeting of two or three thousand people as intimately
+as a small conference.
+
+"The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing," Hayes
+continued formally. He faded out his own office, and was immediately
+replaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review of Eden was under
+way.
+
+With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references to
+documentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial position of
+Ceti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II--popularly called,
+he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he preferred a little less
+popularizing of scientific data, a little more exactitude. He would,
+therefore, continue to call it Ceti II.
+
+He reminded Cal of certain teachers in schools he had been asked to
+leave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, they
+clung to their exactitudes--like frightened little children in a chaotic
+world too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, something
+safe, sure, dependable.
+
+The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish the
+position of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction.
+
+In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms of
+third-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found where the
+man said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly, that the essence
+might be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closest
+attention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest he
+find his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, after
+all, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he lay
+peacefully in Linda's arms.
+
+He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little phrase,
+carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure. Didactic
+pedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, not
+vaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them.
+
+A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space to
+the surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just so
+all the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed to
+be humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance to
+chuckle with him.
+
+If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apology
+for this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worth
+breaking up the review to oblige him.
+
+After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present his
+capsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.
+
+There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands of
+islands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. The
+islands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explained
+that Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universe
+exploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientists
+could follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been left
+for future colonists to complete.
+
+He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzled
+by glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jet
+jockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solid
+sciences to keep up with the work to be done.
+
+A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with the
+injection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence,
+and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have the
+grant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to change
+the human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead toward
+humans with super-intelligence.
+
+Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that the
+Eden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get that one out
+of the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions, indicated that
+they did not appreciate being frustrated, hampered, driven--but they did
+comply.
+
+Back to Eden they went.
+
+The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area. Partly this
+was due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly,
+partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted that
+there was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over the
+globe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Some
+differential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no real
+violence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes
+here on Earth.
+
+"Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they could send
+news, then," Wong suggested in an aside to Cal.
+
+"Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because it wasn't
+supposed to happen," Cal said.
+
+Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew Wong had laid a
+little trap to see how easily he might be lulled into a premature
+conclusion.
+
+The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but only to
+the extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked with a springier
+step, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause nausea, even to the
+inexperienced. The oxygen content of the air, in fact the whole make-up
+of the air, was so close to Earth quality there were no breathing
+adaptations necessary.
+
+So much for generalities. He went on to document them with exactitudes.
+He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the distribution of
+rainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air masses. Cal's doubt
+was not appeased. Weather prediction was about on a par with race-horse
+handicapping, and easy to explain after it happened.
+
+Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed their duet
+to the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists.
+
+A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the major
+theme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion of the plant
+forms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems, roots, flowers. A
+choir of zoologists joined their voices here to point out the large
+number of small meat animals, fish, and crustaceans--with the whole
+thing sounding like a pean of thanksgiving.
+
+After two hours, the condensed information added up to a most
+interesting fact. In essence, due to quite _natural_ conditions--odd how
+much the scientists seemed to need stressing the word "natural"--Eden
+was more favorable to easy human life than Earth!
+
+Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student or apprentice
+might distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing question or so. Say
+the range of easily possible conditions on any given planet was a scale
+ten miles in length. Then that area on the scale where man could exist
+without artificial aids would still be less than a hair's breadth. And
+now to find a planet more nearly perfect for man than the one on which
+he evolved....
+
+Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention? He decided
+to nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the too obvious
+brought out things not obvious at all.
+
+"How frequently," he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do we find a
+mass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve at right angles
+to its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?"
+
+"It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of land
+and water masses, such as we have on Ceti II," the first astrophysicist
+answered.
+
+"How frequently do we find that?" Cal repeated.
+
+"I know of no other," the astrophysicist replied shortly.
+
+"Any evidence of tampering with those ocean currents to get them flowing
+so beneficially?" Cal asked.
+
+"None yet discovered," an oceanographer cut in.
+
+Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't been
+and couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself and
+spoiled the effect of open-mindedness.
+
+"There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligence
+for that," the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a feat would
+require enormous engineering works. Such works under the ocean would be
+matched by comparable works on land, and would therefore show up in our
+aerial surveys, however ancient and overgrown."
+
+Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization, yes, that
+would have left traces. But what of some other kind? Perhaps a deep-sea
+kind that had never come out upon the land? Never mind the arguments
+that such a civilization could not have developed--that was looking at
+it from the human point of view again. Had man grown so accustomed to
+not finding comparable intelligence anywhere in the universe he had
+begun to discount, or forget, there could be?
+
+The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the prevalent
+animals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in land animals higher
+than a large rodent, no sea mammals at all, no fish larger than the
+tarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of primates.
+
+A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of minute life
+forms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again expound the old
+theory of space-floating life spores to seed all favorable matter, and
+thus develop similar forms through evolution, wherever found. Quickly
+and tactfully Bill Hayes nudged him back on the track before the
+expected storm of controversy could break out.
+
+Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one. Quite aside
+from the emergency of what might be happening to the colonists, there
+was growing clamor from the people and pressure from various
+governmental bodies to get off the dime and get going--rescue those
+people, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the flood
+of telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted the pressures in favor of doing a
+workmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of a
+haphazard show, but was mindful of them nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial cannot
+help but realize that "government by law instead of man" is a mere
+political phrase without meaning in reality. The ascendancy of
+me-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in the human psyche that
+abstract idealisms must always take second place where such ascendancy
+is threatened. Thus we see that the belly-crawler, meek and subservient
+to the judge, comes off with a token sentence while the man who attempts
+to maintain his pride, his rights, his self-respect gets the book thrown
+at him.
+
+No practical attorney is unaware that the judgment of his case depends
+largely upon who presides, the whims, the prejudices, the moods, the
+viewpoint of the judge; and that the law merely provides justification
+for the imposition of those whims, moods, prejudices, and viewpoints.
+
+And ambitions.
+
+The announcement at E.H.Q. that a Junior E would be given this problem
+gave Gunderson's man the opening he had hoped to find. A hurried call to
+the capitol and a brief conversation with Gunderson himself confirmed
+his conclusions. Perhaps the E was above all law, and it might not be
+expedient to challenge that right now, but immunity did not necessarily
+extend to the Junior E.
+
+In view of the known ambitions of certain judges, it should not be
+difficult to make a test case of this--whether the E's had a right to
+jeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an unqualified man to
+the problem.
+
+A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, the
+apprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle of the E
+extend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out did the
+Administration of E.H.Q. extend to substitute for government? How much
+of a state within a state had E.H.Q. become?
+
+Now, while the public was clamoring for action, and E.H.Q. was, instead,
+droning on through a mass of inconsequential detail, now while public
+sentiment was crystallizing, or could be crystallized into placing human
+welfare over science procedures, now was the time.
+
+It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor the
+request of the attorney general.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the
+review.
+
+The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously
+favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeed
+they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly
+nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on
+Earth.
+
+Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists
+had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were
+temperamentally suited to the work.
+
+As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly as
+possible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitive
+ecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of this
+first colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do only
+what any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible.
+
+In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had been
+more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden of
+their complaint was that they found living too easy. They were
+professionals, accustomed to challenge.
+
+They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred and
+the planet given over to the second-phase colonists.
+
+They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was making
+farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft,
+ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostile
+conditions. There had even been threats that one of these days they
+would all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stopped
+them by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never got
+another assignment.
+
+He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Some
+organisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, to
+make their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until the
+second or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phase
+colonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet could
+be opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning a
+little chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredom
+might be just the very inimical condition they were having to test.
+
+Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
+colonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction from
+their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawing
+attention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps,
+but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treated
+unfairly.
+
+This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let his
+disappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrative
+hassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior.
+
+Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the whole
+of the problem.
+
+The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. In
+the center was a small mountain. It had been given the name of Crystal
+Palace Mountain because it was crested with an outcropping of
+amethystine quartz-crystal structures in _natural_ pillars, domes,
+arches, spires.
+
+Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell away
+from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleys
+watered by perpetual streams.
+
+It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain and
+the sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named the
+first settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, and
+everybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit of
+knowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to the
+planet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone was
+referring to it that way.
+
+"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course we
+still designate it as Ceti II."
+
+As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progress
+pictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they had
+started to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here they
+were converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the first
+houses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship.
+Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earth
+seed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them from
+Earth.
+
+A collection of community buildings came next in the series of
+photographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, with
+a collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it all
+as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio.
+Productive, progressive, and peaceful--from a distance.
+
+But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed normally
+also.
+
+The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. His
+department would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms
+_not_ developed. _That_ would have been an abnormality calling for
+investigation.
+
+Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the common
+temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities
+developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, each
+group considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all who
+disagreed wrong.
+
+The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember the
+classical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He stands
+upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realization
+that he can see about the same distance in all directions.
+
+"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center of
+creation!"
+
+His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was still
+at the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.
+
+"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the most
+important event in all creation!"
+
+Still later comes another realization.
+
+"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, are
+also at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are not
+with me, and not a part of me-and-mine, are not at the center of things,
+and are therefore of an inferior nature!"
+
+It could readily be seen--the psychologist was allowing a note of
+dryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy,
+religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even his
+scientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; the
+supreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the center
+of things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on the
+outside, and therefore inferior.
+
+There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist left
+the generalities behind and came back to the issue.
+
+The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, for
+there was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mine
+organism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided into
+nations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in some
+other nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been able
+to find to keep the nation from disintegrating.
+
+Another nudge.
+
+Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, as
+expected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longer
+tolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with the
+rest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the near
+ridge to settle in an adjacent valley.
+
+Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out in
+classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyone
+knew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man been
+able to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed no
+civilization at all.
+
+Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potent
+of all forces in driving him out to the stars.
+
+Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided he
+could no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cut
+him off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simple
+statement.
+
+The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance or
+not. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal course
+of E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They had been collated and
+extended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trends
+away from norm.
+
+There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as well
+have originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about as
+unusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.
+
+Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following
+the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human
+existence than Earth."
+
+He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness for
+take-off.
+
+McGinnis and Wong looked at one another.
+
+"You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?" Wong asked.
+His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was banished from an
+ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow."
+
+"Not that so much," Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept of evolution
+is haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that far off. Probably
+the colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep thinking that when
+we want to catch rats we set a trap with a better food than they can get
+normally."
+
+There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye.
+
+"You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch human
+beings?" he asked.
+
+"I don't exactly think that. I just keep wondering," Cal answered.
+
+They were interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on the door.
+This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt
+the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors,
+who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stood
+facing the door. The orderlies looked to the E's for instruction. At a
+nod from McGinnis, one of them walked over to the door and opened it.
+
+Bill Hayes was standing there, flushed with embarrassment.
+
+"Your pardon, E's," he said hurriedly. "I'm just an errand boy, under
+instruction from General Administration. We have been served with a
+court injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior to the Eden matter."
+
+Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment to have his
+chance snatched away from him. He should have gone immediately the
+review was over, without waiting for any advice McGinnis and Wong might
+care to give. Now ...
+
+McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door that opened
+on another hallway. He flashed a command with his eyes to get going,
+then turned back to Hayes.
+
+"I was unaware that the E's must heed court orders," he said frostily.
+
+"It's a question of where civil jurisdiction stops and E jurisdiction
+takes over," Hayes explained nervously. "While the colonists are
+employed by E.H.Q., and under their direction, it is held they are also
+Earth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil authority feels it must
+answer for their welfare."
+
+"I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of World Congress
+some seventy years ago," Wong said mildly.
+
+"The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the Senior
+E; just the Junior, who really isn't an E yet."
+
+"It is the decision of the E's that a Junior will handle this problem,"
+McGinnis said, and turned his back as if that settled the matter.
+
+Hayes cleared his throat nervously.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said. "If it were up to me ... Well, the argument before
+the court ran this way: That where there is no restriction upon the E in
+arriving at a solution, there is also no compulsion upon civil
+authority to adopt that solution. They cited instances ... Well, any
+number of instances. It seems ..."
+
+Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's
+perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, he
+slipped out the door.
+
+The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's request
+quickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet.
+
+"Take me out to the Eden ship," Cal said quietly. "You know where it
+is?"
+
+"Yes," the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls and Cal
+slipped into the seat beside him.
+
+They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear exit of the E
+building, down the maze of ramps and out across the landing field to the
+entrance of the ship.
+
+Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction, but
+none were in evidence. As they drew up to the open door, he saw Lynwood
+and Norton, pilot and engineer, standing just inside waiting for him.
+There was no strain in their faces to show they had received orders not
+to take off with him.
+
+He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly drove it
+back to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew would be the E's
+orderlies.
+
+Cal climbed the short ramp and entered the ship.
+
+"You have clearance to take off at once?" he asked Lynwood.
+
+Lynwood nodded. "Since early morning," he answered.
+
+"Fine. Let's get going," Cal said. "I'm in a hurry, of course," he added
+with a grin.
+
+"Of course," the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed and
+returned it. Apparently this E was human.
+
+It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where Louie
+sat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for the ship to
+lift clear. And still no command came over the radio to halt them.
+
+Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really felt that a
+simple injunction would stop everything, that the E's would not
+challenge this encroachment? Was he playing some deeper game, allowing
+the Junior to slip through his fingers in the hope he would louse up the
+Eden rescue, add strength to the campaign to bring the E's back under
+civil control--his control?
+
+Or had someone genuinely slipped?
+
+The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not come until
+their second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit. Then it came from
+space police in charge of shipping traffic at that point.
+
+"I am under orders from E.H.Q. to proceed," Tom answered, after a quick,
+questioning look at Cal.
+
+"The attorney general's office orders you to halt," the voice commanded.
+
+Tom looked at Cal again, questioning. This was bucking the federal
+government, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on if
+he ignored the order. To say nothing of any other punishment they might
+choose to hand him.
+
+"Keep going," Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump as quickly
+as you can."
+
+"I am under orders to keep going," Tom answered the police. If he
+refused the request of an E, a lifetime of work would go down the drain.
+
+Over in his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through the
+intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were working
+as one man.
+
+"I am under orders to disable you if you refuse," the police warned.
+
+"We have an E on board," Tom answered. "You'd be risking a lot."
+
+"I am advised he is a Junior E," the voice said in clipped speech. "Not
+such a risk."
+
+"Far as I'm concerned," Tom answered laconically, "he's an E. I have to
+follow his orders."
+
+He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was an instant
+silence. They were at the approach to the asteroid belt.
+
+"They can get us here," Louie spoke up. "We have to give over controls
+so they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the microsecond on
+these asteroid movements. They have to calculate a path in short hops,
+and take us through a step at a time. I keep saying there ought to be an
+expressway out of the solar system, but ..."
+
+"What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked. "Get over it
+instead of through it?"
+
+"It's illegal," Louie complained.
+
+"Our necks are already out," Tom said quietly.
+
+"Okay, you're the boss. But I'll have to figure it. It takes time to
+figure it."
+
+"Well, get going on it."
+
+"There's stuff all over," Louie explained. "Not just a band, like most
+people think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too. Not so
+thick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a bunch of
+little jumps."
+
+"We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+The radio gave its hum of life, and a voice came through.
+
+"We have orders from space police not to escort you through, to turn you
+back."
+
+"This is an E ship, with an E on board. His command is to come through,"
+Tom said.
+
+"I just work here," the voice answered as if it were bored and tired. "I
+take my orders from Space Control."
+
+Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look out of a
+corner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to bother him. His
+other hand was speeding through the movements of manipulating the
+astrocalculator. Then he nodded his head, still not looking up, and the
+co-ordinates flashed in front of Frank. Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frank
+set up the pattern of the jump band.
+
+"I take my orders from the E's," Tom answered in a voice that matched
+the boredom, tiredness. Then with a nod from Frank, "Now!" he said.
+
+There was silence again.
+
+"It's going to add at least an hour," Louie complained. "I've got to
+pick my way through this muck."
+
+"We've got time now," Tom answered easily. "Not likely they can find us
+out here, away from the regular lanes."
+
+"Not unless we run across a prowl ship," Louie said. "You know there's
+some smuggling, and now and then a shipping company thinks it can beat
+the rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same thing we're doing. The
+prowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're not the first ones to try
+it."
+
+"Just keep figuring, Louie," Tom said.
+
+"All right, all right!" Louie quarreled back.
+
+Tom looked at Cal and grimaced.
+
+"Louie's all right," he said. "Just has to complain."
+
+"I'm sure of it," Cal answered with a grin.
+
+It took closer to two hours. They had no way of knowing how many times
+the space police had made a fix on their position only too late to catch
+them hovering there. There must have been some fix made and a pretty
+careful calculation of where they could go next, for as they neared the
+outer moons of Jupiter the radio crackled into life again.
+
+"This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take over. We
+will disintegrate your ship if you resist."
+
+Cal took the microphone in his own hand to answer.
+
+"We intend to keep going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional dispute
+between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will not allow you
+to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders to
+disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhile
+you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those orders are
+confirmed."
+
+Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed.
+
+In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders from the
+attorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say, Lynwood, what
+is this all about?"
+
+"Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who," Lynwood
+answered. "I just work here," he added tiredly.
+
+"Well," said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in the
+courts now. You understand, we had our orders."
+
+"You understand, so did I." Tom answered.
+
+"Sure," the voice answered, and cut out.
+
+Cal wondered whether the orders to disintegrate had been a bluff. Would
+the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior E
+on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one they
+didn't expect to have called.
+
+Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's hands by
+defying him, and getting that defiance on record was what the man had
+wanted.
+
+Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than merely finding
+out what had happened to some colonists. Whatever it was, he'd better
+find a successful solution, because the attorney general was counting on
+him to fail. And if he did fail, certainly the position of the Junior E
+would be altered, and possibly a deep thrust into the very heart of the
+Senior E position, as well.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating the
+globe while still in space.
+
+Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, they
+had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain at
+its center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescope
+viewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like a
+diamond set in jade.
+
+The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when they
+amplified their magnification to get a close look at the Appletree
+village before dropping down to land.
+
+Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and he
+stuck to his claim stubbornly.
+
+But there was no settlement there. No sign there had ever been.
+
+Louie could see that for himself, they told him. There was nothing but
+virgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old. There were splashes of
+rolling meadows spotted here and there by other trees, untilled meadows
+sloping downward from the ridges to the river. And not a blemish nor
+scar to show that man had ever landed there.
+
+"Fine thing," Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get us clear
+across the universe in great shape, and then you can't even find the
+landing field."
+
+But Louie was in no mood for banter. He wished Tom would go back and
+hold the manual controls of the ship instead of letting it hover on
+automatic. He wished Cal would go back to his stateroom and think. He
+wished Frank Norton would shut up. He wished they wouldn't all stand
+over him, reading his charts over his shoulder.
+
+In irritated silence he reduced the viewscope dimensions to scale, and
+snapped a picture of the whole island. He took the fresh picture, still
+moist from its self-developing camera, and laid it beside the chart.
+Wordlessly, for the benefit of them all, he traced his pencil over the
+outlines of the chart and their duplicates in the picture. As in
+comparing fingerprints, he flicked his pencil at the points of identity.
+There were far too many to ignore. He poked the point of his pencil at
+Appletree where it was located on the chart. Then he picked out the same
+location in the picture.
+
+It was not the science of navigation that was wrong.
+
+"It's just one of those dirty tricks life plays on a fellow," Tom said
+over Cal's shoulder. "You got us in the right place, Louie, but probably
+in the wrong time slot. You've warped us right out of our own time, and
+Eden hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe won't be for another million
+years. Maybe, back on Earth, man is just discovering fire."
+
+"Yeah," Norton agreed. "Or maybe in the wrong dimension. You and your
+fancy navigation. Now you take a midgit-idgit navigating machine. It
+wouldn't know how to pull such fancy short cuts. Take a little longer,
+maybe, but when we got there we'd be there."
+
+They were both talking nonsense and knew it. Time and dimensional travel
+were still purely theoretical. Louie ignored the ribbing with elaborate
+patience.
+
+"You know what I think," he asked seriously. "I think the whole thing's
+a hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there. I'll betcha
+the colonists have pulled a whingding all the way through."
+
+"There's a whole raft of pictures to show they were there," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+"Pictures!" Louie answered scornfully. "You think they couldn't fake
+pictures?" He thought for a moment. "And where's their ship, their
+escape ship?" he asked as a clincher. "They didn't like it here and have
+gone off somewhere else, and then covered up by sending reports and
+pictures on how things would have developed if they'd stayed."
+
+There was a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal let the
+talk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a modern ocean
+liner pulled into the harbor of New York--to find an untouched Manhattan
+Island in its virgin state?
+
+It couldn't happen, therefore it wasn't to be treated seriously.
+
+"Better set up communication with Earth," Cal said quietly.
+
+In E science the unpredictable, the incredible, the illogical could
+happen at any time. With a mind more open to acceptance of this, he had
+felt the run of shock sooner. For them, the shock impact was delayed
+since their minds rejected the illogical as unreal. For him the human
+shock came at once, and then, as E thinking took over, passed off.
+
+"Sure, Cal," Lynwood agreed. It was a measure of their acceptance that
+they had quite normally fallen into using his first name.
+
+On the emergency signal it took less than three minutes to clear through
+eleven light-years to E.H.Q.--and then sixteen minutes for the operator
+at base to find Bill Hayes.
+
+"Sector Chief Hayes here," the voice said at last through the speaker.
+
+"Gray here, on the Eden matter," Cal answered. "Any other E's
+available?"
+
+"Hm-m," Hayes answered. "Wong has picked up on a problem in the Pleiades
+sector, and left this morning. Malinkoff has given out word not to
+disturb him if the whole universe falls apart. That leaves McGinnis,
+who, I believe, is spending his time working on the defense against the
+injunction by Gunderson. An example of the way petty restrictions can
+bring a fine mind down to trivial problems. But he said call him if you
+need him."
+
+"Please," Cal said. "And you might stay on while I talk to him, if
+you're not busy."
+
+"Sure, E Gray, sure," Hayes answered. "I'm flashing the operator to
+locate McGinnis. Seen anything of the police ship, yet? I understand one
+is following to observe what you do."
+
+"I'm sure it will be a big help," Cal said drily. "Not that it matters,
+so long as it doesn't get in the way."
+
+McGinnis came on at that point.
+
+"I'm not yelling for help, yet," Cal told him. "But here's what it is
+like at this end." He sketched in the details, and heard a sharp gasp at
+the other end from Hayes.
+
+"Now I'd like to stay on this problem," he concluded his brief summary.
+"But somewhere there's fifty colonists in trouble because this whole
+thing is out of focus. I'm not a full E, and maybe their lives are more
+important than my ambition to do a solo job. Certainly more important.
+Then, trivial as it is, we'd be playing right into Gunderson's hands if
+we've sent out a boy to do a man's job."
+
+"Dismiss the Gunderson side of it," McGinnis said drily. "It's
+inconsequential to the main issue. As for that, I don't know any more
+than you do. There's never been anything like this. Colonists have been
+wiped out on other planets, sure; but what happened left traces. This
+one is an oddball, and I'd say you're as well equipped to handle it as
+anybody else."
+
+"I don't--I don't understand this at all," Hayes said in a worried
+voice.
+
+"Who does?" Cal asked. "I'd say set up for continuous communication.
+I'll leave it wide open here, so that everything we say will come
+through. Then, if anything should happen to us, you'll have the record
+up to that point."
+
+"It's the only thing we can do," Hayes agreed.
+
+"If you think I should come out there to stand by, I'll do it," McGinnis
+said. But the tone of his voice said he hoped Cal would shoulder the
+full responsibility, not weaken out of a chance at a real solo.
+
+"I'm not crying uncle, yet," Cal said. "But I may have to take you up on
+the offer. I hope not."
+
+"But do you _know_ anything is wrong?" Hayes asked incredulously. He was
+having the same trouble facing the reality as the ship's crew.
+
+"If you were flying to Los Angeles and found only desert where the city
+is supposed to be, you might assume something was wrong," Cal answered
+drily. "But I don't know what it is. Do you have a recorder set up, so I
+can begin trying to find out?"
+
+"Yes, yes, E Gray," Hayes said hurriedly. He was suddenly conscious that
+he had been interrupting an E conversation, not once but several times.
+"Pardon the intrusions. It was just that ..."
+
+"I understand," Cal reassured him.
+
+When Cal stood up from the communicator, the eyes of the crew were on
+him. Overhearing his conversation with Earth had sobered them, made
+reality come closer.
+
+"You think it might be a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air current
+reflecting from another island and superimposing over this one?" Then he
+answered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. There aren't enough
+discrepancies."
+
+"Let's pan down to the ground with the scanner," Cal said. "Take it slow
+over the area where the village is supposed to be."
+
+Glad to be doing something with his hands, Lynwood twisted the controls
+to take them instantly, in magnification, to a distance slightly above
+the tops of the trees. The automatic pilot caused the ship to drift with
+the rotation of the planet, keeping them in fixed relative position.
+
+They scanned the ground rod by rod. There were expanses of heavy tree
+and bush growth that they could not penetrate. Some of these trees grew
+where the pictures showed cleared fields, buildings, truck gardens,
+cattle pastures.
+
+"Those big trees didn't grow up in a month, since the last colonist
+report," Louie said positively. He still clung to his belief that it was
+all a hoax.
+
+Cal made no comment. He was intent on the scanner screen. There were
+heavy foliage spots, but there were also bare areas covered by a soft,
+springy turf and patches of wild flowers. But there was no sign of man
+or his works. There was not so much as a board, the glint of a nail, not
+a furrow, not even the scar of a campfire. And no indication that there
+had ever been.
+
+In the sandy patches along the banks of the small meandering river,
+there was not even a footprint.
+
+They swept the scanner down the valley.
+
+"Wait a minute," Cal said. "There are some cows and horses." He held the
+scanner fixed while they studied the animals. In two small herds, the
+animals grazed contentedly near a patch of woods.
+
+"We're in the right time slot, then," Tom said, with an attempt to pick
+up the spirit of treating it lightly. "They've been here. Else the cows
+and horses wouldn't be."
+
+"Funny thing about those horses," Frank commented in a puzzled voice. "I
+grew up on a farm. Those are work horses, but field horses always have
+harness marks on them where the hair gets rubbed off or the skin gets
+calloused. If they used these horses for work, there ought to be collar
+and hames rubs on their necks. There ought to be worn streaks left by
+the traces on their sides. There isn't. Far as the evidence shows, they
+might have been wild all their lives."
+
+"Whatever happened didn't seem to hurt them any," Cal agreed.
+
+He swept the scanner on down the valley to the sandy shore of the sea.
+They were close enough to pick up the brown streaks of beached seaweed.
+A flock of shore birds were busy running up the sand away from the
+gentle, beaching waves, then following the water line back down to dig
+their beaks into the soft, wet sand for food. The birds showed no alarm,
+no sign of lurking presence near them.
+
+Cal brought the scanner back up the valley and over to one of the
+ridges bordering it. High on the crest of the ridge, the undergrowth was
+less luxuriant than down in the valley.
+
+And it was here they caught their first glimpse of a human being.
+
+He was hunkered down behind some rocks at the crest, peering over them
+at the valley below. From the shape of his shoulders and back, the set
+of his head, they knew it to be a man. As far as they could tell, he had
+no clothes on. Apparently they had caught him at the moment of his
+arrival at the crest.
+
+They watched him turn his head as he looked quickly, then searchingly,
+up and down the valley. They watched his hand come up to shade his eyes
+against the light from Ceti as he attempted to see into the dark patches
+of foliage where the village ought to be.
+
+What he saw, or did not see, seemed to stun him. He squatted, as frozen
+as a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees, they saw him
+back away from the crest. Now they saw he did not wear even so much as a
+breechclout. When the height of the ridge concealed him from the other
+side, he sprang to his feet and began to run, zigzagging in the manner
+of an obstacle racer to avoid the bushes.
+
+"Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it," Lynwood
+commented.
+
+"And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people wouldn't come
+out to break it up," Louie persisted.
+
+"Then why should he be so scared?" Frank asked.
+
+"Notice that patch of bare dirt he's crossing?" Cal asked. "See the
+little spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look behind him."
+
+The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at the
+scanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus on the
+ground.
+
+"No footprints!" Lynwood exclaimed. "He doesn't leave any footprints!"
+
+The three of them looked at Cal, wide-eyed. Cal didn't like what he saw
+in Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with life's
+little petty tricks was gone.
+
+The look had been replaced with fear, and something more.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope,
+disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the other
+side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled,
+recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth of
+trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valley
+with its own stream.
+
+They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tan
+skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. It
+was their last sight of him. They watched for a while longer, but he did
+not reappear under the green canopy of forest.
+
+"Just a guess," Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope the
+casualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes. "That's
+probably one of the dissident men who broke away from the main colony
+and set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley. Apparently the same
+things have happened to him as happened to the main colony, whatever it
+was.
+
+"I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now worked up
+courage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say whatever happened
+wasn't very long ago, not more than a week. Just a guess."
+
+None of the crew answered him. It was obviously not the case of a voyeur
+spying on others--not with the kind of excitement the running man had
+shown. Running away--that is.
+
+"Let's drop down into the atmosphere," Cal suggested. "I'd assume it is
+breathable from the fact we've seen earth animals and a human being.
+Still we'd better make tests."
+
+"Yeah," Louie said unexpectedly. "If the man isn't making any footprints
+maybe he isn't breathing, either." He tried to make it a joke, to fight
+his fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody laughed. He
+swallowed hard and studied the charts again for no apparent reason.
+
+Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's face showed
+him Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the progress of shock.
+Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's sense of responsibility for
+his crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. But
+there was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of
+his jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep
+them from chattering?
+
+However experienced a man became, however dependable the reactions, one
+never knew how to predict reaction in the face of the completely
+unknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked any of the men if they
+feared to take him down it would be an insult never forgotten. It was
+their job to take an E where he wanted to go. It wouldn't be the first
+time they had gambled their lives on the judgment of an E.
+
+"Oh-oh," Tom exclaimed. "We have company." He pointed to an indicator on
+the panel.
+
+They swept the space around them with the scanner, and hovering off to
+one side they picked up another ship. They watched it for a while, as it
+hovered there. It made no move to come closer, no move to communicate
+with them.
+
+"From its markings," Tom said at last, "I think that's a special
+investigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder what
+they're doing here?"
+
+"To make first-hand observation of my failure," Cal said shortly. "Let's
+get on with our work."
+
+Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, that
+whatever might happen to them would not only be heard on the E.H.Q.
+channel back to Earth, but would also be seen by these special
+observers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that they were
+being watched, that faltering uncertainty would be noted and scorned.
+Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air sampling and testing as
+they lowered the ship by degrees.
+
+Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood handled the ship
+on manual control with ease, almost with flourish. But Louie's hands,
+gripping the edges of the chart table, still showed bloodless white at
+the knuckles. Perhaps because there was nothing for him to do at the
+moment, he alone wasn't snapping out of it.
+
+The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readings
+for this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To complete
+the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicator
+would carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not only
+McGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group of
+scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges of
+tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?
+
+To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness
+than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's
+speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.
+
+Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at
+Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made
+no comment.
+
+Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air
+sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree
+should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed
+mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of
+vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the
+ground.
+
+"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.
+
+Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.
+
+"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the
+responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so
+much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without
+question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them.
+And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less
+themselves.
+
+But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below
+them. He was frozen and unheeding.
+
+The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out
+of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.
+
+"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."
+
+Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp
+unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank,
+looked through the opening into the woods beyond.
+
+And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening protection
+of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them were
+completely naked.
+
+"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out," Cal
+instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from the
+planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to help
+me."
+
+"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own knowledge,
+heroics might do more harm than good.
+
+Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.
+
+The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward him, also
+slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces were
+breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.
+
+Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it happened.
+
+He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him. He whirled
+around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There was
+no ship. The three crewmen were completely naked.
+
+Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his own
+body. He also was nude.
+
+He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in front of him.
+Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of despair.
+
+Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet. A quick
+glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and
+uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show
+where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the
+ground and buried his face in his hands.
+
+Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield some
+wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.
+
+A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication with
+Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see the
+observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seen
+them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what it
+had seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that it
+was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical that the attorney
+general would tell E.H.Q. what had happened.
+
+Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to land.
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was
+personally involved?
+
+For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function
+rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze,
+shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind,
+there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed
+from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer.
+
+The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in
+front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still
+picture from a modernist ballet.
+
+Or a charade. Guess what this is!
+
+He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning
+of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.
+
+With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning,
+darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and
+momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with
+trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion
+picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded
+on the cutting-room floor.
+
+Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising a
+mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotent
+parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creation
+of a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, so
+that he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could now
+place responsibility outside himself.
+
+Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of
+enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, the
+first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.
+
+"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science
+if you do."
+
+In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used the
+statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E.
+The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man because
+he is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in the
+universe that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limited
+interpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to the
+ascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the sole
+basis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality.
+
+He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting these
+phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were not
+the whole of reality, what then?
+
+Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of E
+science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only one
+natural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because of
+our ignorance, because we cannot apperceive the whole, then this, too,
+is no more than another facet.
+
+Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the movement
+of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward step
+by step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read the
+knowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, had
+previously happened to them.
+
+Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought the
+shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. There
+they paused.
+
+It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportions
+of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering
+beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch,
+uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as
+small and inconspicuous as possible.
+
+In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at the
+turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the
+pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing
+men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly,
+apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his body
+against his will.
+
+The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just the
+kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into his eyes
+for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace of
+terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage swamped in funk.
+
+"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he had spoken
+in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of the
+classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him under
+the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown.
+
+As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank
+half-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legs
+behave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement of
+uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther back
+into sheltering protection of the deep forest.
+
+But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came together
+under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection? From what?
+
+Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree, as if,
+on a high place, he feared falling.
+
+"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help it."
+
+One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced,
+spare-framed one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable
+impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be made
+responsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to survive
+against all odds.
+
+"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like that
+for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin' all right.
+Better than some."
+
+Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders, fought off
+the urge to like dejection.
+
+"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and
+mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at
+himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen
+naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."
+
+To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell
+somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself.
+Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of
+responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding
+himself that he was a man.
+
+"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckon
+you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don't
+rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here is Ahmed Hussein,
+and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van Tassel. Manner of speakin',"
+he amended. "He ain't no more miserable than the rest of us."
+
+"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This is Tom
+Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just under
+the weather right now."
+
+"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I
+reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He
+spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him.
+"Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the
+job, and that's all we got left."
+
+Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar
+formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.
+
+"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a
+shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."
+
+"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him.
+Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if
+to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the
+pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."
+
+"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One
+place is good as another right now."
+
+The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the
+ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his
+legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.
+
+"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then
+cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even
+provide a cup of coffee."
+
+"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"
+
+He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began
+rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two
+sticks flew apart and out of his hands.
+
+"Try it," he invited Cal.
+
+Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started
+to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of
+his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not
+provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the
+sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together.
+Suddenly, he simply lost interest.
+
+"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His
+astonishment at himself was a shock.
+
+There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of
+gets you, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.
+
+"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant
+to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been going
+on?"
+
+"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, and
+all ..."
+
+"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning when
+everything was normal...."
+
+"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He looked at
+Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he added. "Can't
+keep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm a
+little surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation this
+long. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more that
+we'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left you
+to your own devices without interest in you. Strange."
+
+"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right now
+I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ... Well, while I'm
+in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keep
+interested.
+
+"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a week
+ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was around
+noon...."
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+It was one day around noon.
+
+Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his
+dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready
+afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch,
+all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden.
+Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and
+didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that
+had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earn
+his bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for
+it on Eden.
+
+He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees in
+the front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from the
+rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not so
+far he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still far
+enough to give a man some space.
+
+The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen window
+where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy,
+peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing the
+flowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in the
+trees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life like
+that, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be.
+
+He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because the
+committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up all
+groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn't
+afford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap out
+something that was splitting the colony right down the middle.
+
+He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetables
+were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here--plenty of rain,
+plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the crops, not even enough
+insect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures where
+the colony's community stock grazed.
+
+The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinking
+pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of some
+trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying down
+in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The green
+grass around them was so tall he could barely see their heads and backs.
+
+His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it. Martha,
+like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all you could see, as
+the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She never
+could stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked out
+this spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and some
+dim shapes of islands in the distance. Right nice.
+
+Yes, it was all very peaceful--and tame.
+
+That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got
+restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets.
+You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or
+couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while,
+maybe always.
+
+On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make
+a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right
+for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow
+death--almost as bad as living on Earth.
+
+Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe
+more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and
+see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q.
+that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy
+living.
+
+A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow
+tall.
+
+Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and
+were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the
+experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation
+so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an
+experimental colony.
+
+And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal
+to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could
+afford to lose any.
+
+Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a Lotus
+Land, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, got
+plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailing
+it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get a
+little black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick it
+out. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to follow
+it. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth
+for a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idle
+right now because there weren't enough experimentals to go around.
+
+They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another job too.
+Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them than living here.
+
+Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half wanted to
+leave right now. That was what the committee was going to decide today.
+He'd done some checking around, and it looked like they were going to
+vote to go. He'd also checked with them who wanted to stay permanently,
+and it looked like, in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to
+be men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sure
+of it.
+
+Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was the
+trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind the
+community together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and get
+along when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves.
+
+It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his sympathies
+were with the ones who wanted to go, Jed felt there was something wrong,
+real bad, about deserting the planet. Still and all, if they voted to go
+he couldn't stop them.
+
+Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on out without
+the total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E.H.Q. would decide that
+Eden was too hard to colonize because it was too easy. Maybe they'd
+abandon the planet entirely. There'd be no more humans here, and no more
+coming.
+
+That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump!
+
+He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, and
+he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else for
+his own fault. There wasn't any hammock.
+
+At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly in
+the direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standing
+there on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not a
+stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.
+
+And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!
+
+His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to stand
+right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter with her anyhow?
+He peered quickly down toward the village to see if anybody was looking
+up in this direction.
+
+The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't any
+hammock. There wasn't any house.
+
+There wasn't any village.
+
+He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where the
+village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around as
+if they'd fallen down.
+
+And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.
+
+And so was he! He'd just realized it.
+
+It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the tree was
+still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stood
+out above all the rest. Still singing.
+
+Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind a
+tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody saw
+him standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird.
+
+The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond
+the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its
+hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong,
+real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't there.
+Nothing.
+
+For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong direction.
+He'd got turned around or something in the confusion, because there was
+a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grove
+they'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the trees
+because it had a peculiar shape.
+
+And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power saw
+for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to save
+the wood for furniture because it was real pretty. That was the tree,
+there on the edge of the grove.
+
+He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out
+where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that whole
+area of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only they
+hadn't, because that was virgin forest, too.
+
+Maybe he'd gone insane? He felt a flood of relief. Sure, that was it.
+He'd just gone insane, that was all. Everything else was all right.
+
+"The calves have got loose to the cows and they're going to take all the
+milk, Jed."
+
+He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so was she. Her
+eyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time like this to be worrying
+about them fool calves getting out. It took all the comfort away from
+him. Her face was white, her eyes were dazed.
+
+"You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha," he heard himself saying. "And
+for Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The committee's coming
+over, and you running around like that!"
+
+He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the hammock
+after all, while he was waiting for the committee, and he was dreaming.
+Of course, he ought to have known all along. This was just the way
+things happened in a dream--even him and Martha running around naked. He
+even chuckled to himself. He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow after
+all, because even in a dream it was his own wife that was next to him
+there, naked--not some other man's.
+
+The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most of it. He
+took her into his arms, and she clung to him.
+
+Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him, and he
+was dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any sheet in the
+hammock when he went to sleep.
+
+And he wasn't dreaming.
+
+"What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was shaking with
+fear, and her arms were wound around his neck so tight now he could
+hardly breathe.
+
+"Now, now, Martha," he cautioned. "Don't you go getting hysterical."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked again.
+
+"I don't know," he said. They were both talking in low tones.
+
+"It's some kind of a miracle," she whispered.
+
+"Now there's a woman's thinking for you," he chided her fondly, joshing
+her a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ... Well any
+scientist would tell you that ..." And then he stopped. He was pretty
+sure the frameworks of science, as he knew them, wouldn't be able to
+tell you.
+
+He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another, they
+both went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he guessed. You'd
+have the feeling of sinking down and down, and there'd be nothing but
+blinding, swirling chaos all around you. Then you'd kind of come to for
+a minute, and there'd be the trees, the sky, the farm animals, the sea
+in the distance.
+
+You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note, almost
+absently, that people were getting to their feet now, some of them
+clinging together the way you and Martha were--and then back down into
+mental chaos you'd go again.
+
+That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun to snap out
+of it a little.
+
+"But the funniest thing of all," Jed said, and looked at Cal quickly,
+penetratingly. "I had the feeling all the time that we were being
+watched!"
+
+Cal said nothing.
+
+"You know," Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a trap? Then
+watching it, to see what it will do?"
+
+Cal nodded, without speaking.
+
+"It was just another crazy thought, I guess," Jed said deprecatingly.
+"Plumb crazy."
+
+But, clearly, he didn't believe it was.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The operator sat
+back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance at
+the adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everything
+said--had been for hours.
+
+Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the E
+cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, all
+the way back.
+
+He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how far
+did that word experimental take you? Some experiment! He realized his
+interest was running deeper than that of a detached technician's concern
+for well-operated equipment--mechanical, that is. Well, let it. Live a
+little once in a while. At least dream.
+
+The department supervisor hovered near the back of the operator's chair,
+breathing down his neck. He gnawed at the knuckles of his hand, and
+hoped nothing would go wrong this time. That astronavigator, Louie
+LeBeau, was probably right. Those colonists had turned nudist, and were
+afraid to report what they'd done back to Earth!
+
+Well!
+
+He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud. He
+decided he hadn't.
+
+If _he_ were out there, instead of that E, _he'd_ make them put their
+clothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset, causing
+all this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E.H.Q. aroused,
+taking up the time of an E--just because they wanted to frolic around
+without any clothes on!
+
+If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should be
+spanked like irresponsible children.
+
+He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists who ought to
+be spanked.
+
+"... E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp," the pilot out there
+was reporting. "He is walking toward the three colonists. Now they have
+started walking toward him. They do not seem hostile. They seem glad to
+see us. My crew and I are still at our stations, ready for ..."
+
+Silence.
+
+The set simply didn't register anything more except that faint sigh of
+uncompleted force fields in space.
+
+"What now? What now?" the supervisor pushed the operator to one side,
+and barely restrained the impulse to cuff him on the side of the head.
+"Now what did you do? Why did you meddle with it when it was coming in
+so clear and strong? What's happened?"
+
+"I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know what's
+happened," the operator flared back. "The signal just stopped. That's
+all."
+
+There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line that
+had been rigged to give direct connection of the running report to
+Hayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped open the key, as if
+he were touching a rattlesnake.
+
+"What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly, without
+diplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!"
+
+"I don't know what happened. I don't know," the supervisor quarreled
+back. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing anything to the
+equipment."
+
+He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which made
+the far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe. "There's no
+reason for an occlusion," he said to Hayes. "And the set here is alive.
+It must be at the other end."
+
+He turned to the operator, and said loudly, "Bounce a beam on Eden's
+surface. Just see if any booster has gone out between here and there."
+Most of it was making a show of efficiency for Hayes.
+
+"Here we go again," the operator mumbled to himself, and pressed down a
+key. The returning pips showed the signal was getting through to Eden.
+
+"Pilot Lynwood! Pilot Lynwood!" the supervisor nagged into the mike.
+"Speak up! Do you hear me?"
+
+The operator sighed deeply. His panel partner grimaced something halfway
+between a grin and a sneer of disgust.
+
+"They don't answer," the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's the
+same as before."
+
+"Here we go again," Hayes groaned, but not only to himself. "All right,"
+he said wearily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the channel open.
+Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if signal resumes."
+
+But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It was too
+much of the same pattern as before. What could have happened?
+
+There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and more
+detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in
+the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to
+speculate in that first one? But in the interests of time!
+
+The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now each
+one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that
+had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew
+what a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it.
+
+It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go out
+in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be available
+in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leave
+E.H.Q. without a single E in residence.
+
+Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? It
+shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! There
+was something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only one
+in a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than one
+in a million could qualify as an E.
+
+A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believed
+what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the people
+who said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punished
+him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if they
+could. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled him
+dangerous to society.
+
+It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between
+rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were still
+of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a base. Ah,
+there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the inquisitiveness,
+the skepticism; and at the same time teach him the basics he must have
+for constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission by
+the punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by his
+teachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs.
+
+Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if a
+guy could just think. But what could have happened?
+
+He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out by the
+attorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably was--to the
+attorney general's office. Fine lot of good E.H.Q. would get out of
+that. He was no fool. He knew the attorney general would gladly
+sacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it would give him a weapon to
+fight E.H.Q.
+
+Why hadn't E.H.Q. sent along an observer ship also? These cocky E's!
+Probably hadn't thought it necessary. Always ready to assume they could
+handle the situation by themselves!
+
+He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review, get it
+on record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of playing it safe.
+Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too concerned with his own
+skin, too willing to play it safe. But an employee of E.H.Q. to make a
+public criticism of an E! No, better play it safe.
+
+He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E McGinnis
+would talk to him.
+
+He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the planet and
+wait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to have happened while E
+Gray's cruiser was out in space. It must be something connected with
+landing, being on the surface of the planet.
+
+But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists! Why hadn't
+they signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out of their bushes and
+signaled the danger? Surely they must know what it was. They were alive
+and healthy, three of them at least. Why hadn't they used their stupid
+heads?
+
+But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space, or even in
+their stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't they? Or did they?
+Sure they did. No matter what happened to the buildings, they must have
+all sorts of equipment hidden under the trees, or in caves.
+
+Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing in there
+like a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions. That's
+what came from sending out a boy to do a man's job. Maybe the attorney
+general's office had been right in its attempt to prevent a Junior from
+going. What was the use of all that E training, if the boy didn't have
+enough sense ...
+
+At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off, not go rushing
+in blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there was a _real_ product of
+E science, the veritable dean of the E's.
+
+E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be followed by a
+rescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And between an E out in
+space and another on the ground, they shouldn't have any trouble in
+working it out. He wondered if he should suggest that to E McGinnis as
+soon as the operator located him. Even if the grand, lovable old man
+thought of it for himself, he'd compliment Hayes for thinking it,
+reasoning it all out!
+
+The intercom operator came on his line.
+
+"Sir," she said, and cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp. Her
+voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted E
+McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what he
+said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could."
+
+"Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed to give
+her courage.
+
+"Sir," she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you. He
+says the foggy, rambling way that review was conducted was a disgrace.
+He says why don't you get on with what you have to do instead of
+bothering people. He says not to waste any more of his time unless you
+can come up with something he doesn't already know. He says he doubts
+you'd know what that was even if it hit you in the face. He said to tell
+you the exact words, so I took it down in shorthand, so I could.
+Because--he said to."
+
+She was all but wailing, as she finished.
+
+"All right," Hayes sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder things
+were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me your
+notes so I can follow them carefully," he told the operator.
+
+"So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the joint," she
+mumbled, but she had already thrown the key so he couldn't hear her.
+
+Resignedly, because he knew he was going to catch it from the scientists
+just as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself that he must
+always be in the middle of things, he began to arouse the scientists.
+
+He felt so sorry for himself that he dropped his tentative plan to have
+the midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the individual
+colonists out there--to see if some of them might be young, pretty,
+female--34-24-34.
+
+As if the idea were now red hot, he dropped the plan of telling General
+Administration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps he should go
+out there, personally.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was,
+indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office--to
+Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to be
+secret. All right for them to know, because they were very special
+persons, but the people should not be told.
+
+"Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He is
+starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Making
+a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the crew isn't covering
+him. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The three unclothed men are
+moving toward him, spread out a little, crouching, obviously going to
+attack. The stupid fool doesn't seem to realize it. He's ...
+
+"Wait a minute. I don't believe it...."
+
+"Well, what?" Gunderson exploded from his end.
+
+"Sir," the assistant gulped, "the ship disappeared, just like that."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"No, sir. It did. The three crewmen are sprawled on the ground. Now two
+of them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the ramp, or
+anything."
+
+"Can't be. Has to be around somewhere."
+
+"No, sir. Isn't. Sorry to contradict you, sir. It isn't anywhere."
+
+"They probably set controls to send the ship back into space, and
+jumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it. Ships don't
+just disappear."
+
+"I'll search, of course. But this ship just disappeared."
+
+"All right, what's going on? What else?"
+
+"They're naked. Naked as the day they were born. All four of them. Same
+as the colonists."
+
+"Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get the
+evidence."
+
+"Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they were
+fully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could have undressed
+inside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed--and then he wasn't. Just
+like that."
+
+"Hm-m."
+
+"Shall I land, sir? Place them under arrest?"
+
+"Wait a minute. Let's think of a good charge. Something to stand up in
+court. Have to make this airtight right from the beginning in case some
+stupid judge decides to make a show of independence."
+
+"Indecent exposure, sir? Lewd public behavior?"
+
+"Pretty weak, in view of what's involved."
+
+"A suggestion, sir. Maybe a morals charge is the most effective weapon
+we could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of bad scientific
+judgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel compelled to rise up in
+their defense--except, of course, those employed by the government. But
+on a morals charge there wouldn't be one voice raised--fear of being
+tarred with the same brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are already
+discredited. Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused against
+us, but a morals charge--think of the backing we'd get from the women's
+clubs, P.T.A., all the pressure groups determined to dictate to the rest
+of the world how it should behave. It's worked for hundreds of years,
+sir. Never fails."
+
+"Hm-m," Gunderson mused. "You may be right."
+
+"Shall I land, sir, make the arrest?"
+
+"You've got plenty of photographic evidence?"
+
+"All we'd need, sir, at least for the lewd, public indecent exposure
+charge."
+
+"Wait a minute. How about the colonists? Got pictures of them?"
+
+"The three men, sir. No others."
+
+"Let's don't rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a ship
+they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybe
+we can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, or
+at least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than just
+that. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, in case
+they've gone nudist."
+
+"You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?"
+
+"Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd been gunning
+for the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites. Hm-m, even if we
+decided not to prosecute, we'd have the pictures in their dossiers, so
+that anytime in the future, for the rest of their lives, if any of them
+gave us any trouble, we could quietly let them know what we've got, and
+they'll just fold up and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years,
+too."
+
+"Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir." The assistant knew that already
+Gunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job he'd
+better let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the idea should
+backfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly enough where it had
+originated.
+
+"Hm-m, you know," Gunderson was saying. "This could work out all right.
+If their ship's gone they're not communicating with E.H.Q. And if
+they're not communicating, E.H.Q. will send out another ship to see why.
+Maybe there'll be an E on it. I hear the only one available is
+McGinnis--that guy who's planning to fight us on that injunction.
+
+"Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could make
+pictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress sometime, take
+a bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody with a public reputation
+ever fights a charge like that, guilty or innocent. They pay up or
+knuckle under to keep it quiet. Have, for hundreds of years; always
+will, as long as a bunch of fat, old, ugly biddies, male and female, who
+nobody wants that way are viciously resentful that they can't have what
+somebody else is enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped with
+frustrations they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're even
+worse. Yeah, a morals charge is the way to get at him."
+
+"But I understood there was a law, that we couldn't charge an E for any
+offense."
+
+"We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the televiewers. That's
+the whole point. We can't charge an E now, but wait until we get things
+stirred up on a morals basis. That law'll be changed in a hurry, because
+any legislator that tried to hold out against changing it would be drawn
+and quartered by his constituents--and has enough sense to know it.
+
+"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go about it.
+Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you guys would read
+your history of how police enforcement officers got things back under
+control each time some idealist started squawking about human rights,
+you'd think of these things, too.
+
+"Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on every
+move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back under
+police control, the way scientists were before, I've got to have
+information.
+
+"And keep taking pictures!"
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship,
+everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself
+crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any
+clothes on--what then?"
+
+"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward
+his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three
+crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the
+edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said
+in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun."
+
+Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious
+emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and
+thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were
+faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and
+yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some
+special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a
+dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed
+it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now
+he could be more comfortable.
+
+One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was
+gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort.
+Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and
+perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth,
+claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were
+clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became
+less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could
+see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than
+enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea
+that clothes encouraged immorality.
+
+"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a
+natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin'
+like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at
+least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd
+hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of,
+but, believe me ..."
+
+He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of
+perplexity.
+
+"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kids
+screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--only
+scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real truthful," he said,
+"most of the yellin' came from the men. The women, by and large, was
+real swell.
+
+"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect ever
+seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she's
+tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him
+for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of
+womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make
+a jackass outta himself at the wrong time."
+
+Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh from
+Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and made
+no apology about present company being excepted.
+
+"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said, "where you
+begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up any
+pieces."
+
+They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than the
+disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of those
+that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and tools
+to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them that's hurt,
+taking care of them as much as possible, first thing they think of is
+making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.
+
+That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation
+following a cyclone or other freak of nature.
+
+Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of
+hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who
+insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down
+to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to
+help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take
+care of the needy.
+
+And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then,
+pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't
+likely to start up a passel of gossip.
+
+He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from
+behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down
+that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was
+that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.
+
+Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing
+happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was
+naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden,
+and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.
+
+By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of
+people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to
+think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She
+was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over
+their hysterics.
+
+"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as
+they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we
+need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."
+
+Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a
+pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her
+asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried
+gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd,
+scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into
+it until it boiled, Indian style.
+
+It might seem funny to city women, always protected against everything,
+that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First place, she had her
+man already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, she
+was a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, trained all her
+life to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals something
+unexpected was always happening.
+
+Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, now
+that he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began to
+settle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire or
+flood. It was all over. Now it was time to start picking up the pieces,
+rebuilding.
+
+Only it wasn't all over.
+
+That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire.
+
+Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a stick in a
+hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of
+flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a
+wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together
+will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make
+the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those
+quartz crystals from the top of the mountain to focus sun rays....
+
+But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two
+sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself
+what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a
+little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must
+have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were
+more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or
+months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came to
+building a fire.
+
+One of the men tore it then.
+
+He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over his
+shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire.
+
+Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was
+staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation of
+that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on with
+the telling.
+
+Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having the
+same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked right
+there if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the way
+a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.
+
+He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women. That it
+was in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the mistake of
+listening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged Adam into eating that
+apple because a woman was never satisfied to leave well enough alone.
+And now, he said, in this new Eden, man was being given another chance.
+If he was smart, if he's learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't
+listen to no woman.
+
+Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased the
+tension a little.
+
+A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to start
+a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves because
+in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or no
+watchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. That
+caused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was
+already half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At least
+the world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three
+hours had passed in what seemed like minutes.
+
+Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go a
+little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busy
+and knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--the
+way it often did.
+
+Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up a
+small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even without
+no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in the
+ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright in
+the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with
+vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift
+that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it
+with grass, and there you were.
+
+But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.
+
+Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled right up
+again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the
+only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried
+lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were
+like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of
+their hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up again
+straight.
+
+Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, all
+right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves would
+scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind.
+
+Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They tried
+it themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was a
+little more forgiving.
+
+A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun got
+low. People began to realize they were getting hungry, and they began to
+realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.
+
+Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd been hurt.
+Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.
+
+The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do was go
+down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it to
+their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their faces
+into the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know they
+could.
+
+The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts to
+eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to depend
+on seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it.
+
+The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage their
+supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sort
+of hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then.
+
+By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people in
+the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. The
+darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, the
+stranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people were
+starting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the dusk
+you could see the same thought in all the gleaming eyes.
+
+They couldn't have fire!
+
+Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain what had
+happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with an
+explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, looking
+back, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's a
+comfort.
+
+But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing it
+can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained. And yet,
+isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation for what's
+happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?
+
+Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some sleep.
+Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any children. That was
+one of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn't
+have children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'd
+have to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't have
+been surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than the
+grown folks.
+
+The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animals
+take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort from the presence
+and protection of the others. They bedded around on the ground, making
+themselves comfortable as possible. One thing you could say,
+experimental colonists might not be long on brains, the way scientists
+are, but they weren't picked for that. They were picked for endurance,
+and the brainy will often crack up under a strain that the enduring kind
+hardly notices. Far as endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad.
+
+Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars were as
+bright as ever--brighter because there wasn't no fire to dim their glow.
+They couldn't see Earth, of course, but everybody knew right where to
+look for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light in its
+constellation. It was still there.
+
+Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days until the
+regular monthly communication with Earth was due. That as soon as E.H.Q.
+didn't hear from them, there'd be a rescue party out here in nothing
+flat. So, at worst, it meant living this way only five or six more days.
+
+That made everybody feel better. It was a comforting thing to look up
+through the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they weren't
+forgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be buzzing around
+like a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers cocked and ready as soon
+as the message didn't get through.
+
+Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western movies
+where the U.S. cavalry always got there in time. At least they weren't
+being attacked by no Indians, somebody said.
+
+Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but nobody said
+it.
+
+Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfort
+just showed them how soft they were getting with easy living.
+Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a few
+days everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinking
+that even if there was some equivalent to the old-time Indians attacking
+them, rescue would soon be here and they would be safe.
+
+Because man always wins.
+
+Most people were wide awake by dawn. Some had slept in little bits,
+waking often enough to keep a sense of continuity. Others, those who
+slept better, awoke with a start; looked around themselves wildly,
+realized they were lying out in the open plumb naked in front of other
+people; maybe wondered for an instant what kind of party they'd been to
+the night before; and nearly bolted in panic before they remembered.
+
+Most everyone felt sort of surprised that things weren't back to normal,
+with yesterday being something soonest forgot soonest mended. It takes
+time for folks to realize--things.
+
+Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship, a
+reminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained. Seemed like
+everybody had woke with a determination to make the best of things and
+help one another do the same. Everybody was pitching in together to make
+the best of things. Once they bit into the cool fruit on the trees
+around them, even not having a hot drink to start the day didn't seem to
+matter.
+
+Some of the women got together and decided it would help things get back
+to normal if the people covered their nakedness, or least parts of it.
+It might be all right just among themselves, they said, because
+everybody was in the same fix and knew what happened--but how would they
+feel when the rescue ship landed and they had to walk out in front of
+strange men with nothing on?
+
+They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But when they
+strove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns just slipped out and
+fell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the leaves together with
+bindweed. Same thing. The bindweed slithered out and fell to the ground.
+
+One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick mud from the
+river and paste them with more mud on her body. It wouldn't stick,
+peeled right off like she was oiled. One man said he could do it without
+leaves, just cover himself with mud. He lay down in a muddy pool and got
+himself covered with wet clay.
+
+He was a sight. All at once he looked vulgar, obscene. And nobody had,
+before. That did it. Somebody said they were humans, not pigs, and if
+the men on the rescue ship had never seen a naked body before it was
+time they did. What was so wrong about the human body, anyhow?
+
+They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and gave up
+trying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to cover themselves
+was a nasty kind of thinking, something to be ashamed of.
+
+Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists who'd broken
+off from the main colony and moved across the ridge were all right.
+
+Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What fools they'd
+all been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep a man from thinking
+straight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping like animals when, all
+the while, just across the ridge there'd be houses and beds, fires and
+clothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans
+always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences
+forgotten.
+
+In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where the
+dissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of the
+ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same as
+this side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure.
+
+Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we still
+weren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and join
+forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down and
+congregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was the
+beginning of something that would come later, something Cal would see
+for himself. That they were already not thinking the way humans do.
+Thinking and behaving more the way dumb animals do.
+
+Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the next. In some
+ways it was still like a dream. The way people were just accepting
+things, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered one
+time an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man and
+the average man than there was between that average man and the ape.
+He'd resented it at the time, of course, but now he thought of it again
+and began to realize what the E had meant.
+
+Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back to nature,
+wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How stupid it was for man
+to knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing such
+hardships, when all a man could ever want was right here.
+
+Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He reminded
+them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a prime
+bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worse
+than this, and had ought to keep their wits about them.
+
+Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did it
+because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because once
+upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered, it had been his duty.
+
+It was the next day that things got real rough.
+
+Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be sure when
+the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn't
+see any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just go
+away. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe that
+you'd go away just because you didn't find our village.
+
+Anyhow, hadn't we ought to work out some kind of a message? Maybe scrape
+some kind of a message on the ground? They decided the smooth sand above
+the tide line down on the sea shore was the best place for it.
+
+Nobody had anything else to do, so the whole colony, all forty of them,
+walked the couple of miles down to the seashore. They picked out a nice
+stretch of white sand, and with a broken piece of driftwood they started
+to scratch a message, just a big SOS. The driftwood wriggled out of
+their hands like a snake. Nobody could hold it. Several men tried
+together, made no difference.
+
+Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The furrow
+closed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody tried piling up
+sand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no difference. Sand
+smoothed right out again.
+
+Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't need to use
+a stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They had their bare
+feet, didn't they? They could tromp out the letters that way.
+Footprints, close together, would be as good as a furrow.
+
+That's when it happened.
+
+Jed tried it himself. And his footprints disappeared. They just weren't
+there. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been walking. Nobody
+was leaving any footprints.
+
+That's when they bolted in panic.
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had
+spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief.
+
+"Maybe that seems funny to you," he commented. "After taking so much
+we'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not making
+footprints."
+
+"Pretty fundamental thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware of
+spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into
+fundamental being, a thing like that."
+
+Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances, as if
+confirming their belief that an E would understand their problems. Cal
+appreciated the confidence expressed in that glance, but did not feel it
+was justified. It was now pretty obvious that this was some alien
+co-ordinate system, never before encountered by man. But how to get hold
+of it? How to reconcile with it? Coexist with it?
+
+Never before encountered by man? What if the myths of early man be true?
+And too authentic the legends of his being a pawn to the will of the
+gods? Could there have been some factual basis for the gods? And not, as
+was supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for the
+control of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control?
+
+"It's been bad since then," Jed continued. "Seems like once they got
+the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in a
+stampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They didn't even stay
+together. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes from
+each other.
+
+"You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You could
+pass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they wouldn't
+say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, not
+even breathin' lest you discover them.
+
+"After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves
+together--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us now
+have got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is to
+hide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's why you didn't see us from
+the air. We was hidin' from you.
+
+"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of
+the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't come
+themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get
+some clothes for them from the ship.
+
+"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the
+colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since the
+footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if they
+also saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don't know."
+
+"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of fifteen
+or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll know
+we didn't cut out through choice."
+
+"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in the
+middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."
+
+"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not an E.H.Q.
+ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We'll not count on
+anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with
+an E on board--McGinnis."
+
+"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently. "That ship
+might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next."
+
+"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing
+happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to the
+ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on whatever this is."
+
+"You figger to solve this one?" Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.
+
+"I'm going to try," Cal said with more confidence than he felt. "It's
+what I'm here for. Maybe I can't solve it, but I can try."
+
+"I don't know how you're going to start," Dirk spoke up. "We're just
+like animals here. We can't use tools."
+
+"But animals do use tools," Cal answered after a moment. "Materials,
+anyway. Birds build nests using sticks, grass, clay. Monkeys and apes
+throw sticks and stones. Even insects use materials. Basic difference
+between man and the rest is that man gives special shapes to tools,
+where mainly the rest use whatever falls to hand. But all higher,
+organized protoplasmic life uses tools in one form or another."
+
+"We ain't allowed to," Jed said emphatically. "Not even what's at hand.
+Somebody, or somethin', is bound and determined we ain't goin' to."
+
+At that moment Cal felt close to a solution, or at least an
+understanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first step
+toward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the corner
+of the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the concept
+disappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using materials.
+Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet the definitions of
+what constitute life? As compared with our evolution, from its earliest
+beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the
+physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it,
+the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect,
+awkward way of going about it, as compared with ...
+
+Compared with what?
+
+The concept would not yet allow him full focus upon it. He filed it away
+for future contemplation.
+
+He saw Dawkins and the other colonists looking at him defiantly, as if
+interpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about the taboo
+on tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them, to find out for
+himself.
+
+"Other than the feeling of being watched," he said carefully, "have you
+had any sign, any other evidence or indication of somebody, or
+something? I know about the feeling, because I feel it too. And very
+strongly, right now. But any specific evidence?"
+
+Jed Dawkins looked relieved at the confession.
+
+"Everything's the evidence. Everything that's happened. What more
+evidence would you want?" he said.
+
+"One of the strongest arguments in favor of something, or some kind of
+intelligence," Cal said slowly, "is that nobody's been hurt. All natural
+law hasn't been canceled. We still have light radiation, heat radiation,
+gravity, water still flows, the planet still turns. Trees still grow and
+fruit still ripens. We can talk and be understood, using our tongues and
+minds as tools. We can still eat and drink. We can still know.
+
+"This is no chaotic co-ordinate system that defies all natural law. This
+is a deliberate manipulation of some natural laws to get a result. Man
+manipulates natural laws by the use of tools and materials, but he
+doesn't suspend them. Here, apparently without tools, at least tools we
+can perceive, natural law is manipulated, but not suspended.
+
+"When the village disappeared, no one was hurt. A lot of people were
+caught in awkward positions and fell, some of them several feet. There
+should have been at least a few broken bones, pulled ligaments. There
+weren't. Our ship landed safely. We were a long time in the atmosphere
+of Eden, and for a few minutes there on the ground we were still using
+tools of a high order. It was only when danger of real harm to us was
+past that the ship disappeared."
+
+"I reckon it's comfortin' to know we ain't meant to be hurt," Jed said,
+and looked at his two companions. "I guess it is," he repeated
+doubtfully. "Maybe it ain't something as nice and familiar as a cyclone,
+or a den of rattlesnakes, something you could understand, but you got
+to admit we ain't been hurt yet." It was as if he were arguing the point
+with his companions.
+
+"Something I've been noting, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. "A discrepancy of a
+sort that has me puzzled. Sun reckoning, we've been able to keep our
+minds on this subject for over two hours now. As if, whatever this is
+manipulating natural laws can also manipulate the way our minds work."
+
+"Yeah," Jed admitted slowly, his face thoughtful. He turned to Cal.
+"Like I said at the start. Our minds have sort of wandered of late.
+Start to do something, and first thing y'know, we're doin' something
+else. Can't keep our minds on one thing very long--like animals."
+
+"That might be no more than the aftermath of deep shock," Cal said.
+
+"It's for a purpose!"
+
+Startled at the outburst, they all turned and looked at Louie.
+
+"It's for a purpose," Louie repeated in a kind of rapture. "They want us
+to understand we are being watched over, cared for. That colonist you
+all laughed at was right. This is the first Garden of Eden, where man
+lived in complete innocence. Now man has been returned to it, to live
+again in complete innocence. You do not think straight because there is
+no reason. You will be cared for. Woe unto him who seeks to despoil it
+again by seeking vain knowledge!"
+
+His eyes were wild, his face contorted with a mixture of exaltation and
+condemnation.
+
+"Shut up, Louie," Tom said in a low, firm voice.
+
+"We understand," Jed said tolerantly. "Some of the colonists are talkin'
+the same way. He's got plenty of company."
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+All the rest of that day, and throughout the following, Cal and Tom
+worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them living
+together again.
+
+By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of colonists
+that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louie
+frankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his time with the
+colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days,
+occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep the
+cows separated from their calves so the colonists would have milk to
+drink, but without ropes or corrals it was hopeless. He finally gave up
+his attempt to husband the stock, and he too seemed content then to
+mingle with the colonists.
+
+The marked change in Louie could not be ignored, for he was not idling
+away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelong
+pose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirty
+end of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little band
+of colonists. Or wandering through the forests and undergrowth calling,
+praying, comforting.
+
+Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man, seemingly
+dedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries beyond his power to
+comprehend, reverted to childlike superstitious awe for an explanation.
+In the face of mystery or catastrophe, it takes a faith beyond the
+capacity of most to continue believing that the universe has a rational
+order to its laws that can be comprehended if man persists. It is
+temptingly easy for man to revert back to the irresponsibility of
+childhood, assuming that the control of phenomena is in the hands of
+those stronger, wiser than he. It takes a strength, in the face of this
+temptation, to go on believing that man _can_ know, that it is not
+morally wrong for him to know.
+
+No blame then for Louie.
+
+Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that away from
+E.H.Q. the crew become the E's attendants, and that their first duty is
+always to the E. But separation from the other two men of his crew was
+like the loss of a part of himself. To these also he had a duty. He
+tried to solve his problem by alternating his time, spending part of it
+with Cal, the remainder with his crew.
+
+Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and
+found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They had
+seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, they
+had climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, to
+watch the ship's landing--and its disappearance.
+
+Once they were found, it took little persuasion to convince them they
+should return to the other colonists, that differences of opinion meant
+nothing now as against the need of human beings to cling together in the
+face of catastrophe.
+
+But they too were having trouble thinking in a straight line, and even
+though they first appeared eager to join the other colonists, it took
+some doing to keep them all together and moving forward to cross the
+ridge, to come down the other side, to assemble again at the site of the
+village with the others.
+
+And yet, within minutes, neither band seemed to remember that they had
+ever been separated.
+
+By the time they had returned, it was apparent that Louie was succeeding
+where Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the few hours that
+had elapsed, the nucleus had tripled in size. Louie's wandering through
+the brush, calling, pleading with them to follow him, promising there
+was no danger if they would allow him to watch over them, intercede for
+them with Those who had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them from
+their hiding places, calmed their fears.
+
+And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing them back
+into the fold, one and two and three at a time, until, at last, by Jed's
+count, all were there, no more missing.
+
+And yet, in spite of his success, there was a kind of hurt and
+disappointment in Louie's eyes. For once back, they not only forgot
+their fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced into a
+placid herd, without memory of their panic. Without memory of the
+shepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned them to the fold.
+
+They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eating
+leaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the river
+to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water to
+drink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as they
+lay on white sand or grassy slopes to dry, they slept contentedly.
+
+The phenomenon was not as startling to Cal as it might have seemed to
+others.
+
+On Earth, gradually learned through trial and error, experimental
+colonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible, incisive,
+or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary. The basic test of a successful
+colonist was endurance--the endurance of hardship, privation, the stoic
+indifference to conditions of discomfort, monotony, pain, uncleanliness,
+immodesty--conditions which would send a more imaginative or sensitive
+temperament into a downward-spiraling syndrome of failure. They were the
+kind of men and women who, on Earth in an earlier time, had been able to
+endure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease, desert
+heat; to make those first steps in taming a hostile environment, so that
+men with less endurance, but with more delicately poised and sensitive
+minds, following them might then endure.
+
+It was characteristic of such men and women, even under Earth
+conditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for these things.
+They simply went, and endured, and tamed. Even on Earth, when the taming
+had been done, they moved on. This was the stuff of the experimental
+colonist.
+
+Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in panic, but
+now they had returned to their original purpose--to endure. It was
+enough.
+
+Louie was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious about
+scientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal failure to be
+curious about philosophical implications. They listened idly to his
+exhortations, but their eyes did not light with fire nor cloud with
+doubt. They simply wandered away after a time and ate or slept.
+
+In the evening of that second day, Cal sat with Tom and Jed down by the
+bank of the river where the sky was clear and the stars beginning to
+shine. They were talking quietly of home, of Eden, of the colonists who,
+more and more, seemed to take on the character of a contented herd of
+animals. So far there had been no attempt of the old males to drive the
+young ones out of the herd, destroy them, but that might come in time;
+as surely as the old males on Earth by tacit agreement on both sides,
+were always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out and
+destroying lusty young male competition.
+
+They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed able
+to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject,
+while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to live
+from moment to moment, without concern for past or future.
+
+Except Louie. He too seemed able to hold his thinking in a straight
+line, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours, to have
+turned wholly mystical, to a stronger belief that they were being
+watched and cared for by some higher power, and that this was for a
+purpose. Yet not so tangential, for Cal had come to the same conclusion,
+although his interpretation differed.
+
+"I can't doubt that there is an intelligent direction of this peculiar
+co-ordinate system," he said to Tom and Jed. "But I must doubt it is
+supernatural in the way Louie interprets. Anything appears to be magic
+when we don't understand how it happens, and becomes science when we
+do."
+
+He paused, and looked at his companions' faces in the starshine. They
+were quiet, reposed, listening.
+
+"Ever since man got up off the bottom of his ocean of air," he said,
+"and out into space, we've been prepared to run into some form of
+intelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not prepared to do
+anything about it, you understand," he said with a shrug. "Just
+theoretically prepared that it might happen. It was a possibility. Now
+it does seem to have happened. E McGinnis asked me, before I left Earth,
+if I thought Eden was an alluring trap, especially baited to catch some
+human beings. It begins to appear that it is."
+
+"I've caught many a wild animal in my day," Jed said slowly,
+thoughtfully. "I've pinned 'em up in cages, watched how they behaved. I
+guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to hurt 'em, fact make
+'em as comfortable as they can--just want to know about 'em. Sometimes,
+after I watched them awhile I'd turn 'em aloose and watch 'em scoot back
+to their natural world. That could happen to us. Sometimes they'd die,
+and I wouldn't know why. That could happen. Some animals won't bear
+young in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever's
+holdin' us don't know that, and might turn us aloose when, after a time,
+we don't bear any young."
+
+He paused and looked even more thoughtful.
+
+"Sometimes," he added slowly, "after I studied 'em, found out how they
+would behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, because they was too
+dangerous to let run around among humans. That could happen."
+
+"I haven't done much trapping," Tom said. "But in zoos I've watched
+animals in cages. The thought always came to me that if they could think
+the way we do, they could just open their cages and walk away."
+
+"Now you take turkeys," Jed answered. "Pin 'em up with a high fence,
+they'll back up, take off and fly over it. But pin 'em with a low fence,
+and they won't. Seems like they know they have to fly over a high
+obstruction, but don't figger on it for a low one. Sometimes they
+flutter up against it, or try to push it over, but most of the time they
+just walk around and around in the yard lookin' for an opening."
+
+"Natural survival pattern," Cal commented. "In the woods, in their
+natural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it took more
+effort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it took to walk
+around the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior to walk around
+it."
+
+"That's what they do with a low fence then," Jed said. "They just keep
+tryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it like
+a high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use tryin' to tell 'em it's
+high, because they know it ain't. So they can't solve it. Seems awful
+stupid, somehow, a little low fence, all that blue sky above 'em, and
+they can't figger it out."
+
+"I suspect that's what's happening to us," Cal said. "We've always
+argued that wherever there is matter and energy in the universe, certain
+natural laws will prevail. We've learned ways to take advantage of those
+natural laws, to do certain things that will make them work for us
+instead of against us.
+
+"We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise in the
+universe it, too, would have to become aware of these natural laws; that
+it, too, would have to do these same certain things to take advantage of
+those laws; that because the laws and what to do about them would always
+be similar man would have a lot in common with that other intelligence,
+and a means of communicating because of that similarity.
+
+"We'd argue that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this wasn't
+so important as its mental evolution--because that mental evolution
+would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't be truly alien,
+because science would be a common denominator.
+
+"Now it appears we could be wrong. Maybe our concept of science is too
+narrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become so fixed in our
+pattern of solving a problem we can't change, can't back off and take
+another look, see the problem not as it appears but as it really is."
+
+"But isn't that the science of E?" Tom asked curiously. "To be able to
+extrapolate any co-ordinate system? I'm not criticizing," he added
+hastily. "Just asking."
+
+"I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too based on
+the relationship of things and forces to each other, too set in the
+notion that only physical tools can affect physical things. We may be
+looking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore not able to
+understand why we can't walk around the obstruction in the usual
+manner." He stopped, and added with a shrug. "Stupid, maybe. Or like the
+turkey, the yard is so big that he never gets a picture of it as a whole
+enclosure. By the time he's wandered down this side of the fence he's
+forgot what he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thing
+together in his mind. That's my trouble, anyhow. So far, I'm not able to
+put the whole thing together, see it all as one piece.
+
+"When I do, if I do, then maybe like a caged animal I'll see how to
+unlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is to fly."
+
+There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying natural
+law without any trouble, the three men broke off their discussion when
+they saw a bright flash high in the sky above them. All three knew what
+it meant.
+
+Another E ship had arrived.
+
+No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists in
+acknowledgment of their space flare.
+
+If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still in
+daylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship, no
+equipment for direct communication. They may even have reasoned there
+was no means of signaling with artificial light.
+
+But there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could not build a
+fire.
+
+As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men could
+anticipate what must be happening there. Right now they would be
+anxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring up like
+signal fires on a lonely island where a marooned man has, at last,
+sighted a ship on the horizon.
+
+The colonists were no longer hiding, but were freely wandering in open
+spaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk they would have seen the men
+and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might have
+spotted them in the infrared viewers which picked up the heat
+differentials and gave a fair approximation of shapes.
+
+The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their watches. How
+long, they would be asking, does it take those colonists, that E down
+there, to get a signal fire going?
+
+About five minutes passed, and another flare lighted the heavens.
+
+"Get off the dime down there!" it seemed to say. "Acknowledge us!"
+
+Cal took the chance that they might have an infrared viewscope directly
+on him, and he waved his arms above his head. But apparently they had
+not spotted him, for there was no answering flare.
+
+At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to fifteen
+minutes, throughout the long night the flares continued to light the
+sky.
+
+"Talk to us," the flares begged. "Surely you were expecting us. Surely
+you would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light could not rouse
+you."
+
+Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms, but it
+brought no answer from the ship. In the darkness perhaps the equipment
+wasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze bushes and trees also
+swayed with movement.
+
+Once there was a rustle in the brush, and in the starlight they
+recognized the figure of Louie approaching them.
+
+"This has got to stop," he said worriedly as he came up to them. "That
+light is an unnatural thing. It will anger Them. It is not meant for the
+peace of Eden to be disturbed by any artificial thing. And if They
+should turn Their wrath upon us--woe, woe!"
+
+His face was stricken in the light of a new flare, and as suddenly as he
+had come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees to seek his
+people, be beside them, comforting them when disaster struck down.
+
+After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgment
+of the flares in darkness. They watched for an hour or so, and then
+tried to sleep. The periodic flares continued to come throughout the
+long night, as if now no longer pleading for acknowledgment, but rather
+reassuring men in such deep distress that they could not answer.
+Reassuring them that help was at hand and morning would come.
+
+They tried to sleep, and although fitfully disturbed by the continuing
+flares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn, Cal awoke and
+aroused his two companions, and by the time there was enough light for
+the ship to see clear detail upon the ground, the three men were ready
+for a better attempt at answering the ship's signal.
+
+They went up to the village site, where the colonists were sleeping in
+the way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke Frank and Martha,
+Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louie, too, awoke, heard
+the plan, and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, to
+communicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath of
+Those who wanted only the natural state here--a wrath still withheld
+because of superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far.
+
+In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating with him, got
+together enough colonists to carry out his plan.
+
+Good-naturedly, the colonists did as they were told, but with the
+attitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing they'd
+rather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency about communicating
+with home seemed to have been washed from their minds.
+
+In a clear space, on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit or lie
+in certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of ancient signal
+patterns, those certain positions took the shape of space-navy patterns.
+
+Three men lay in a triangle. Next to that, six men sat in a circle, and
+last three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped someone on the
+ship would be able to read the ancient message.
+
+"Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty."
+
+The signal had no more than formed when there was a flash from the ship
+so bright that it could be seen in the morning sky. They had read his
+signal, and now they began a series of flashes, of questions. "What's
+going on down there?" was the essence of their questioning.
+
+It was well the ship had caught the first signal, for the colonists lost
+all interest in the game which had no point. They simply stood up and
+wandered away in search of their breakfasts from the trees and bushes.
+
+Louie, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge of them
+again and shepherded them to a grove of trees where the fruit seemed
+especially large and succulent.
+
+But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone. He lay
+down on the ground, himself, to move his arms in semaphore positions.
+But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he, too, could hardly
+care less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement at such
+childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one more
+message.
+
+"Keep off! No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate system."
+
+He stood up then, and made a farewell gesture toward the ship.
+
+At that instant he felt strangely that he had passed into another stage
+of growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment that
+had held him back. What the ship did, in response to his warnings, no
+longer mattered. If it landed, its personnel too would join the
+colonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might circle there
+indefinitely.
+
+Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence, unable
+to aid them, release them.
+
+He did not particularly care what they did.
+
+They could go on, spluttering out their signals, trying to question him.
+He didn't even try to read their messages. It didn't matter. Their
+science had nothing to do with him, nothing to offer him. Through it he
+could not reach a solution.
+
+Somehow he knew that already.
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness he
+could muster, "this time there must not be any interference with
+communication. There just absolutely must not be!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't my fault," the operator retorted with an exasperation
+that blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E McGinnis said--that
+they could identify E Gray, and the ship's crew, and many of the
+colonists, but that there was no sign of the ship that took them there.
+If there wasn't any ship there couldn't be any communication. It's not
+my fault. I can't receive something that wasn't sent."
+
+"I know, I know," the supervisor said, and then, worried that he may be
+giving the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, "just watch
+it, that's all!" He chewed violently at his knuckle and glared at the
+operator.
+
+"Just watch it," the operator mumbled bitterly. "Just watch it, the man
+says. And what will I watch if the message stops coming?"
+
+"Now, now, now, now," the supervisor nagged, "we'll have no
+insubordination, if you please."
+
+And upstairs this time more than Bill Hayes, sector chief, were
+monitoring the message. The top administrative brass of E.H.Q. were
+assembled in their big plush conference room used for arriving at major
+policy decisions that sometimes affected the whole course of man's
+progress and direction in occupying the universe.
+
+They sat in worried silence as E McGinnis reported the two messages he
+had received from Junior E Gray.
+
+First: Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty.
+
+Then: Keep off. No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate
+system.
+
+They looked at one another under beetled brows. They wondered, at first
+privately and then openly if that Junior E had blown his stack. They had
+looked at many a problem finally solved by the E's, but never before had
+such a ridiculous situation come up.
+
+And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided to
+place a curb on E.H.Q.'s freedom of movement, its control over the
+experimental phases of planet development. The injunction to halt a
+Junior E from taking over the Eden problem fooled none of them. They
+knew that Gunderson wasn't concerned for those colonists out there, that
+he was merely using the public furor to advance his own personal power.
+They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and
+ever to bring every phase of human activity under their control. They
+knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to
+arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law
+which seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actuality
+broadened police powers over a wide area of man's actions.
+
+Yes, there was far more at stake here than the fate of fifty colonists.
+In a sense E.H.Q. itself was the stake. The whole science of E was at
+stake.
+
+And E McGinnis had played right into Gunderson's hands. It was he who
+had been the E influence in deciding to allow a Junior to handle the
+problem in the first place. It was he who was standing off from the
+planet, not landing and taking over things as he should.
+
+There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people on Eden
+were in good health, and from their apparent actions, not even
+distressed.
+
+This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for example. Did
+the Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it? Must mean that. What
+else could prevent it? But when an E, a real E, took charge in an
+experimental colony, the colonists had nothing further to say about the
+matter. True, when the five-year experimental period was over and the
+three-generation colonists took over a planet, then it came more under
+civil control, and E.H.Q. largely withdrew with the provision that it
+could step back in at any time the problem seemed not to have been
+solved after all.
+
+But while under the five-year test ... The E was the final word, or
+should be. The colonists knew it. The E knew it, or should know it.
+Obviously then it was weakness on the part of the Junior if he allowed
+the colonists to dictate that there could be no mechanical science.
+Proof of his inability to handle the job.
+
+A perfect setup for Gunderson!
+
+They decided they were forced to take a strong hand with McGinnis.
+Ordinarily the E was the final word, not only with the colonists, but
+with the administration at E.H.Q. But maybe there were times when he
+shouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take a hand. After all, Gray
+was still a Junior, hardly more than a boy. Was it right that a mere boy
+could stop investigation by anyone except himself? Tell Earth with all
+its power and might what to do?
+
+Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E policy should
+be made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing else, they must take
+a strong hand to prevent Gunderson from moving in with his police
+powers. Protect the E science from Gunderson, or at least salvage what
+they might.
+
+Their conference over, they asked for a connection with McGinnis.
+
+"We assume you will land and take charge, E McGinnis?" the board
+chairman asked.
+
+"Certainly not," McGinnis snapped back. "An E has forbidden it."
+
+"Well now," the chairman argued, and sweat began to come out on his
+forehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his judgment isn't mature
+enough for this problem."
+
+"I have every confidence in Junior E Gray," McGinnis said acidly. "And
+every E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you have
+decided. Either the science of E means something, or it doesn't. Either
+we have complete freedom to handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remind
+you, gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E
+is a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to
+repeat past disasters?"
+
+"If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"--the chairman was all but pleading
+now--"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take a
+firmer control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policy
+demands it. Perhaps the whole future of E demands it."
+
+A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "this is Linda Gray. I requested that I be cut in
+on any communication concerning my husband, and E McGinnis made it an
+order before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I want
+to be with my husband."
+
+"I will not be landing on Eden, Linda," E McGinnis said firmly. "An E
+has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. No
+other E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health, and
+apparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us against
+landing. He must have a reason. We don't know, yet, what it is.
+
+"Now he has stopped communicating, we don't know why. He must have a
+reason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason. E science has been
+drilled into him until it is a part of his every mind cell, perhaps even
+every body cell.
+
+"I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him, because
+communicating with us distracts him from solving the problem. If E.H.Q.
+decides to send out a ship on its own, and risk landing in an unknown
+co-ordinate system, against the orders of two E's, which will become the
+combined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. If
+you wish to be on it, that is your decision.
+
+"I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E.H.Q. cannot connect
+with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted any
+further. I'm trying to think."
+
+The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in a
+vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination to do something,
+anything.
+
+They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it was
+their duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help,
+and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as his
+means of regaining control over the E's and E.H.Q. for civil authority.
+Didn't the stupid E see the danger? Wasn't it the same danger that men
+of science had always faced, the same mistake they had always
+made--leaving out the human element in a problem?
+
+The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man doesn't give a
+tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only that
+he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things, the inevitable,
+the only possible goal of the non-science mind. Surely the history of
+science versus non-science should have made this evident long ago!
+Surely there had been enough incidents in history....
+
+Very well, it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself. If he
+refused the see the clear danger to his whole structure--and their own
+ascendant position at the center of it--it was their clear duty to
+protect him nonetheless.
+
+They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, a
+miniature E.H.Q., at least to be there on the scene; to help in any way
+they could, perhaps to counter the moves Gunderson's police might make,
+at least to stand by.
+
+At least, in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to show
+their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully,
+without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendant
+at the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained the
+tradition of all non-science endeavors.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility not
+only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, in
+every rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only a
+Junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein lies
+Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of the
+people. A Junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affecting
+the life or death of fifty people. More than that, perhaps the future
+progress of mankind.
+
+"May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should become
+necessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in spite of
+the Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not be
+overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proved his
+capacity to merit an E.
+
+"We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson
+on that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not the
+Associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E?
+Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is extra smart?
+
+"The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over the
+individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never been
+clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but it
+has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the E
+structure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhaps
+if we concede his control over the Juniors on down, we can maintain the
+immunity of the Senior E. We must work to save at least that much."
+
+The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, left
+six hours later.
+
+Linda was on it.
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind.
+
+His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the messages
+spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in the
+semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all
+the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring.
+
+It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the
+newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who
+might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals,
+separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positions
+would do the job.
+
+Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every
+organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of others
+on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up in
+opposition.
+
+There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that Junior E, place
+him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise to
+let the colonists off easy--he could easily show that it was the
+influence of the Junior which had made a disgusting orgy develop there
+on Eden. Never mind that they were naked before the Junior arrived. The
+public could always be razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence,
+its order and meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and political
+trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good
+one; for the public never bothered to know the whole context of
+anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an
+attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all the
+public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury,
+observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence,
+only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and
+insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits he
+formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set up
+his case accordingly.
+
+His own course was clear.
+
+His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally
+clear:
+
+    _1. Proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime._
+
+    _2. Ignore any protests from the E ship already out there, or any
+        other ship E.H.Q. might have sent._
+
+    _3. Ignore any signals from the Junior E on the planet._
+
+    _4. Land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main site of
+        the lewd and obscene crime._
+
+    _5. Place Junior E Calvin Gray under arrest._
+
+    _6. Place the crew of the Junior E's ship, Thomas Lynwood, Franklin
+        Norton, Louis LeBeau, under arrest._
+
+    _7. Place any colonist who opposed the police under arrest._
+
+    _8. Place the remainder of the colonists in detention under
+        protective custody._
+
+    _9. Place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any way with
+        the police in carrying out the foregoing orders._
+
+The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final order.
+
+Place a Senior E under arrest?
+
+Certainly, a Senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to wander
+around, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing to let them
+get away with making such statements as "The police attitude toward the
+people is the major cause of crime." It was something else, and time the
+E's found it out, for them to make any overt move to interfere with the
+police in their performance of duty.
+
+Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist. It would
+strengthen his case.
+
+The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. He
+proceeded to the scene of the crime.
+
+He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis,
+received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of
+the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to
+make an arrest for an illegal act--and certainly running around stark
+naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public,
+was an illegal act--would pay any attention to the request of an
+onlooker which amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"?
+
+There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the planet's
+surface, so the third order did not apply.
+
+It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into trouble.
+
+He passed inside the orbits of the three other ships now circling the
+planet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the E.H.Q.
+floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden's
+atmosphere.
+
+The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled.
+
+And nothing happened.
+
+It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not lower the
+ship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions against
+crashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothing
+happened. They lowered not another inch.
+
+A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this
+barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the
+proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made
+their thrust with full speed and momentum.
+
+There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did not
+penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick
+ice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetration
+would not do.
+
+Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared
+to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the ship at
+full power against the surface.
+
+And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came
+to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any
+feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.
+
+What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?
+
+Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis.
+E science apparently had some kind of shield which they'd kept secret
+from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he
+released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!
+
+"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's a
+shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's
+causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the
+specimen They want. There's an E down there.
+
+"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."
+
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal
+McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known,
+that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having
+caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap
+to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with
+their experiment.
+
+From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had
+signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from
+ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the
+frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking
+out of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of
+reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his
+life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the
+consideration of a problem.
+
+His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he
+needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he
+needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led
+into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new
+concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that
+road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to
+determine his position in reality.
+
+He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder
+that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.
+He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into
+the shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with
+their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as
+many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and
+texture as food.
+
+At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness,
+awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was
+awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with
+that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of
+things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of
+things. But there was awareness of more.
+
+There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in
+all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to
+reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his
+environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something
+stronger and more important than he.
+
+To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that
+all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made
+subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not
+assume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.
+
+If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who
+could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that
+he must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he
+himself be destroyed.
+
+So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributes
+magnified.
+
+Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it
+its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and
+willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only
+answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the
+important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not
+do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher
+beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have
+driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have
+survived to remain aware.
+
+But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.
+The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops
+looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord
+with the answer.
+
+The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold
+millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve
+the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond
+the primitive one was self-evident.
+
+To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.
+Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accident
+often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he was
+endowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environment
+that heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing had
+not become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the
+foolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.
+
+Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by
+Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reason
+for its creation?
+
+He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was too
+new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the
+non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,
+to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,
+those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science
+descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to
+achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture
+and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.
+
+But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be
+erased!
+
+Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,
+as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,
+had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not
+yet been found.
+
+Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to
+doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and
+the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than
+accompanying music.
+
+The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered
+until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung
+around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always
+persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some
+subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that
+time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.
+
+As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his
+vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,
+the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of
+view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship
+to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of the
+Royal Society of London (1667)_.
+
+"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which
+can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only an
+enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a business
+of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."
+
+He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one
+arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most
+significant sentence ever written by man.
+
+"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, and
+passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain
+a dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."
+
+That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,
+for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science
+method of making its judgments prevail over all others.
+
+Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of
+all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.
+
+And now?
+
+Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial
+answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?
+Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something
+too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left
+behind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?
+
+What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still
+newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to
+reality must man now discover before he could continue his journey down
+the long road toward total comprehension?
+
+He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for it
+contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost
+as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.
+
+For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of the
+colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men had
+caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly,
+the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He lay
+back down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.
+
+Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed
+something, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, and
+had forgotten in science.
+
+These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only to
+be a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of even
+the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, was
+their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one
+with their environment--unaware.
+
+Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would they
+be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the
+clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in their
+own image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?
+
+Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.
+
+In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship with
+them. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himself
+off from the gods ...
+
+Loneliness.
+
+Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose then
+his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?
+
+Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of exploding
+exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding
+themselves woven into music, painting, literature.
+
+"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none
+other than we who are aware?"
+
+The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more
+and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, the
+recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all others
+subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The
+dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was that
+also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man,
+defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very
+willingness to live--and so died?
+
+What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--and
+lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling that
+apathy? Facing that dissolution?
+
+When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! To
+discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at least
+hope to discover it.
+
+For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation,
+the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always
+interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely
+different from the intent.
+
+Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were no
+other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that
+closed mind be made?
+
+All right.
+
+Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Their
+frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all his
+efforts?
+
+He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that
+sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist and
+his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man
+was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his
+rock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling
+faces.
+
+"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young man
+said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to
+give you one too."
+
+At least they were being impartial.
+
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the
+flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock
+again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating.
+
+He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their
+long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in
+occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to
+protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too
+would be searching for awareness.
+
+But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did not
+meet those terms.
+
+That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal
+did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws,
+the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debris
+which prevented communication of awareness as They defined it?
+
+There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon
+the tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception,
+psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had
+been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical
+tools, man stopped looking for answers other than these?
+
+Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without the
+use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude
+manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation
+without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate
+wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a
+printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result?
+
+A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to
+obtain the same result? But how?
+
+To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (for
+the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the
+current) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of that
+diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one
+thought of the diagram of a receiver? How?
+
+He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence too
+low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was
+walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless
+circle.
+
+Circle?
+
+Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare
+sand at the river's edge.
+
+In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was
+prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of
+every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the
+current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of
+planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.
+
+Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical
+science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it
+took, would know the circle.
+
+He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip of
+his finger he quickly drew a circle.
+
+The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!
+
+He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the
+invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of a
+circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you
+know?"
+
+He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the
+center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the
+perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximating
+the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wrote
+R^2. He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign.
+
+Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed
+all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. They
+understood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet
+there was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sand
+before he saw what it was.
+
+The = had changed to : !
+
+Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate to" for
+"equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure, without tools he
+could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It was
+pedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, without
+tools, to draw a perfect circle?
+
+Or was that running around inside his low fence?
+
+He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was now
+smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what they
+meant.
+
+He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his
+string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. They
+were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers
+could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked
+down again, and the equation was gone.
+
+Wrong track again.
+
+He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.
+
+The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a
+constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference between
+physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference
+in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an
+equation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the whole
+science of atomics was based.
+
+"E = MC^2," he wrote.
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals sign?
+That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals was one of the
+possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we
+were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that
+answer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in
+unbalanced equations?
+
+He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see them erased.
+But they were still there. So he was starting on the right track. But
+wait.
+
+Before his eyes he saw the C^2 smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M"
+remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the low
+fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was
+the ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But so
+all-inclusive as to be too vague for use.
+
+For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's
+use of C^2 in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his
+time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics
+where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its
+inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work,
+had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted
+it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his
+day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things
+without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him
+entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that
+much to their superstitions.
+
+The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, but
+emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center
+of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixed
+cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the
+chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a
+fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that
+would not shift.
+
+The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?
+
+He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the track.
+
+It had changed again. Now it read "E{d}M": The form of the function of
+energy to matter is variable.
+
+Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and the
+independent variable of the function vary together.
+
+Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy to
+matter.
+
+And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship
+between energy and matter.
+
+He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.
+
+"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as
+much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."
+
+There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep
+sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in
+the sand.
+
+"They talked to _you_," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve
+Them, but it was to _you_ They talked."
+
+And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.
+
+Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's
+shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down
+at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an
+infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of
+forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."
+
+The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal
+felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not
+regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie,
+racked with broken sobbing.
+
+Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes
+that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in
+his youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them a
+tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to
+science--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations,
+making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of
+landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations
+again--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in
+youth.
+
+Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had
+talked.
+
+"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had
+searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have
+found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees,
+grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship?
+
+"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the
+incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more than
+conquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would be
+pleasing to another intelligence?
+
+"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another
+intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement?
+The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denial
+of it?"
+
+Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward the
+depths of the forest.
+
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had
+lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete
+retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they
+had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their
+idea-content no longer required its use.
+
+Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the
+clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always
+available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought.
+Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts of
+the herd, near the colonists but not of them. He had ceased to exhort,
+warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was
+thinking.
+
+And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering
+his own food, catching his own fish.
+
+And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.
+
+Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the
+old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night
+they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to
+four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright stars
+above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis,
+and from the E.H.Q. laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's
+attempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its
+failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and
+then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness,
+her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.
+
+McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson in
+person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable to
+believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person to
+take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to
+do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave
+it alone.
+
+Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal the
+reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away and
+unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting
+strains of a song remembered from long ago.
+
+For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given the
+key--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportion
+and you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and the
+door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it.
+
+Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had to be for his
+job as pilot.
+
+"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's
+messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some
+leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign." He scratched a
+formula in the dirt:
+
+    "2 + 2 = 4"
+
+The = changed to : . Then to {d}. Then through the series of variable
+relationships.
+
+Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.
+
+"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't
+variable. It equals."
+
+Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.
+
+"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what They have to
+say than in trying to convince Them that They're wrong."
+
+"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom argued,
+"then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate
+relationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would be
+solid, dependable."
+
+"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly. "Not a
+house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of
+proportion--and they aren't there anymore."
+
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him
+the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how
+to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is
+useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door.
+
+This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical
+science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E
+science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What
+if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most bogged
+down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of
+some other answer.
+
+Everyone knew the equation E = MC^2, but few could implement it to build
+an atomic power plant.
+
+Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced
+equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be
+countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he
+might be to consider something else.
+
+In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and
+leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the
+stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking
+care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien
+philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their
+own weight.
+
+Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was
+too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical
+science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider
+the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact
+nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other
+side of the equation to restore balance.
+
+To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality.
+To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the
+physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X
+factor to keep reality unchanged.
+
+But how to do it still eluded him.
+
+At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a
+solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring
+was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole
+without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete
+visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the
+long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic
+signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility
+that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control
+physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a
+physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along
+the direct route toward his goal.
+
+Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet
+kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could
+only draw the right design.
+
+Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It
+seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the
+problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.
+
+One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace
+Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of
+the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown
+away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches
+and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them,
+strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of
+outside it?
+
+In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm to
+try?
+
+He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who would
+care.
+
+"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And you can't
+carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty
+purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its
+shipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not much
+in the way of food growing there. So we never went back."
+
+"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered," Cal
+said. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding.
+But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think
+I'll go."
+
+"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose
+your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water.
+Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I
+reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We
+won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you
+needn't worry about us either."
+
+"You want me to come with you, Cal?" Tom asked.
+
+"No," Cal answered, "I think better if I'm alone."
+
+He left them then, went past some colonists who were picking berries and
+eating them, and on up the valley that ran between two ridges.
+
+It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley
+floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual
+drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became a
+ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and
+ripening fruit was sweet.
+
+Before he left the ravine to begin his climb he ate some of the fruit,
+and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with a long, cool
+drink of water from one of the many springs that fed the stream.
+
+He looked up at the mountain above him, and his eye picked out the most
+likely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in terms
+of those tremendous, tortured skin folds of other planets. Hardly more
+than a high hill in terms of those. Nor, as far as he could see, would
+the climb be difficult or hazardous.
+
+The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into his mind,
+although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The
+gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they
+might not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain was
+more easily climbed, and therefore man would have been the more easily
+convinced after repeated explorations that no gods lived there after
+all.
+
+Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the site of
+heaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly, as man explored
+the earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat until
+at last the whole idea was patently ridiculous?
+
+Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet--to what may man now turn in
+rapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all physical science, filled
+the deep human need of these expressions?
+
+The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he intended
+to follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him, at
+the valley of the colonists below, and far down where the valley merged
+into the sea, and far on out at the hazy purple line of another island.
+As he started to turn back again, to resume his climb, his eye caught a
+flash of something moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown,
+bare skin.
+
+He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees. As he had
+suspected it was Louie, still trying to keep him always in sight.
+
+His first impulse was to call out, to wait for Louie, ask him to join in
+the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from all
+others. And sympathetic and compassionate though he might be, the
+confusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had his
+earlier attempts to comfort Louie met success.
+
+Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear his
+mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's tortured mind
+intended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Even
+a boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for that
+would be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodily
+attack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable.
+
+He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it swept
+upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was not
+difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and provided clear
+spaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to his
+bare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt no
+physical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from the
+branches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind into
+trivialities.
+
+Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason out
+the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality.
+
+Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, a
+merging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, and
+appreciation.
+
+Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that
+they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they were
+replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low,
+creeping growths which his feet avoided without mental direction.
+
+A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of
+crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the
+geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been broken
+away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.
+
+There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or
+colonist had ever passed this way.
+
+The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly and
+without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemed
+to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's
+star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he,
+alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it
+as he was encompassed by it.
+
+Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley
+floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any
+instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would stand
+revealed.
+
+Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way through
+higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeper
+amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted not
+only in the purples but into greens and reds and blues.
+
+As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above he
+caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles, buttresses,
+and arches of the mountain's crest.
+
+It was the crystal palace.
+
+The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below, yet
+his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor
+were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and
+rest, to gather his energy for the last steep assault upon the peak.
+
+Far below him he saw Louie toiling up a slope, then dropping with every
+appearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still he
+would rest no more than a minute, and always his head was turned to keep
+sight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to his
+feet; and slowly, step by step, begin his climb again.
+
+As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the
+self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guilt
+of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral
+sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the
+ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be
+either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's
+inadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil,
+these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance or
+threat to the ascendancy of me-and-mine at the center of things, and had
+no meaning beyond that context.
+
+He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharp
+climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near to
+the towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now he
+walked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothic
+entrance.
+
+And stood transfixed in ecstasy.
+
+Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and
+glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the
+sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where
+light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the
+air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him.
+Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended
+sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture.
+
+As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees that laced
+their limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again he stood, lost in
+time and space and being, lost in vision and in music which neither had
+nor needed form nor beginning nor end.
+
+And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of man, to
+bridge the gap between Their minds and his.
+
+Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor
+and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they
+seemed mirrored into infinity.
+
+The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down, clockwise,
+then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding him ...
+
+... the internal structure of crystals....
+
+
+
+
+25
+
+
+Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced
+from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled
+by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust
+over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases,
+tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the
+vibrating crystals one formed that was aware.
+
+Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only
+ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of
+molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on another
+planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinity
+to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked the
+distinction here as in that protoplasm.
+
+As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these
+crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold--to food.
+Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about
+them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy
+atmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavage
+into new individuals.
+
+What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does it
+appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, and
+blunders blindly through its environment in search for condition more
+favorable to its continuance.
+
+In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more than
+that.
+
+Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness of
+me-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel, know? A
+protoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all possibility of
+awareness in other kinds of growth because they are not a part of
+me-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know awareness?
+
+Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on that
+planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self.
+Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, and
+self-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of surroundings.
+
+Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time, awareness of
+self and surroundings grew into awareness of wider peripheries, to
+sensing their world, its structure, its nature.
+
+Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other worlds, of
+other stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly akin to the
+vibrating fields of force which compose the material universe, and the
+vibrations of fields of force can be altered. To change their
+surroundings to a more suitable environment through vibration rates of
+things led surely to negation of distance. To change from crystal form
+to fields of energy and back again combined with negation of
+distance--they too spread out and out among the stars.
+
+At first it was enough. But awareness is never still. Questions form.
+
+In all the universe were they the only sentient thing? Did any cry but
+theirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the nature of
+their being their search was unconcerned with the outer shape of things
+which could be changed by them at will, but rather with the inner
+vibratory rate which would signal sentience, awareness.
+
+They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces. Water runs
+down hill without knowing that it does, without the internal structure
+to provide the vibratory rate which would permit knowing.
+
+For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of a
+me-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to conceive
+that other structures than the crystalline might have a form of
+awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must be
+acknowledged.
+
+For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline
+substance, protoplasm.
+
+On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated and
+specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex of
+its organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the most
+complex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside of
+self.
+
+Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!
+
+Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience in
+communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of
+their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind,
+they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous
+pyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new life
+form that they too were aware--to communicate that the loneliness of one
+might now be softened by the presence of the other.
+
+And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the dust.
+
+His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay in
+adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the
+dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.
+
+But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought something
+which they could share with this new life form. The rock could be a
+tree! See!
+
+And lo, the rock was a tree.
+
+And the people were sore afraid.
+
+For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so. This
+mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into a
+new and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valley
+beckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not venture
+forth.
+
+The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystalline
+forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awareness
+composed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes,
+security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awareness
+composed of the inner vibration, the relationships of those vibrations,
+with outer shapes changed at will, and therefore meaningless.
+
+Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes of things.
+The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed that became root and
+stem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man that
+decomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause!
+Surely they must see that even the permanent rock changed slowly into
+dust, that the eternal sea was restless, never still; that stars moved
+in the vault of heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. How
+did they account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause?
+
+They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the seed ground
+into meal, the moving animal shot down with stick or stone and stilled
+and changed to food, the moving of the smaller rocks, erection of a
+dwelling made of poles and thatch to change environment for the man
+inside. Change, then, man knew; why fear the greater change, the easier
+one? Why tug and lift and strain to move the boulder from the path, when
+all was needed was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance the
+equation of relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone no
+longer barred the way?
+
+Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot their
+own once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine, forgot to
+credit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength to serve a
+purpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he could do. To see it
+lifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a greater strength than
+his, and purpose that he could not understand. And man fell to his knees
+in fear and awe.
+
+For man knew only one relation to all things--to conquer if he could,
+and force acknowledgment of superior strength and purpose. To kill if
+that acknowledgment was not given. To survive by giving that
+acknowledgment to a stronger one than he.
+
+Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew when
+strength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme a
+way that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The one
+invariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs to
+diplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mine
+ascendant is the aim and goal.
+
+To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy of
+me-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness lower than
+intelligence that they could meet in partnership. Instruct them, then.
+No joy or purpose in conquering them. No companionship in these
+disgusting grovelings. Show them the inner forces that controlled the
+outer shapes of things.
+
+Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer shape of
+things was no longer a consideration in their life; but for this form of
+life, still dependent for that life upon the maintenance of material
+form, no doubt the shapes and forms of things were paramount to them.
+Well then, show them the true relationship, sketch out upon the sands
+the diagram of how the forces that control the shapes of things are
+interwoven, interact.
+
+Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape, and lo, a
+spring of water flowed from dry and barren stone.
+
+But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and form. A
+sacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw with finger in
+the air or in the sand, protection from the evil forces that surrounded
+him.
+
+The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man was not
+ready for communication. Too soon, too soon.
+
+But man did not forget, the memory lived on. And fathers spoke to sons,
+and made the outer forms of gestures, drew the cabalistic signs, and
+told of magic things and powers that these signs could do. To some, one
+diagram was shown, a way to build a house of stone that better weathered
+the storms of Earth. The house of stone became a holy place, a thing
+existing in its own right, and not, as was intended, an example of one
+use to which this arrangement of forces might be put.
+
+And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time to slay an
+animal for food. And men fought wars over these differing symbols, each
+side determined to make its symbol ascendant over the other.
+
+Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the memories
+lived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams beyond their outer
+shape had gained sway. The racial memory persisted, and in the latter
+Pleistocene epoch the knowledge of altering shapes through force of mind
+became a racial memory, coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated into
+forms and phrases; but from generation to generation the memory was kept
+alive that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeed
+changed by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had pointed
+his finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped forth clad
+in jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed a mountain and a
+voice spoke unto him, and proof of this were letters cut in stone.
+Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some water into wine, and fed a
+multitude from five small loaves and fishes.
+
+A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the inner
+meanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward through the
+world.
+
+But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner meanings,
+another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shape
+and size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size and
+shape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture,
+which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the inner
+vibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged in
+the Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape and
+weight of things to make them change.
+
+It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essential
+difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as that
+between a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culture
+where everything has limit and every inch must be mapped.
+
+But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed into
+bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown into
+tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man could
+master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxford
+definition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties of
+things.
+
+Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, led
+inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specific
+vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid to the senses,
+as a range of light vibrations translate into color through the eyes.
+
+E = MC^2!
+
+It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!
+
+Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient
+fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic
+displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently
+through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his
+weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his
+strength. For here he was among the stars.
+
+Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not
+prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "Hello!"
+
+But careful, perhaps he would.
+
+There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope
+he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but
+rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either
+side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the
+planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He
+never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that
+the god Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and this
+phenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted as
+the proof the legend was correct--and do incalculable damage to
+scientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enough
+to take no chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works,
+perhaps discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further
+fuel to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds and
+seared out possibility of rational thought.
+
+So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite the fact
+that some men know how to reach the stars.
+
+To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of
+barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of
+man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a
+thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and
+clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but nevertheless
+present centers of man's mind--some certain man who might be ready to
+receive that thought.
+
+Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until man
+found it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change of
+course that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it for
+Earth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystal
+tool upon the mountaintop.
+
+The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds were
+full of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhaps
+by now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act upon
+another thing that they could not countenance the thought that thought
+could act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, and
+recorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches and
+its spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of
+force, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his
+status and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared
+admit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments.
+Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought their
+science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And to
+scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more than
+truth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth is
+paramount?
+
+Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked and
+lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today there
+are such men.
+
+So walk with care, and wait.
+
+The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled with
+measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filled
+with cabins, fields, food.
+
+Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured on
+the one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not bound
+within the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely man
+must know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thing
+through a description of its outer surface.
+
+But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical things
+to act upon other physical things, even in considering the universal
+energy as a thing, he would look no farther.
+
+All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept
+of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no
+tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that
+happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men,
+perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships,
+their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind
+trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth
+outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust
+at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because
+he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.
+
+And they would know when that mind came.
+
+The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to
+earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough.
+The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be
+undisturbed in his thought.
+
+Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it
+was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move.
+Could he respond?
+
+He drew a circle in the sand!
+
+Joy! Ecstasy!
+
+This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two
+intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to
+the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ...
+to find ...
+
+Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him
+think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things
+in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize
+that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to
+express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can
+change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he
+desires.
+
+Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself,
+for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready
+to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his
+own interpreting.
+
+Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
+conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are,
+bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that
+communication might be direct.
+
+He holds the key.
+
+He knows the lock.
+
+He finds the door.
+
+Show him the one small step remaining--the diagram, the design, the
+movement of the forces of his mind.
+
+To turn the key.
+
+Unlock the lock.
+
+Throw wide the door.
+
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his
+eyes.
+
+Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of
+yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken
+thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just
+barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,
+the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.
+
+And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and
+forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,
+to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one
+had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.
+No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.
+
+How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance
+was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or
+dead?
+
+But why wonder?
+
+A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
+test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
+amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces
+in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.
+
+He was standing outside the entrance arch.
+
+With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through
+the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then
+fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.
+
+"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know
+you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw
+you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.
+But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some
+shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.
+Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."
+
+"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.
+
+As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped
+by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,
+seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of
+relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the
+untangling, straightening of thought.
+
+Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.
+
+"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock
+and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on
+back to the rest."
+
+"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.
+
+A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush
+to approach Jed and Tom.
+
+"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked
+up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.
+Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."
+
+"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
+continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that
+everything happened a couple of weeks ago."
+
+"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him
+curiously.
+
+Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a
+difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with
+puzzlement on his face.
+
+"There's something important about it being around this time of day,
+Cal?" he asked.
+
+"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could
+restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it
+was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It
+being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had
+passed, nothing had happened."
+
+Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.
+
+"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"
+
+"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite
+a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about
+it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things
+back as they were?"
+
+In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed
+his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the
+approach of the drill.
+
+It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.
+
+The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the
+metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences with
+the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking
+on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They
+looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.
+They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked
+their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest
+dream.
+
+Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together,
+and feel the shock, and wonder.
+
+Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the
+hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.
+
+"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or
+something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had
+the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll
+dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."
+
+"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the
+people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.
+They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across
+the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing
+you know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find out
+why we didn't communicate."
+
+"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked
+curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.
+You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys
+fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"
+
+"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the
+hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of
+everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.
+
+"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front
+of everybody right along."
+
+"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been
+dreamin'," she said.
+
+"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"
+he cautioned.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.
+
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the
+aisle toward him.
+
+"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he
+said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better
+repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with
+the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite
+his face.
+
+"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the
+overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more
+insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable
+period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity
+that got the better of his desire to discipline.
+
+"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him.
+He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up
+the mountain."
+
+"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened
+for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started
+back down the aisle toward his own office.
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."
+
+Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.
+
+"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with
+your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."
+
+But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was
+everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about
+the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different
+answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance,
+and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they
+weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in
+crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's
+knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know
+what he was not meant to know.
+
+The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments,
+to listen frankly.
+
+"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a
+minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush
+to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."
+
+"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve
+miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their
+reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to
+skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to
+be complaints about this."
+
+"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I
+didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."
+
+"All right, all right."
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."
+
+The supervisor's eyes grew round.
+
+"Can't be," he exclaimed.
+
+"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator
+said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report
+it."
+
+"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have
+to be."
+
+"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those
+buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.
+
+"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the
+reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's
+doing."
+
+"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.
+
+There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.
+
+"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning
+all over, trying to find him."
+
+The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.
+
+"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this
+reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips
+and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the
+complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if
+there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.
+
+An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
+furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them
+in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some
+more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?
+
+His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a
+virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.
+
+"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up
+the aisle.
+
+"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,"
+the operator called out. "Something very important."
+
+"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."
+
+But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
+tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.
+
+"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line
+opened.
+
+"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal.
+"What now?"
+
+"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the
+Captain said without any preliminaries.
+
+"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear
+in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe
+she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."
+
+"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You
+ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out
+first."
+
+"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled
+back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"
+
+"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said.
+"A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her
+stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way
+anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.
+Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.
+Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E
+Gray on the surface of Eden."
+
+"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,"
+Hayes said accusingly.
+
+"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't
+have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like
+we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
+
+"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of
+your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's
+hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd
+to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then
+in ten days she'd ..."
+
+"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the
+ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the
+possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
+
+"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E
+McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could
+lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
+
+"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship," the captain
+said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
+
+Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes
+to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide
+direct intervention.
+
+"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator
+said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis
+will talk to him."
+
+"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
+
+"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.
+
+The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that
+testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was
+quite explicit.
+
+"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be
+disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin,
+in conference."
+
+"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil
+did they get into your ship?"
+
+"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm
+sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He
+leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E
+Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in
+there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice
+quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I
+ever do get back."
+
+"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple
+explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were
+hard to find.
+
+"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to
+hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
+communication.
+
+
+
+
+28
+
+
+Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom
+he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered
+his ship by any normal means.
+
+Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.
+He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive,
+darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of
+shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him
+to adjust to them.
+
+He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch
+of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that
+somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see
+what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared
+from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a
+shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator
+had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the
+chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have
+been made that rapidly.
+
+He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the
+E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people
+were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept
+his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to
+produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to
+that, otherwise ...
+
+He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more
+effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders
+to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two
+police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and
+take custody.
+
+But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.
+
+He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in control of
+Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs!
+Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior
+had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid
+judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there
+were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might
+have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but
+Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals
+issue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her
+nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.
+
+It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told
+him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the
+ship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in
+the vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you for
+taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."
+
+The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He
+thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any
+judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and
+maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to
+any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the
+favor returned tomorrow.
+
+Without concrete evidence ...
+
+He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship,
+confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in
+a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting
+frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and
+swallow him--perhaps wishing one would.
+
+"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly,
+ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor
+nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As
+far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately
+preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.
+
+"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of
+any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow
+until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that
+ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and
+severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that
+destroyed both the United States and Russia.
+
+"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world
+government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in
+trying to destroy you.
+
+"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have
+already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the
+major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of
+police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.
+
+"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an
+organized society without some special body to enforce that
+organization. It's a problem which the E's haven't solved, probably
+because we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behavior
+of man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, because
+science doesn't know enough yet to take hold of it.
+
+"I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and your
+organization to solving this problem of how to build an organized
+society instead of destroying it."
+
+The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.
+
+E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and immobile. But E
+science had inured him to shock. He waited because it was E Gray's show,
+and he was letting Cal handle it.
+
+"Where is he now?" McGinnis asked when he saw the empty chair.
+
+"Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth," Cal said with a grin.
+"Our boy has a few things to think about."
+
+"You've explained the theory back of all this"--McGinnis changed the
+subject--"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory."
+
+"Well," Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two, you
+first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it is
+done, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn how to
+apply the theory.
+
+"When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The whole basis
+of science is that anybody can do it, anybody who follows the
+step-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts that can't be
+trained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people, in possession
+of this theory and method before they were wise enough to use it, and
+chaos.
+
+"But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods of science
+are also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most prefer their
+frustrations and their miseries to making the effort which will solve
+them. For centuries the libraries containing all the accumulated
+knowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free and open to anybody who
+wants to read, but few have bothered to absorb that knowledge and that
+wisdom.
+
+"This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista of
+knowledge, another point of view whereby we can change material things
+to suit our desire, is merely another advance of science. For science,
+after all, is no more than organized knowledge of reality. You can't
+multiply six times six until you've learned how to add two and two. Most
+people won't bother.
+
+"It will be a long, long time before any significant number will
+graduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become ready
+for the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know how few E's
+there are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom, and selflessness
+to use this new knowledge for the benefit of man instead of his
+detriment.
+
+"I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to make
+me-and-mine ascendant over others before he can absorb this knowledge."
+
+"Maybe that's my trouble," McGinnis said slowly. "I've been thinking,
+all along, of how much power this gives the E's. Wondering if even the
+E's should have that much power over others."
+
+Linda spoke up.
+
+"E McGinnis," she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what happened to
+the colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you think this will
+qualify him for his big E?"
+
+Both men burst into laughter.
+
+"No question of it, Linda," E McGinnis said with a chuckle. "But I doubt
+it really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things none of the rest of
+us can do, and the real question now is whether we have the right to
+call ourselves Seniors until we can match his ability."
+
+"I think," Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E.H.Q. that the
+colonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere else. I've left the
+shield around the planet so none can enter or leave without the eighth
+key. I can unlock the door and close it again. Perhaps Eden should
+become the next step for the E, the next hurdle he must cross.
+
+"When I've sent my ship and crew back to Earth, and we've removed all
+the colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden to what it was
+when I arrived--a place where no tools will work, no physical tools. To
+qualify for E, a man will be put on the island, where he can live as we
+lived, to work out the step-by-step method. When he's ready, he can go
+into the thought-amplifier on top of the mountain, and if his mind is
+open enough to the potentials he'll receive the final step of
+instruction--as I did.
+
+"One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they can
+take this next step."
+
+"I'm not working on any project right now," E McGinnis said hopefully.
+
+"I'll be right back," Cal said with a grin, "and we'll get started on
+it."
+
+The chair where he had been sitting was empty.
+
+
+
+
+29
+
+
+Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watched
+the interplay of lights until he felt communion come.
+
+Rapture! Joy!
+
+Question?
+
+"Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more.
+
+"You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with a
+crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible in
+protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way.
+
+"But we have come up.
+
+"You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives every
+inch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries, millennia.
+It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept has dominated all
+our thought, and does still. Without it, we'd not have survived at all.
+
+"It takes time to outgrow it, to learn we can survive without it. Five
+hundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high school students in
+the United States revealed that a third of them still rejected his
+knowledge, still believed the Earth to be at the center of the universe
+and man was the reason why the universe had been created at all. But two
+thirds had adjusted.
+
+"More important, there _was_ a Copernicus.
+
+"Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are impatient
+for fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality. He has much to
+offer you, as you to him. Competition for survival has given him
+ingenuity.
+
+"Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of the
+universe, but there _was_ a Copernicus who asked the question, 'What if
+it isn't so?'
+
+"Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one _did_ ask if
+this might not be the key to the structure of the universe, the balance
+of the stars.
+
+"Billions watched the stars, but finally one _did_ ask, 'What if the
+light be curved instead of straight?'
+
+"There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to learn an
+ingenuity which might surpass even yours.
+
+"This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still other
+doors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may need
+these special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed this new room
+of thought.
+
+"Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the method
+that can change things to fit the equation of desire, before one comes
+who asks a question even you have not conceived.
+
+"But someday he _will_ come--and ask."
+
+The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eight Keys to Eden
+
+Author: Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27595]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Geoffrey Kidd, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN</h1>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk1">
+<h2><small>BY MARK CLIFTON</small></h2>
+
+<p class="pa1">NOVELS<br />
+Eight Keys To Eden<br />
+They'd Rather Be Right*<br />
+The Forever Machine*</p>
+
+<p class="pa1">NON-FICTION BOOK<br />
+Opportunity Unlimited</p>
+
+<p class="pa1">NOVELETTES<br />
+Remembrance and Reflection<br />
+How Allied<br />
+What Thin Partitions**<br />
+Sense From Thought Divide<br />
+Star, Bright<br />
+Hide! Hide! Witch!<br />
+A Woman's Place<br />
+Clerical Error<br />
+What Now, Little Man?<br />
+Do Unto Others</p>
+
+<p class="pa1">SHORT STORIES<br />
+What Have I Done?<br />
+The Conqueror<br />
+Kenzie Report<br />
+Bow Down To Them<br />
+Reward For Valour<br />
+Progress Report**<br />
+Crazy Joey**<br />
+We're Civilized**<br />
+Solution Delayed**</p>
+
+<p class="pa1">ARTICLES<br />
+It Can't Be Done<br />
+The Dread Tomato Affliction</p>
+
+<p>* <i>In collaboration with Frank Riley</i><br />
+** <i>In collaboration with Alex Apostolides</i></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>EIGHT KEYS<br />
+TO EDEN</h1>
+
+<h2><small>by</small><br />
+Mark Clifton</h2>
+
+<p class="hd2">Doubleday &amp; Company, Inc.<br />
+Garden City, New York<br />
+1960</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk1" style="width: 22em;"><p><i>All of the characters in this book<br />
+are fictitious, and any resemblance<br />
+to actual persons, living or dead,<br />
+is purely coincidental.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa2">Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470<br />
+Copyright &copy; 1960 by Mark Clifton<br />
+All Rights Reserved<br />
+Printed in the United States of America<br />
+First Edition</p></div>
+
+<div class="trn"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b>
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Variant and dialect spellings remain as printed.</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">To<br />
+<br />
+Charles Steinberg<br />
+<br />
+who made writing possible for me</p>
+
+<hr />
+<h1><small>EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN</small></h1>
+
+<hr />
+<h2>SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">1</span> Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis,
+without question.</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">2</span> Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general contrariness.</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">3</span> Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to
+account for the phenomenon?</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">4</span> How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose
+that he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">5</span> What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant,
+the obscure prevalent?</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">6</span> What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered
+effect is really cause?</p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><span class="sp1">7</span> What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates
+unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there
+be only one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in
+many facets because we cannot apperceive the whole, of
+which we have gained only the most elementary glimpses,
+with which we can cope only at the crudest level?</p></div>
+
+<div class="pa2"><p class="center"><b><big>And are those still other doors, yet undefined,<br />
+on down the corridor?</big></b></p></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+<h2>1</h2>
+
+<p>One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden
+was overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor.
+His finger hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted
+his teeth and pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out
+of his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the forty
+operators hunched over their panels.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to
+a stop.</p>
+
+<p>"Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic,
+but it came out sullen.</p>
+
+<p>The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and
+punched irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second
+star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room.
+He didn't expect there to be any occlusions to interfere with the
+communications channel. The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting
+schedules to include such blunders. But he had to check.</p>
+
+<p>There weren't.</p>
+
+<p>He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come
+on his shift, never anybody else's.</p>
+
+<p>"Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he
+rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose
+and hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The operator looked skeptical instead.</p>
+
+<p>Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental
+colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot
+of things, some unprintable, which qualified them for being test
+colonizers and nothing else apparently. They were almost as
+much of a problem as the Extrapolators.</p>
+
+<p>But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.</p>
+
+<p>"Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications
+by inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully
+tried out another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A
+jump band didn't last more than an instant, and no ship captain
+would risk his license by using the E frequency, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of
+the other operators at their panels. None was signaling an
+emergency to draw him away from this; give him an excuse to
+leave in the hope the problem would have solved itself by the time
+he could get back to it. He chewed on a knuckle and stared
+angrily at the operator who was sitting back, relaxed, looking
+at him, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the
+supervisor asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"</p>
+
+<p>The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother
+to answer with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression
+of contempt for supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He
+caught the surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel,
+behind the supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to
+attract attention. In response to the wink he pulled the dogged
+expression of the unjustly nagged employee over his features.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor
+muttered savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off
+their&mdash;their pants out there!"</p>
+
+<p>The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was
+about time, and reached over to press down the emergency key.
+He held it down. Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend
+upon impossibly slow three-dimensional space time, a siren which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+could be heard for ten miles in Eden's atmosphere should be
+blaring.</p>
+
+<p>The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the
+gnawing at his knuckles to his fingernails.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry
+colonist to come through and scream at them to turn off that
+unprintable-phrases siren. He braced himself and worked up some
+choice phrases of his own to scream back at the colonist for
+neglecting his duty&mdash;getting Extrapolation Headquarters here on
+Earth all worked up over nothing. He wondered if he dared
+threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to check them over.</p>
+
+<p>He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay
+no attention to his recommendation. He knew it, and the colonist
+would know it too.</p>
+
+<p>He began to wonder what excuse the colonist would have.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wanted to see if you home-office boys were on your toes,"
+the insolent colonist would drawl. Probably something like that.</p>
+
+<p>He hoped the right words wouldn't fail him.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no response to the siren.</p>
+
+<p>"Lock the key down," he told the operator. "Keep it blasting
+until they wake up."</p>
+
+<p>He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near
+operators were now frankly listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Get on with your work," he said loudly. "Pay attention to what
+you're recording."</p>
+
+<p>It was enough to cause several more heads to raise.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is
+nothing to concern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's
+all. Haven't you ever heard of a delayed report before?"</p>
+
+<p>He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It
+was like asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope
+over the razor edge of a precipice suddenly go slack.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's nothing any of you can do," he said. He tried to
+cover the plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+own messages ..." But he had threatened them so often that there
+was no longer any menace.</p>
+
+<p>He spent the next ten minutes hauling out the logs of Eden to
+see if they'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a
+fraction years, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit
+scanner didn't pick up a single symbol to show that Eden had been
+even two seconds off schedule. The first year daily, the second
+year weekly, and now monthly. There wasn't a single hiccough
+from the machine to kick out an Extrapolator's signal to watch
+for anything unusual.</p>
+
+<p>Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an <i>outr&eacute;</i>
+problem as an Iowa cornfield.</p>
+
+<p>"You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again
+as he came back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They
+haven't answered yet."</p>
+
+<p>The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists
+hadn't answered. And what should he do about it? Go out there
+personally and shake his finger at them&mdash;naughty, naughty?</p>
+
+<p>"Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface,
+to see?" the supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want
+to see for myself that you haven't let your equipment go sour.
+Or maybe there's a space hurricane between here and there. Or
+maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe some star has exploded
+and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it, man. Bounce
+it! What are you waiting for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for
+you to give the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the
+supervisor. "I can't just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen
+to be in the mood."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the
+supervisor cautioned.</p>
+
+<p>Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic
+relays strung out through space to take hold, automatically
+calculating the route, set up the required space-jump bands. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+was called instantaneous communication, but that was only
+relative. It took time.</p>
+
+<p>The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report
+to the sector chief that an emergency had come up which he
+couldn't handle. He hated the thought of Extrapolators poking
+around in his department, upsetting the routines, asking questions
+he'd already asked. He hated the forethought of the admiration
+he'd see in the eyes of his operators when an E walked into the
+room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to questions, the
+thrill of merely being in the same room.</p>
+
+<p>He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration
+to an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the
+momentary secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a
+time, when he was a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E.
+What kid hadn't? He'd gone farther than the wish. He'd tried.
+And had been rebuffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told
+him with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to
+be kind to a lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off
+a precipice in full confidence that you'll think of something to
+save yourself before you hit bottom."</p>
+
+<p>It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed
+himself the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.</p>
+
+<p>"To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester
+had continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a
+scientist. Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar
+you from an excellent career in engineering."</p>
+
+<p>It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what
+science said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true,
+why was it said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would
+have to face, live with. No certainties on which to stand.</p>
+
+<p>He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated
+on the flashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's
+screen. There was nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing
+wrong with the communication channels between Eden and Earth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Blasted colonists," the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam
+on their planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet
+they've let all the sets at their end get out of order."</p>
+
+<p>He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face
+hadn't told him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman&mdash;and
+there were fifty of them on Eden&mdash;could build a communicator.
+That was regulation.</p>
+
+<p>"You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?"
+he asked the operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering
+up some neglect in not notifying me? If you're covering up, you'd
+better tell me now. I'll find out. It'll all come out in the investigation,
+and ..."</p>
+
+<p>The operator turned around and looked at him levelly. He
+looked him over, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed
+feet. Then he coolly turned his back. There was a limit to just
+how much a man could stand, even to hold a job at E Headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>It was about time the supervisor got somebody with brains onto
+the job. The sector chief should be called immediately. Supervisors
+were supposed to have enough brains to think of something
+so obvious as that. That much brains at least.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+<h2>2</h2>
+
+<p>The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayed
+report" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn't
+happen to him.</p>
+
+<p>To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor,
+his first act was to rush down to communications and go through
+all the routines for rousing the colonists the supervisor had tried.
+His worry was mounting so rapidly that he hardly noticed the
+resigned expression of the operator who knew he would have to
+go through all these useless motions again and again before it was
+all over, and somebody did something.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," the chief said to the supervisor. "It's my problem now."
+He sighed, and unconsciously squared his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Chief Hayes," the supervisor agreed quickly. Perhaps too
+quickly, with too much relief? "Well, that is, I mean ..." his voice
+trailed off. After all, it was.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand my check of your routines was no reflection on
+you or your department," Hayes said diplomatically. "It's a heavy
+responsibility to alert E.H.Q., pull the scientists off who knows
+what delicate, critical work&mdash;maybe even hope to get the attention
+of an E&mdash;all that. I had to make sure, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said, and relaxed some
+of his resentment. "Serious matter," he chattered. "Disgrace if an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+E, without half trying, put his finger on our oversight. We all
+understand that." He tried to include the nearby operators, his
+boys, in his eager agreement, but they were all busy showing how
+intensely they had to concentrate on their work.</p>
+
+<p>"That's probably all it is&mdash;an oversight," Hayes said with
+unconvincing reassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's
+face, added, "Beyond our control here, of course. Something it
+would take at least a scientist to spot, something we couldn't be
+expected ... What I mean is, we shouldn't get alarmed until
+we know, for sure. And&mdash;ah&mdash;keep it confidential."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said in a near whisper.
+He looked meaningfully around at the room of operators, but
+did manage not to put his finger to his lips. Those who were
+observing out of the corners of their eyes were grateful for at
+least that.</p>
+
+<p>On his way back to his own office Chief William Hayes reflected
+that the bit about keeping it confidential was on the corny side.
+Within fifteen minutes he'd start spreading it all over E.H.Q.,
+himself. Every scientist, every lab assistant would know it. Every
+clerk, every janitor would know it. E.H.Q. would have to work full
+blast all night long, and some of the lesser personnel had homes
+down in Yellow Sands at the foot of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>These would be calling their husbands and wives, telling them
+not to fix dinner, not to worry if they didn't come home all night.
+No matter how guarded, the news would leak out, the word spread,
+and the newscast reporters would pick it up for the delectation
+of the public. Eden colony cut off from communication. Nobody
+knows ... Wonder ... Fear ... Delicious ... Exciting....</p>
+
+<p>Or was this the kind of thinking that had kept him from
+qualifying as an E? What was it the examiner had asked? "Mr.
+Hayes, why do you feel it is all right for you to view, to read, to
+know&mdash;but that others should be protected from seeing, reading,
+knowing? What are these sterling qualities you have that make it
+all right for you to censor what would not be right for others?"</p>
+
+<p>He abruptly brought his mind back to the present. Perhaps he'd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+first better prepare a news statement before he did anything else,
+something noncommittal, reassuring. No point in getting the
+populace stirred up.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat down behind his desk, a big man in a brown suit,
+natural iron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began
+to realize that for the next twenty-four hours, at least, he would
+be in the spotlight. Well, he'd give a good account of himself.
+Demonstrate that he had an executive capacity beyond the needs
+of his present job. More than a mere requisition signer, interoffice
+memo initialer.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing the scientists would give him trouble. If he had
+been deeply hurt that they thought he couldn't open up his mind
+enough to become an E, what about scientists whose limits were
+reached still farther along? He must remember to keep his temper,
+use persuasion, maybe kid them a little. The blasted experts were
+almost as bad as E's&mdash;worse, in a way, because the E didn't have
+to remind anybody of his dignity, or how important the work was
+he was doing.</p>
+
+<p>But then, you never asked an E to drop what he was doing, and
+listen. You never asked an E to do anything. He either noticed and
+was interested, or he didn't notice, or wasn't interested.</p>
+
+<p>But nobody ever told an E that he must apply himself to a
+problem. Once a man became a full-fledged Extrapolator he was
+outside all law, all frameworks, all duty, all social mores. That was
+the essence of E science, that any requirement outside of his
+own making didn't exist. It had to be that way. That kind of mind
+could not tolerate barriers, but spent itself constantly in destroying
+them. Erect barriers of triviality, and it would waste its substance
+upon trivial matters. The only answer was to remove all possible
+barriers for the E, lest immersion in something trivial prevent that
+mind from seeking out a barrier to knowledge, a problem of
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>But the scientists! Hayes sighed. If only the scientists wouldn't
+keep thinking they were cut from the same cloth as the E. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+had to have restrictions, organization imposed upon them. Yes
+indeed!</p>
+
+<p>They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble
+a review of all the known facts about Eden&mdash;a dead issue as far as
+their own work was concerned, for Eden had been assayed and
+filed away as solved. They'd moan and groan about having to drag
+up the facts that had been analyzed and settled long ago.</p>
+
+<p>He saw himself compared with the producer of a show, and
+theatrical performers didn't come any more temperamental than
+scientists. He'd be hearing about how much of their time he'd
+wasted for months to come. Every time any administrator asked
+why they hadn't produced whatever it was they were working on,
+it would be because Chief Hayes had interrupted them at the
+most crucial moment and they'd had to begin all over again.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, they'd drag their heels, all right, and he'd have to remind
+them, tactfully, that their prime duty was to serve the Extrapolators;
+that they were employed here only because someday, in
+some co-ordinate system, somebody might be able to supply a
+key fact that some E might want to know.</p>
+
+<p>They'd ask him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would
+be listening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex,
+knowing he could give no such guarantee.</p>
+
+<p>They'd drag their heels because, deep down, they carried a
+basic resentment against the E&mdash;because, experts though they
+were, each of them, somewhere along the line, had learned the
+bitter limits in his mind that prevented him from going on to
+become an E.</p>
+
+<p>They'd drag their heels because the E's, each blasted one of
+them, would regard the absolutely true facts proved beyond
+question by science with an attitude of skepticism, temporarily
+accepting the uncontestably immutable as only provisionary, and
+probably quite wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, they'd grumble, and they'd drag their heels at first; but they
+would get into it. They'd get into it, not because the sector chief
+had babied them along, kidded them, coaxed them, but because,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+as surely as his name was Bill Hayes, some unprintable E would
+ask a question for which they had no answer. Or even worse, some
+question that made no sense, but left the scientist feeling that
+perhaps it should have!</p>
+
+<p>That was the E brand of thinking which gave everybody trouble&mdash;and
+without which man could never have gone on creeping
+outward and outward among the stars. Every new planet, or
+subplanet, or sun or blasted asteroid seemed to call for some
+revision of known laws. Sometimes an entirely new co-ordinate
+system had to be resolved. Oh, science was easy, a veritable snap,
+while man crawled around on the muddy bottom of his ocean of
+air and concluded that throughout all the universe things must
+conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as a
+damned halibut must be of the works and thoughts of man.</p>
+
+<p>And often the E was unable to resolve the co-ordinate system&mdash;which
+was simply a euphemistic way of saying that he didn't
+come back. And without him, man could go no farther. An E,
+therefore, was the rarest and most valuable piece of property in
+the universe. Whatever else man might be, he will go to any
+lengths to protect the value of his property.</p>
+
+<p>All right, Bill, perhaps a part of that is true. But give the scientists
+their full due. They'd work with a will once they grew
+aware of the need of it, because they were just as concerned as
+anybody else with what might have happened to those colonists.</p>
+
+<p>But first they would argue.</p>
+
+<p>His secretary interrupted his thought by coming in from her
+own office. She had an inch-thick stack of midgit-idgit cards in
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's that batch of scientists who worked on the original
+Eden survey," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"So many?" Hayes asked ruefully. "Maybe I'd better send an
+all-points bulletin."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the boss," she said easily. "But if I know scientists, they
+don't read bulletins."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah, sure," he agreed. "You made sure this is everybody? Nobody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+is slighted? They'll scream like stuck pigs when I ask them,
+but they'll be even worse if I slight anybody by not asking."</p>
+
+<p>"Double checked with Personnel's own midgit-idgit," she replied.
+"The machine says if anybody is left out, it's not its fault,
+that it would only be because we stupid humans forgot to inform
+it in the first place."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think that machine complains more than people
+do," he answered. "Certainly it is a lot more insolent."</p>
+
+<p>"Gets more work done, though," she said comfortably. "You
+want anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not right now."</p>
+
+<p>"Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for
+that new exploration ship, and it wants service, too," she reminded
+him. "It's worse than you are," she added.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her familiarity with a twinkle.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't fire you," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?" she asked. "You think not? Just let me feed it a few wrong
+data and watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary."
+She winked at him, laughed, and went back to her office.</p>
+
+<p>Sector Chief Hayes sighed, and pulled the stack of cards toward
+him. First he must sort them out according to protocol because
+his diplomacy wouldn't be worth the breath used in it if
+he called the wrong man first. At a glance he saw that the idgit
+had already sorted them correctly according to status.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're so smart," he muttered to the absent machine, "why
+didn't you call them too?"</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom
+number. It would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes
+dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E
+key to open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.</p>
+
+<p>"How soon," the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this
+Eden matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm setting it up now," he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+surely. That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor
+that wouldn't require an E."</p>
+
+<p>"Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available."</p>
+
+<p>The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been
+broken. He sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his
+forehead was wet with sweat, that his shirt was sticking to his
+body. Not conscious that he was grinning joyfully.</p>
+
+<p>Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question
+of whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of
+'em. Maybe three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices,
+the students.</p>
+
+<p>He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind
+it being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize
+he could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody.
+He understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Dr. Mille," he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt.
+"This is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration."</p>
+
+<p>"All right! All right!" the voice answered testily. "What is it
+now?"</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+<h2>3</h2>
+
+<p>In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E
+buildings and the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas
+R. Lynwood moved methodically through his preflight inspection.</p>
+
+<p>Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to
+pilot an E wherever he might want to go, and bring him back
+again&mdash;if possible. To Lynwood reality was a physical thing&mdash;the
+feel of controls beneath his broad, square hands; the hum of
+machinery responsive to his will. He liked mathematics not for
+its own sake but because it best described the substance of
+things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how they
+behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could
+also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to
+wait until the theorists had turned such equations into machines,
+controls, forces before he got excited.</p>
+
+<p>He was one who, even in childhood, had never wanted to be
+an E. He didn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told
+him in Personnel that was why he was a favorite pilot of the E's,
+but he discounted that. They didn't try to tell him how to run
+his ship&mdash;well, most of them didn't&mdash;and he didn't try to tell them
+how to solve their problems.</p>
+
+<p>The men around the hangar had another version of why the
+E's liked him to pilot them around&mdash;he was lucky. Somehow he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+always managed to come back, and bring the E with him. Well,
+sure. He didn't want to get stuck somewhere, wind up in a gulio's
+gullet, gassed by an atmosphere that turned from oxygen-nitrogen
+into pure methane without warning or reason, and against all
+known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of a dead star
+suddenly gone nova.</p>
+
+<p>But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would
+fiddle around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone.
+Most of the time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He
+was lucky, sure, but part of it might be because he'd never
+been sent out with the wrong E.</p>
+
+<p>There could be a first time. Luck ran out if you kept piling
+your bets higher and higher. But until then ...</p>
+
+<p>He was square-jawed, a freckled man with red hair. Contrary
+to superstition, he didn't have a fiery temper. He was forty and
+had already built up a seniority of twenty years in deep space.
+He was captain of his ship and wanted nothing more. Sure, it
+was only a three-man crew&mdash;himself, a flight engineer, an astronavigator.
+But it was an E ship, which meant that he outranked
+even the captains of the great luxury liners.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time when the realization caused him to strut a
+little, but he'd got over it. He was single, had no ties, wanted
+none. He had a good job which he took seriously, was doing significant
+work which he also took seriously, was paid premium
+wages even for a space captain, which didn't matter except in
+terms of recognition. He didn't mind going anywhere in the known
+universe, or how long he would be away. He hoped he would
+get back someday, but he wasn't fanatic about it.</p>
+
+<p>In a routine so well-practiced that it had become ritual, he
+checked over the cruiser point by point. Of course the maintenance
+men had checked each item when they had, after his last trip,
+dismantled, cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one
+part after another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked
+over the ship with a gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some
+flaw, just one tiny flub, so they could turn some luckless mechanic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+inside out. The Inspection Department, traditionally an enemy
+of Maintenance, took over from there and inspected every part as
+if it had been slapped together by a bunch of army goof-offs
+who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war and, unconsciously
+at least, aided in expending them.</p>
+
+<p>Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers,
+that the ship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered
+such papers as so much garbage, and went over the entire
+ship himself. This might have had something to do with his so-called
+luck.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if Frank and Louie had checked into the ship
+this morning. Probably had; last night's outing wasn't much to
+hang over about. A steak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands,
+a couple of drinks at Smitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few
+dances at the Stars and Moons. Big night out for his crew before
+they left for deep space. Yellow Sands was strictly for young
+families, where bright-boy hubby worked up on the hill at E.H.Q.,
+and wifey raised super-bright kids who already considered Dad
+to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that town was to
+snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as the
+case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor
+Louie was dedicated to hell-raising.</p>
+
+<p>When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he
+saw his flight engineer, Frank Norton, had a couple of student
+E's on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the nuisances of being stationed here at E.H.Q.
+that you'd have swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging
+around, asking questions, disputing your answers, arguing with
+each other, and, if you didn't watch them carefully, taking things
+apart and putting them back together in different hookups to see
+what would happen.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everything
+everybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody
+had ever had the sense to think about the problem before;
+to doubt most of all the opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+experts were right then there would be no problem. Most of them
+didn't have to be taught it, they seemed to have been born with
+it. Time was you batted a young smart aleck down, told him to go
+get dry behind the ears before he shot off his mouth. But not
+these days. These days you looked at him hopefully, and crossed
+your fingers. He might grow up to be an E.</p>
+
+<p>Tom wondered what it would be like to doubt the realities,
+the very machinery under his hands, to assume that although it
+had always worked it might not work this time. He could not
+conceive that state of mind, or how a man could live in it without
+going insane. Every time he saw these tortured kids saying, "Well,
+maybe, but what if ..." he was glad to be nothing more than
+a ship captain who knew his machinery was exactly what it was
+supposed to be and nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>But, in a way, it was nice for the lads too. After thousands of
+years of man's almost rabid determination to destroy the brightest
+and best of his young, the world had finally found a place for
+the bright boy.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, probably because of the early dawn hour, there
+were only two of them in the generator room. As expected, they
+were arguing over the space-jump band. Frank was standing
+over to one side, observing but not participating. His cap was
+pushed back on his blond head, his big face expressionless. It
+was common gossip throughout flight crews everywhere that
+Frank, blindfolded, could take a cruiser apart and put it back
+together without missing a motion.</p>
+
+<p>"The jump band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip,"
+one student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out
+a field in the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before
+rejoined. Its width is as variable as we need it, up to a light-year."</p>
+
+<p>"Only it hasn't any width at all," the other student argued.
+"That's the whole point. The Moebius strip has only one edge,
+so it can't have width. We enter that edge, go through a line
+that doesn't exist, and come out a light-year away, without taking
+any longer than the time to pass a point."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But that's <i>what</i> happens, not <i>how</i>," the other shouted angrily.
+"Everybody knows <i>what</i> happens. Tell me <i>how</i> and maybe I'll
+listen."</p>
+
+<p>Tom caught his flight engineer's eye and signaled with his head
+that it might be a good idea to get rid of the students. Any other
+time it would be all right, a part of their stand-by job, but they'd
+got word last night to have the ship in readiness from six o'clock
+on. They might have to wait all day, but then again, some E might
+get an idea and want to go shooting out to Eden right off.</p>
+
+<p>Frank caught the signal, grinned, and began to herd the two
+students toward the door. They were in such heated argument
+now, accusing one another of parrot repetition instead of thinking
+for himself, that they didn't realize that they were being nudged
+out of the ship, down its ramp, and out on the field.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think it hasn't been educational, and all," Frank murmured
+to them as he got them off the ramp. "You get the how of
+it figured out, you let me know."</p>
+
+<p>The two looked at him as if he might be an interesting phenomenon,
+decided he wasn't, and wandered away, back toward the
+school dormitories, still arguing.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think a quiet milk run out to Saturn would have
+its brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back
+inside the ship. Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding.</p>
+
+<p>There was no tension between them. They had worked together
+so long that they had got over all the attraction-repulsion conflicts
+which operate far beneath the surface mind to cause likes and
+dislikes. Now they accepted one another in the way a man accepts
+his own hands&mdash;proud of them when they do something with extra
+skill, making allowances when they fumble; but never considering
+doing without them.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonder who the E will be this time?" Frank asked, without
+too much concern. It didn't really matter. An E was an E, for
+better or for worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't heard," Tom answered. "Probably not decided yet.
+If the Senior E's think it isn't much of a problem, they might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+send a Junior. Or if they don't want to be bothered, they might
+send a Junior who's up for his solo problem."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever, or whatever, I'm sure it will be interesting," Frank
+commented with a grin. Tom returned the grin. There wasn't any
+malice in it, nor any of the basic enmity and destructiveness of
+the stupid toward the bright, just a recognition that an E was
+an E. They had a vast respect for an E, but you couldn't get
+around it that some of them were&mdash;well, maybe eccentric was
+the word.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear there's trouble on that planet we're going to&mdash;Eden, isn't
+it?" Frank commented.</p>
+
+<p>"You think we'd be hauling an E out there if there weren't?"
+Tom countered wryly.</p>
+
+<p>They continued to check over each item in the generator room,
+their flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation.
+They gave the room extra care this time because there
+had been some quick-fingered students around who just might
+have got it into their heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied
+at last that there had been no subtle meddling, they snapped the
+cowl of the generator back into position. They took one more
+sharp look around, then walked, single file, up the narrow passage
+to the control room. Louie LeBeau was sitting in the astronavigator's
+seat, checking over his star charts and instruments.
+He glanced up at them as they came level with his cubicle. He
+was the third man of the team, as used to them as they were to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fourteen hop adjustments to get us past Pluto and out of the
+heavy traffic," he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid
+brown eyes were perpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over
+at Traffic that they're going to provide a freeway out of the solar
+system so we can take it in one hop, but they don't do it. Wonder
+when we'll ever go modern, start doing things scientific?"</p>
+
+<p>They paid no attention to his grumbling. That was just Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Then how many hops to Eden, after Pluto?" Tom asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I figure twenty," Louie answered. "Can't take full light-year<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+leaps every time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff
+in the way to louse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded.
+There'll be no trouble getting <i>to</i> Eden, no trouble <i>getting</i> there.
+Make it in about fourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven
+lousy little light-years. Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch.
+Wait'll the union agent hears you're working me fourteen hours
+without a relief. And are you letting me get my rest now, so I
+can work fourteen hours? Or are you stopping me from resting
+with a lot of questions?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you think there may be trouble <i>after</i> we get to Eden?"
+Tom asked.</p>
+
+<p>Louie looked at him. There was no fear in the soft, brown eyes;
+just an enormous indignation that life should always treat him
+so dirty.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+<h2>4</h2>
+
+<p>Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom
+mirror and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks.
+That should take care of the beard problem for the next six
+months or so. He leaned forward and examined the fine lines
+beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes. Well, that was one
+of the signs he'd reached the thirty mark. One couldn't stay forever
+at the peak of youth&mdash;not yet, anyway. Perhaps he should
+think about that sometime.</p>
+
+<p>Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....</p>
+
+<p>He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom
+door watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.</p>
+
+<p>"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There
+was a questioning note in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Want to keep handsome," he said lightly. "Never know when
+I might have to run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one
+of my other wives to catch me with stubble on my face."</p>
+
+<p>It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce
+the topic foremost in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo
+to qualify me for my big E. I'm due, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Linda chose to avoid coming directly to grips with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yehudi is already at the door," she said, and made a face of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+exasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals
+the orderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can
+have you all to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"It's better if you get used to him," Cal cautioned. "Turn off
+the signal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi,
+you'd have twenty rushing in to see what was wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take
+his morning shower without an observer standing by to see that
+he doesn't drown himself or swallow the soap," she commented
+with a touch of acid.</p>
+
+<p>"Get used to it, woman," he commanded. "There's only one
+observer now. When&mdash;if I get my Senior rating, there'll be three."</p>
+
+<p>She didn't say anything. Instead she stepped over to him,
+pressed her nude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away," she said, and
+glittered her eyes at him wickedly.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't, but it's a good idea," Cal grinned at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You could tell him to go away," she whispered with a little
+pout.</p>
+
+<p>She was fighting. She was fighting with the only weapon she
+had to hold him, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown.
+He knew it, and the bitterness in her eyes, back of her
+teasing, showed she knew he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked
+her hair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it
+in his chest. He felt her sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom,
+laid her gently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who
+stood expressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed
+and held her head in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't fight it," he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has
+had to go."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the first time it ever happened to me," she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew when you married me.... You agreed...."</p>
+
+<p>"It was easy to agree, then. There was the glamor of being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+known as the wife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just
+you, and the thought of losing you, never seeing you again."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't gone yet," he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll
+get the job. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of
+them might want it. Even if I do get the problem, who says I
+won't be back? You take old McGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day.
+He's been an E for nigh on to fifty years. He's still around, you'll
+notice."</p>
+
+<p>She was quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his
+dark hair, blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent
+head, the slope of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all
+the masculine grace and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into
+her mouth. All the beauty she might never see again, feel enfolded
+around her, enfold with herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a little fool," she said through clenched teeth. "Of course
+you'll be back. And you'd better make it quick, or I'll come after
+you."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled
+body on the bed, pulled the sheet over her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go back to sleep," he suggested. "Rest. I'll have
+breakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the
+Eden briefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning."</p>
+
+<p>Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently
+he kissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try
+to hold him.</p>
+
+<p>He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept
+her eyes closed. He stood up then, and signaled the orderly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take my shower now," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The orderly didn't speak, just followed him into the bathroom
+to stand in the doorway and watch him through the shower glass.
+He was rigidly obeying the cardinal rule of E.H.Q.</p>
+
+<p>Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an
+E. The whole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>How much of the future of the universe depended upon his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+not interrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him
+to say. He sighed. He thought of his own wife&mdash;shrewish, fat,
+coarse, always complaining. He wondered what she would do if
+he picked her up, carried her to bed, closed her eyes with his
+fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'd be speechless.</p>
+
+<p>He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about
+fifty pounds.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already
+there&mdash;McGinnis and Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade
+more cordial, a shade more interested than usual. They seemed,
+this time, to be looking at him as if he were a person, not
+merely a Junior E. When he turned away from them to greet
+the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked the club-room
+privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faces
+were frankly envious.</p>
+
+<p>Eden was to be his problem!</p>
+
+<p>He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through
+his shower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment,
+he'd been nagged with the fear he might not be considered;
+that the grief of Linda and her rise above it would lead only to
+anticlimax. By the time he'd got to the club-room door, followed
+by his orderly, he had already conditioned himself to disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he
+wanted for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"You fellows join me in something?" he asked both Juniors and
+Seniors.</p>
+
+<p>"A second cup of coffee," Wong agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"A second bourbon," old McGinnis said drily.</p>
+
+<p>The Juniors shook their heads negatively. Yesterday they had
+been his constant companions, only a few degrees below him in
+accomplishment, pushing rapidly to become his equal competitors
+for the next solo. Today, this morning, there was already a gap
+between them and him, a chasm they would make no move to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+bridge until they had earned the right. They seated themselves
+at another table, apart.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem,"
+McGinnis commented while orderlies placed food and
+drink in front of them. "We ought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?"</p>
+
+<p>"First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly.
+"Or perhaps Malinkoff, if he shows up."</p>
+
+<p>"Malinkoff is too deep in something to come to the briefing,"
+Wong said.</p>
+
+<p>"Wong and I came only to help on your first solo, if we can,"
+McGinnis said. "Always think a young fellow needs a little send-off.
+I remember, about fifty years ago, more or less ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Worst thing to guard against," Wong interrupted, "is disappointment.
+This whole thing might add up to nothing. Might not
+turn out to be a genuine solo at all, just something any errand
+boy could do. In that case it wouldn't qualify you. You know
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give real
+challenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become
+an E. You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference,
+something that required original thinking, the E kind of thinking.
+You brought it off successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed
+what you'd done. If they thought it was worth something,
+you got your big E. If they didn't, you tried again. And you didn't
+get it by default, just because somebody thought there should be
+a given quota of Seniors on the list.</p>
+
+<p>"Little or big," he added, "I'd like the problem."</p>
+
+<p>They said no more. He knew the score. He'd had twelve years
+of the most intensive training the E's themselves could devise.
+He knew that sometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve
+years chasing down jobs which anybody on the spot could have
+solved if they'd used their heads a little before they ran on to
+something that challenged that training. He'd be lucky if this was
+big enough&mdash;but not too big.</p>
+
+<p>That was in their minds, too.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+<h2>5</h2>
+
+<p>On ordinary days there were only the usual few science reporters
+in the press room of E.H.Q. These held their jobs by the difficult
+compromise between the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and
+their publishers' equal insistence upon sensationalism.</p>
+
+<p>Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like
+television writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to
+the mass by writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old;
+since the facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit
+the open space or time slot; even these reporters had a difficult
+time of maintaining the usual odds&mdash;that there is only a twenty-to-one
+chance that anything said in the newspapers or on the air
+may be accurate.</p>
+
+<p>But on this morning the press room was crowded. In spite of all
+efforts of journalism to stir up old animosities to make news,
+or to force factional leaders into rashness which could not be
+settled without violence; the various states of world government
+insisted upon negotiating ethnical differences amicably, and
+factional leaders persisted in keeping their heads. There had been
+no world-shaking discoveries made in the last week or so; the
+public no longer believed that changing a screw thread was
+exactly a scientific "break-through"; no real or imagined scandals
+seemed of such journalistic stature as to work the public into a
+frenzy of intolerance for one another's aberrations.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question
+circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a
+strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from
+Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified into a
+flood.</p>
+
+<p>EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST
+and progressed normally to COLONY WIPED OUT.</p>
+
+<p>That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one
+in journalism. If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top
+of the news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's
+headlines in the press of today's new hate and panic.</p>
+
+<p>The public, with an established addiction to ever increasing
+daily doses of sensationalism, and deprived of its shots through
+this dry spell, snapped out of its apathy to greet this new thrill
+with vociferous calls to editors, wires to congressmen, telegrams
+to the Administration.</p>
+
+<p>What are we doing about this colony that has been wiped
+out? Where is our space battle fleet? Who is going to be punished?</p>
+
+<p>It was an overnight sensation, and on this morning following the
+news leak there could even be seen some secretaries to the writers
+for top commentators and columnists in the crowded press room.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally these stood in little groups apart and associated only
+with each other to maintain the literary tradition of proper
+insulation from the realities of what was going on in the rest of
+the world. Obviously no first-rate writer could have afforded to
+appear in person not only because of damage to his stature
+lest it be noted he was doing his own spadework; but, more
+important, first-hand observation might limit his capacity for
+rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the bias
+of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to maintain
+author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism
+required by the employers, and best not to put oneself
+in such a position.</p>
+
+<p>Now two of these secretaries could be seen over in a corner of
+the press room exchanging their views, probing one another for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+information. No one thought it curious they weren't trying to
+get the information from source for everyone in journalism understands
+the importance lies in what the competition is going to
+say, not in what happened.</p>
+
+<p>"How long has it been since the first message came through,
+or didn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fourteen hours, about."</p>
+
+<p>"We could have had a rescue fleet out there by now."</p>
+
+<p>"To rescue 'em from what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever's wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand an assistant attorney general is checking into it."</p>
+
+<p>"So Gunderson's still gunning for the E's, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Has he ever let up since he became attorney general? Gripes
+his soul he can't arrest them for not doing what he wants, or for
+doing what he doesn't want."</p>
+
+<p>"How'd they ever get immune, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Skip class that day in history?"</p>
+
+<p>"Must've."</p>
+
+<p>"Vague, myself. Right after the insurrection. Seems there were
+two powers, Russia and America. The people of the world got
+fed up, gave a pox to both their houses, boiled over, formed a
+world government. Somehow the scientists got in their licks in
+the turmoil, pointed out that scientists who have to confine their
+discoveries to what suits the ideology of the non-scientists can
+only find limited solutions."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a deal."</p>
+
+<p>"Could only happen in a world turmoil, when everything was
+fluid. Anyhow, they got away with it, for a certain group,
+Extrapolators, had to be free to extrapolate without fear of
+reprisal."</p>
+
+<p>"Boy, something. Imagine. Take any dame you want. Nobody
+can squawk. Take any money, riches you want. Nobody can stop
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Funny thing. Nothing like that happens. Idea seems to be that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+when you don't have to fight against restrictions, they aren't important
+any more. At least not to an E."</p>
+
+<p>"Guess that's why one of 'em pointed out that police are the
+major cause of crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Whether he was right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson
+into a tail spin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped
+on that subject. He'll get 'em one of these days. Even an E can
+make a mistake, and when one of 'em does, he'll be there."</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno, the public has a lot of hero-worship for the E. Pretty
+tough for any politician to buck that."</p>
+
+<p>"The public! You know as well as I do&mdash;they think what we tell
+'em to think, you and me."</p>
+
+<p>"You think that's why he's got a man out here on this Eden
+thing? Looking for a mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe. Maybe not. He just never passes up the chance that
+maybe this time he can grab something."</p>
+
+<p>"Between Gunderson and the E's, I'll take the E's."</p>
+
+<p>"Your boss feel the same way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Far as I know."</p>
+
+<p>"But if your boss changed his mind, you would have an agonizing
+reappraisal."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sure. A guy's got to eat."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+<h2>6</h2>
+
+<p>The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance
+of solidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table.
+Now, where the west wall had been, another room seemed to
+join this one, an office. A large man in a brown suit made an
+entrance through the door of the office and sat down back of the
+desk. His face was drawn with weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the
+Eden area. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the
+usual rules of procedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the
+scientists involved in this problem have been up all night reviewing
+every known fact about Eden. We ask the indulgence of the
+E's not only for the kind of knowledge that may prove too little,
+but for any strain caused by trying to assemble such massive data
+into order in so short a time.</p>
+
+<p>"For the press, let me say we are aware of some questions of
+why we didn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as
+the call failed to come through. A military man does not rush
+troops into battle until he has some idea of what he must oppose;
+even a plumber needs to get some idea of the problem before
+he knows what tools to take with him. It would serve no constructive
+purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out to rescue, and
+might prove the highest folly."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All over E.H.Q., in the various buildings where anybody was
+directly concerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared
+here in the club room. The tri-di screen wall would seem
+to join the room of the person speaking. A pressed button signaled
+the desire to speak, and like the chairman of a meeting, Bill
+Hayes decided whom to recognize. It was a way to conduct a
+meeting of two or three thousand people as intimately as a small
+conference.</p>
+
+<p>"The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing,"
+Hayes continued formally. He faded out his own office, and was
+immediately replaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review
+of Eden was under way.</p>
+
+<p>With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references
+to documentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial
+position of Ceti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II&mdash;popularly
+called, he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he
+preferred a little less popularizing of scientific data, a little more
+exactitude. He would, therefore, continue to call it Ceti II.</p>
+
+<p>He reminded Cal of certain teachers in schools he had been
+asked to leave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically,
+positively, they clung to their exactitudes&mdash;like frightened little
+children in a chaotic world too big for them to face, hanging on
+to mother's skirts, something safe, sure, dependable.</p>
+
+<p>The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish
+the position of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms
+of third-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found
+where the man said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly,
+that the essence might be that Eden was there no longer; that
+he'd better pay closest attention to everything said, however
+positive and didactic, lest he find his own mind closed to a solution.
+He reminded himself that, after all, these people had worked
+all night for his benefit, while he lay peacefully in Linda's arms.</p>
+
+<p>He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little
+phrase, carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+Didactic pedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists,
+not vaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out
+of space to the surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling
+it Eden, just so all the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II.
+This was supposed to be humorous, and he waited until all the
+viewers had had a chance to chuckle with him.</p>
+
+<p>If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and
+apology for this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel
+it worth breaking up the review to oblige him.</p>
+
+<p>After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present
+his capsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.</p>
+
+<p>There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands
+of islands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea
+surface. The islands had not been counted, he admitted, and
+then needlessly explained that Eden had been discovered only
+ten years ago. Since universe exploration was expanding much
+faster than properly qualified scientists could follow to catalogue
+conditions, details such as this had been left for future colonists
+to complete.</p>
+
+<p>He took time out to complain that the younger generation was
+too dazzled by glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars,
+sports stars, jet jockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough
+going into the solid sciences to keep up with the work to be
+done.</p>
+
+<p>A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with
+the injection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in
+intelligence, and if the Administration would just pay attention
+and let him have the grant he was asking, he felt confident that
+research in how to change the human kidney structure would
+take us a long mutant leap ahead toward humans with super-intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested
+that the Eden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+get that one out of the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions,
+indicated that they did not appreciate being frustrated,
+hampered, driven&mdash;but they did comply.</p>
+
+<p>Back to Eden they went.</p>
+
+<p>The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area.
+Partly this was due to the variable plane rotation that heated all
+parts evenly, partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It
+had been noted that there was such an interweaving of cool and
+warm currents all over the globe that a relatively even temperature
+was maintained throughout. Some differential in spots, of
+course, enough to cause rainfall, but no real violence of storms,
+not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes here on
+Earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they
+could send news, then," Wong suggested in an aside to Cal.</p>
+
+<p>"Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because
+it wasn't supposed to happen," Cal said.</p>
+
+<p>Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew
+Wong had laid a little trap to see how easily he might be lulled
+into a premature conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but
+only to the extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked
+with a springier step, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause
+nausea, even to the inexperienced. The oxygen content of the air,
+in fact the whole make-up of the air, was so close to Earth
+quality there were no breathing adaptations necessary.</p>
+
+<p>So much for generalities. He went on to document them with
+exactitudes. He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the
+distribution of rainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air
+masses. Cal's doubt was not appeased. Weather prediction was
+about on a par with race-horse handicapping, and easy to explain
+after it happened.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed
+their duet to the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists.</p>
+
+<p>A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+major theme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion
+of the plant forms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems,
+roots, flowers. A choir of zoologists joined their voices here to
+point out the large number of small meat animals, fish, and
+crustaceans&mdash;with the whole thing sounding like a pean of thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>After two hours, the condensed information added up to a most
+interesting fact. In essence, due to quite <i>natural</i> conditions&mdash;odd
+how much the scientists seemed to need stressing the word
+"natural"&mdash;Eden was more favorable to easy human life than
+Earth!</p>
+
+<p>Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student
+or apprentice might distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing
+question or so. Say the range of easily possible conditions on
+any given planet was a scale ten miles in length. Then that area
+on the scale where man could exist without artificial aids would
+still be less than a hair's breadth. And now to find a planet more
+nearly perfect for man than the one on which he evolved....</p>
+
+<p>Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention?
+He decided to nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the
+too obvious brought out things not obvious at all.</p>
+
+<p>"How frequently," he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do
+we find a mass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve
+at right angles to its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?"</p>
+
+<p>"It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of
+land and water masses, such as we have on Ceti II," the first
+astrophysicist answered.</p>
+
+<p>"How frequently do we find that?" Cal repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I know of no other," the astrophysicist replied shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Any evidence of tampering with those ocean currents to get
+them flowing so beneficially?" Cal asked.</p>
+
+<p>"None yet discovered," an oceanographer cut in.</p>
+
+<p>Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't
+been and couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself
+and spoiled the effect of open-mindedness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligence
+for that," the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a
+feat would require enormous engineering works. Such works under
+the ocean would be matched by comparable works on land,
+and would therefore show up in our aerial surveys, however
+ancient and overgrown."</p>
+
+<p>Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization,
+yes, that would have left traces. But what of some other kind?
+Perhaps a deep-sea kind that had never come out upon the land?
+Never mind the arguments that such a civilization could not have
+developed&mdash;that was looking at it from the human point of view
+again. Had man grown so accustomed to not finding comparable
+intelligence anywhere in the universe he had begun to discount,
+or forget, there could be?</p>
+
+<p>The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the
+prevalent animals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in
+land animals higher than a large rodent, no sea mammals at all,
+no fish larger than the tarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of
+primates.</p>
+
+<p>A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of
+minute life forms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again
+expound the old theory of space-floating life spores to seed all
+favorable matter, and thus develop similar forms through evolution,
+wherever found. Quickly and tactfully Bill Hayes nudged
+him back on the track before the expected storm of controversy
+could break out.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one.
+Quite aside from the emergency of what might be happening to
+the colonists, there was growing clamor from the people and
+pressure from various governmental bodies to get off the dime
+and get going&mdash;rescue those people, or, cynically, at least make a
+show of action to quell the flood of telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted
+the pressures in favor of doing a workmanlike job in preparation
+for a genuine rescue instead of a haphazard show, but was mindful
+of them nevertheless.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>7</h2>
+
+<p>Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial
+cannot help but realize that "government by law instead of man"
+is a mere political phrase without meaning in reality. The
+ascendancy of me-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in
+the human psyche that abstract idealisms must always take second
+place where such ascendancy is threatened. Thus we see that
+the belly-crawler, meek and subservient to the judge, comes off
+with a token sentence while the man who attempts to maintain
+his pride, his rights, his self-respect gets the book thrown at him.</p>
+
+<p>No practical attorney is unaware that the judgment of his case
+depends largely upon who presides, the whims, the prejudices,
+the moods, the viewpoint of the judge; and that the law merely
+provides justification for the imposition of those whims, moods,
+prejudices, and viewpoints.</p>
+
+<p>And ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>The announcement at E.H.Q. that a Junior E would be given
+this problem gave Gunderson's man the opening he had hoped
+to find. A hurried call to the capitol and a brief conversation with
+Gunderson himself confirmed his conclusions. Perhaps the E was
+above all law, and it might not be expedient to challenge that
+right now, but immunity did not necessarily extend to the
+Junior E.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In view of the known ambitions of certain judges, it should
+not be difficult to make a test case of this&mdash;whether the E's had
+a right to jeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an
+unqualified man to the problem.</p>
+
+<p>A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, the
+apprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle
+of the E extend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out
+did the Administration of E.H.Q. extend to substitute for government?
+How much of a state within a state had E.H.Q. become?</p>
+
+<p>Now, while the public was clamoring for action, and E.H.Q.
+was, instead, droning on through a mass of inconsequential detail,
+now while public sentiment was crystallizing, or could be
+crystallized into placing human welfare over science procedures,
+now was the time.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor
+the request of the attorney general.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+<h2>8</h2>
+
+<p>After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the
+review.</p>
+
+<p>The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously
+favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties.
+No indeed they had given the full routine of tests and had
+come up with exactly nothing that might be unfavorable to man,
+at least not more so than on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional
+colonists had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They
+were temperamentally suited to the work.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as
+lightly as possible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was
+to adapt primitive ecology to human needs, how it could be done.
+It was not the job of this first colony to explore, to catalogue.
+They were expected to do only what any pioneer does&mdash;endure,
+exist, and prove it possible.</p>
+
+<p>In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there
+had been more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony.
+The burden of their complaint was that they found living too
+easy. They were professionals, accustomed to challenge.</p>
+
+<p>They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be
+transferred and the planet given over to the second-phase colonists.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living
+was making farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were
+getting soft, ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and
+coping with hostile conditions. There had even been threats that
+one of these days they would all pile into their ship and come
+back home. So far he had stopped them by threats of his own,
+that he would personally see they never got another assignment.</p>
+
+<p>He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough
+time. Some organisms took longer than that to develop in the
+human body or mind, to make their inimical presence known.
+Some did not show up until the second or third generation; which
+was the reason for the second-phase colonists, to live there for
+three generations, before the planet could be opened to young
+John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning a little
+chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredom
+might be just the very inimical condition they were having to
+test.</p>
+
+<p>Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
+colonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction
+from their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a
+means of drawing attention, getting an investigation of their
+plight. Drastic, perhaps, but man had been known to do drastic
+things before when he felt treated unfairly.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let
+his disappointment override his interest. Such would be an
+administrative hassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even
+a Junior.</p>
+
+<p>Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the
+whole of the problem.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement.
+In the center was a small mountain. It had been given the
+name of Crystal Palace Mountain because it was crested with an
+outcropping of amethystine quartz-crystal structures in <i>natural</i>
+pillars, domes, arches, spires.</p>
+
+<p>Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+away from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay
+fertile valleys watered by perpetual streams.</p>
+
+<p>It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the
+mountain and the sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit
+had named the first settlement Appletree, because there they
+would gain knowledge, and everybody knows that the apple was
+the Garden of Eden's fruit of knowledge. No one quite knew
+when the name Eden was first applied to the planet. Suddenly,
+during the first scientific expedition, everyone was referring to it
+that way.</p>
+
+<p>"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of
+course we still designate it as Ceti II."</p>
+
+<p>As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes
+of progress pictures over the space-jump band. Here was the
+valley before they had started to fell trees. Here it was in progress
+of clearing. Here they were converting the trees into lumber for
+houses. Here were the first houses so that some could move out
+of the living quarters in the ship. Here they were uprooting the
+stumps, turning the sod, planting Earth seed. These were barns
+for the cattle and horses sent with them from Earth.</p>
+
+<p>A collection of community buildings came next in the series of
+photographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree,
+with a collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures
+showed it all as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley
+in Ohio. Productive, progressive, and peaceful&mdash;from a distance.</p>
+
+<p>But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed
+normally also.</p>
+
+<p>The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. His
+department would have been most alarmed had differences and
+schisms <i>not</i> developed. <i>That</i> would have been an abnormality
+calling for investigation.</p>
+
+<p>Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the common
+temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities
+developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+groups, each group considering its stand to be the right one, and
+therefore all who disagreed wrong.</p>
+
+<p>The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember
+the classical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness.
+He stands upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the
+astonishing realization that he can see about the same distance
+in all directions.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center
+of creation!"</p>
+
+<p>His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found
+he was still at the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the
+most important event in all creation!"</p>
+
+<p>Still later comes another realization.</p>
+
+<p>"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine,
+are also at the center of things and share my importance.
+Those who are not with me, and not a part of me-and-mine,
+are not at the center of things, and are therefore of an inferior
+nature!"</p>
+
+<p>It could readily be seen&mdash;the psychologist was allowing a note
+of dryness to enter his comments&mdash;that the bulk of man's philosophy,
+religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even his
+scientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; the
+supreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at
+the center of things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine,
+on the outside, and therefore inferior.</p>
+
+<p>There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the
+psychologist left the generalities behind and came back to the
+issue.</p>
+
+<p>The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms,
+for there was no common enemy to band the group into one
+solid me-and-mine organism&mdash;the audience would recall that when
+Earth was divided into nations it had always been imperative to
+find a common enemy in some other nation; that this was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+only cohesive force man had been able to find to keep the nation
+from disintegrating.</p>
+
+<p>Another nudge.</p>
+
+<p>Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings.
+At last, as expected, some dissident individuals and family groups
+could no longer tolerate the irritation of living in the same
+neighborhood with the rest. These broke off from the main
+colony, and migrated across the near ridge to settle in an adjacent
+valley.</p>
+
+<p>Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing
+out in classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For,
+as everyone knew, had men ever been able to settle their differences,
+had man been able to get along peacefully with himself,
+he might have developed no civilization at all.</p>
+
+<p>Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the
+most potent of all forces in driving him out to the stars.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently
+decided he could no longer stand the stench of the psychologist
+and abruptly cut him off. He himself took over the summation.
+It boiled down to a simple statement.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance
+or not. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the
+normal course of E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They
+had been collated and extended both by human and machine
+minds to detect any subtle trends away from norm.</p>
+
+<p>There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might
+as well have originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They
+were about as unusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.</p>
+
+<p>Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+<h2>9</h2>
+
+<p>"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's,
+following the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to
+effortless human existence than Earth."</p>
+
+<p>He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in
+readiness for take-off.</p>
+
+<p>McGinnis and Wong looked at one another.</p>
+
+<p>"You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?"
+Wong asked. His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was
+banished from an ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat
+of his brow."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that so much," Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept
+of evolution is haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that
+far off. Probably the colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep
+thinking that when we want to catch rats we set a trap with a
+better food than they can get normally."</p>
+
+<p>There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch
+human beings?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't exactly think that. I just keep wondering," Cal answered.</p>
+
+<p>They were interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on
+the door. This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+to interrupt the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking.
+The three Juniors, who had been sitting by, listening, arose
+from their seats and stood facing the door. The orderlies looked
+to the E's for instruction. At a nod from McGinnis, one of them
+walked over to the door and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Hayes was standing there, flushed with embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon, E's," he said hurriedly. "I'm just an errand boy,
+under instruction from General Administration. We have been
+served with a court injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior
+to the Eden matter."</p>
+
+<p>Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment
+to have his chance snatched away from him. He should have gone
+immediately the review was over, without waiting for any advice
+McGinnis and Wong might care to give. Now ...</p>
+
+<p>McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door
+that opened on another hallway. He flashed a command with
+his eyes to get going, then turned back to Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>"I was unaware that the E's must heed court orders," he said
+frostily.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a question of where civil jurisdiction stops and E jurisdiction
+takes over," Hayes explained nervously. "While the
+colonists are employed by E.H.Q., and under their direction, it
+is held they are also Earth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil
+authority feels it must answer for their welfare."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of
+World Congress some seventy years ago," Wong said mildly.</p>
+
+<p>"The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the
+Senior E; just the Junior, who really isn't an E yet."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the decision of the E's that a Junior will handle this
+problem," McGinnis said, and turned his back as if that settled
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes cleared his throat nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said. "If it were up to me ... Well, the argument
+before the court ran this way: That where there is no
+restriction upon the E in arriving at a solution, there is also no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+compulsion upon civil authority to adopt that solution. They cited
+instances ... Well, any number of instances. It seems ..."</p>
+
+<p>Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now,
+while Hayes's perspiring attention was focused imploringly on
+Wong and McGinnis, he slipped out the door.</p>
+
+<p>The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's
+request quickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me out to the Eden ship," Cal said quietly. "You know
+where it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls
+and Cal slipped into the seat beside him.</p>
+
+<p>They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear
+exit of the E building, down the maze of ramps and out across
+the landing field to the entrance of the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction,
+but none were in evidence. As they drew up to the open
+door, he saw Lynwood and Norton, pilot and engineer, standing
+just inside waiting for him. There was no strain in their faces to
+show they had received orders not to take off with him.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly
+drove it back to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew
+would be the E's orderlies.</p>
+
+<p>Cal climbed the short ramp and entered the ship.</p>
+
+<p>"You have clearance to take off at once?" he asked Lynwood.</p>
+
+<p>Lynwood nodded. "Since early morning," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine. Let's get going," Cal said. "I'm in a hurry, of course," he
+added with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed
+and returned it. Apparently this E was human.</p>
+
+<p>It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where
+Louie sat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for
+the ship to lift clear. And still no command came over the radio to
+halt them.</p>
+
+<p>Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really
+felt that a simple injunction would stop everything, that the E's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+would not challenge this encroachment? Was he playing some
+deeper game, allowing the Junior to slip through his fingers in the
+hope he would louse up the Eden rescue, add strength to the
+campaign to bring the E's back under civil control&mdash;his control?</p>
+
+<p>Or had someone genuinely slipped?</p>
+
+<p>The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not
+come until their second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit.
+Then it came from space police in charge of shipping traffic at
+that point.</p>
+
+<p>"I am under orders from E.H.Q. to proceed," Tom answered,
+after a quick, questioning look at Cal.</p>
+
+<p>"The attorney general's office orders you to halt," the voice
+commanded.</p>
+
+<p>Tom looked at Cal again, questioning. This was bucking the
+federal government, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it
+was written on if he ignored the order. To say nothing of any
+other punishment they might choose to hand him.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep going," Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump
+as quickly as you can."</p>
+
+<p>"I am under orders to keep going," Tom answered the police.
+If he refused the request of an E, a lifetime of work would go
+down the drain.</p>
+
+<p>Over in his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through
+the intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie
+were working as one man.</p>
+
+<p>"I am under orders to disable you if you refuse," the police
+warned.</p>
+
+<p>"We have an E on board," Tom answered. "You'd be risking a
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>"I am advised he is a Junior E," the voice said in clipped speech.
+"Not such a risk."</p>
+
+<p>"Far as I'm concerned," Tom answered laconically, "he's an E.
+I have to follow his orders."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+an instant silence. They were at the approach to the asteroid
+belt.</p>
+
+<p>"They can get us here," Louie spoke up. "We have to give over
+controls so they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the
+microsecond on these asteroid movements. They have to calculate
+a path in short hops, and take us through a step at a time. I keep
+saying there ought to be an expressway out of the solar system,
+but ..."</p>
+
+<p>"What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked.
+"Get over it instead of through it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's illegal," Louie complained.</p>
+
+<p>"Our necks are already out," Tom said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Okay, you're the boss. But I'll have to figure it. It takes time to
+figure it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, get going on it."</p>
+
+<p>"There's stuff all over," Louie explained. "Not just a band, like
+most people think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too.
+Not so thick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a
+bunch of little jumps."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie,"
+Frank reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>The radio gave its hum of life, and a voice came through.</p>
+
+<p>"We have orders from space police not to escort you through,
+to turn you back."</p>
+
+<p>"This is an E ship, with an E on board. His command is to
+come through," Tom said.</p>
+
+<p>"I just work here," the voice answered as if it were bored and
+tired. "I take my orders from Space Control."</p>
+
+<p>Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look
+out of a corner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to
+bother him. His other hand was speeding through the movements
+of manipulating the astrocalculator. Then he nodded his head,
+still not looking up, and the co-ordinates flashed in front of Frank.
+Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frank set up the pattern of the jump
+band.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I take my orders from the E's," Tom answered in a voice
+that matched the boredom, tiredness. Then with a nod from
+Frank, "Now!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to add at least an hour," Louie complained. "I've got
+to pick my way through this muck."</p>
+
+<p>"We've got time now," Tom answered easily. "Not likely they
+can find us out here, away from the regular lanes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless we run across a prowl ship," Louie said. "You know
+there's some smuggling, and now and then a shipping company
+thinks it can beat the rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same
+thing we're doing. The prowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're
+not the first ones to try it."</p>
+
+<p>"Just keep figuring, Louie," Tom said.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right!" Louie quarreled back.</p>
+
+<p>Tom looked at Cal and grimaced.</p>
+
+<p>"Louie's all right," he said. "Just has to complain."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure of it," Cal answered with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>It took closer to two hours. They had no way of knowing how
+many times the space police had made a fix on their position
+only too late to catch them hovering there. There must have been
+some fix made and a pretty careful calculation of where they could
+go next, for as they neared the outer moons of Jupiter the radio
+crackled into life again.</p>
+
+<p>"This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take
+over. We will disintegrate your ship if you resist."</p>
+
+<p>Cal took the microphone in his own hand to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"We intend to keep going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional
+dispute between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will
+not allow you to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of
+orders to disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in
+person. Meanwhile you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol
+if those orders are confirmed."</p>
+
+<p>Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed.</p>
+
+<p>In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+from the attorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say,
+Lynwood, what is this all about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who,"
+Lynwood answered. "I just work here," he added tiredly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in the
+courts now. You understand, we had our orders."</p>
+
+<p>"You understand, so did I." Tom answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," the voice answered, and cut out.</p>
+
+<p>Cal wondered whether the orders to disintegrate had been a
+bluff. Would the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship
+with even a Junior E on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of
+the local police, one they didn't expect to have called.</p>
+
+<p>Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's
+hands by defying him, and getting that defiance on record was
+what the man had wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than
+merely finding out what had happened to some colonists. Whatever
+it was, he'd better find a successful solution, because the attorney
+general was counting on him to fail. And if he did fail, certainly
+the position of the Junior E would be altered, and possibly a deep
+thrust into the very heart of the Senior E position, as well.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+<h2>10</h2>
+
+<p>Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no
+trouble getting <i>to</i> Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating
+the globe while still in space.</p>
+
+<p>Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying
+spiral, they had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal
+Palace Mountain at its center. There was only one such spot on
+Eden, and in their telescope viewer its crystalline spires and
+minarets sparkled back at them like a diamond set in jade.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when
+they amplified their magnification to get a close look at the
+Appletree village before dropping down to land.</p>
+
+<p>Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and
+he stuck to his claim stubbornly.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no settlement there. No sign there had ever been.</p>
+
+<p>Louie could see that for himself, they told him. There was
+nothing but virgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old.
+There were splashes of rolling meadows spotted here and there
+by other trees, untilled meadows sloping downward from the
+ridges to the river. And not a blemish nor scar to show that man
+had ever landed there.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine thing," Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get
+us clear across the universe in great shape, and then you can't
+even find the landing field."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Louie was in no mood for banter. He wished Tom would
+go back and hold the manual controls of the ship instead of
+letting it hover on automatic. He wished Cal would go back to his
+stateroom and think. He wished Frank Norton would shut up. He
+wished they wouldn't all stand over him, reading his charts over
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>In irritated silence he reduced the viewscope dimensions to
+scale, and snapped a picture of the whole island. He took the
+fresh picture, still moist from its self-developing camera, and laid
+it beside the chart. Wordlessly, for the benefit of them all, he traced
+his pencil over the outlines of the chart and their duplicates in the
+picture. As in comparing fingerprints, he flicked his pencil at the
+points of identity. There were far too many to ignore. He poked
+the point of his pencil at Appletree where it was located on the
+chart. Then he picked out the same location in the picture.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the science of navigation that was wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just one of those dirty tricks life plays on a fellow," Tom
+said over Cal's shoulder. "You got us in the right place, Louie, but
+probably in the wrong time slot. You've warped us right out of our
+own time, and Eden hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe won't
+be for another million years. Maybe, back on Earth, man is just
+discovering fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Norton agreed. "Or maybe in the wrong dimension.
+You and your fancy navigation. Now you take a midgit-idgit
+navigating machine. It wouldn't know how to pull such fancy
+short cuts. Take a little longer, maybe, but when we got there
+we'd be there."</p>
+
+<p>They were both talking nonsense and knew it. Time and
+dimensional travel were still purely theoretical. Louie ignored the
+ribbing with elaborate patience.</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I think," he asked seriously. "I think the whole
+thing's a hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there.
+I'll betcha the colonists have pulled a whingding all the way
+through."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's a whole raft of pictures to show they were there,"
+Frank reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>"Pictures!" Louie answered scornfully. "You think they couldn't
+fake pictures?" He thought for a moment. "And where's their
+ship, their escape ship?" he asked as a clincher. "They didn't like
+it here and have gone off somewhere else, and then covered up
+by sending reports and pictures on how things would have
+developed if they'd stayed."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal
+let the talk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a
+modern ocean liner pulled into the harbor of New York&mdash;to find
+an untouched Manhattan Island in its virgin state?</p>
+
+<p>It couldn't happen, therefore it wasn't to be treated seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Better set up communication with Earth," Cal said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>In E science the unpredictable, the incredible, the illogical
+could happen at any time. With a mind more open to acceptance
+of this, he had felt the run of shock sooner. For them, the shock
+impact was delayed since their minds rejected the illogical as
+unreal. For him the human shock came at once, and then, as E
+thinking took over, passed off.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Cal," Lynwood agreed. It was a measure of their acceptance
+that they had quite normally fallen into using his first name.</p>
+
+<p>On the emergency signal it took less than three minutes to clear
+through eleven light-years to E.H.Q.&mdash;and then sixteen minutes
+for the operator at base to find Bill Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sector Chief Hayes here," the voice said at last through the
+speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Gray here, on the Eden matter," Cal answered. "Any other E's
+available?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m," Hayes answered. "Wong has picked up on a problem
+in the Pleiades sector, and left this morning. Malinkoff has given
+out word not to disturb him if the whole universe falls apart.
+That leaves McGinnis, who, I believe, is spending his time working
+on the defense against the injunction by Gunderson. An example<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+of the way petty restrictions can bring a fine mind down to
+trivial problems. But he said call him if you need him."</p>
+
+<p>"Please," Cal said. "And you might stay on while I talk to him,
+if you're not busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, E Gray, sure," Hayes answered. "I'm flashing the operator
+to locate McGinnis. Seen anything of the police ship, yet? I
+understand one is following to observe what you do."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it will be a big help," Cal said drily. "Not that it
+matters, so long as it doesn't get in the way."</p>
+
+<p>McGinnis came on at that point.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not yelling for help, yet," Cal told him. "But here's what it
+is like at this end." He sketched in the details, and heard a sharp
+gasp at the other end from Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'd like to stay on this problem," he concluded his brief
+summary. "But somewhere there's fifty colonists in trouble because
+this whole thing is out of focus. I'm not a full E, and maybe their
+lives are more important than my ambition to do a solo job.
+Certainly more important. Then, trivial as it is, we'd be playing
+right into Gunderson's hands if we've sent out a boy to do a man's
+job."</p>
+
+<p>"Dismiss the Gunderson side of it," McGinnis said drily. "It's
+inconsequential to the main issue. As for that, I don't know any
+more than you do. There's never been anything like this. Colonists
+have been wiped out on other planets, sure; but what happened
+left traces. This one is an oddball, and I'd say you're as well
+equipped to handle it as anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't&mdash;I don't understand this at all," Hayes said in a worried
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Who does?" Cal asked. "I'd say set up for continuous communication.
+I'll leave it wide open here, so that everything we say
+will come through. Then, if anything should happen to us, you'll
+have the record up to that point."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only thing we can do," Hayes agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think I should come out there to stand by, I'll do it,"
+McGinnis said. But the tone of his voice said he hoped Cal would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+shoulder the full responsibility, not weaken out of a chance at a
+real solo.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not crying uncle, yet," Cal said. "But I may have to take
+you up on the offer. I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you <i>know</i> anything is wrong?" Hayes asked incredulously.
+He was having the same trouble facing the reality as the
+ship's crew.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were flying to Los Angeles and found only desert where
+the city is supposed to be, you might assume something was
+wrong," Cal answered drily. "But I don't know what it is. Do you
+have a recorder set up, so I can begin trying to find out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, E Gray," Hayes said hurriedly. He was suddenly
+conscious that he had been interrupting an E conversation, not
+once but several times. "Pardon the intrusions. It was just
+that ..."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," Cal reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>When Cal stood up from the communicator, the eyes of the
+crew were on him. Overhearing his conversation with Earth had
+sobered them, made reality come closer.</p>
+
+<p>"You think it might be a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air
+current reflecting from another island and superimposing over this
+one?" Then he answered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. There aren't
+enough discrepancies."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's pan down to the ground with the scanner," Cal said.
+"Take it slow over the area where the village is supposed to be."</p>
+
+<p>Glad to be doing something with his hands, Lynwood twisted
+the controls to take them instantly, in magnification, to a distance
+slightly above the tops of the trees. The automatic pilot caused
+the ship to drift with the rotation of the planet, keeping them in
+fixed relative position.</p>
+
+<p>They scanned the ground rod by rod. There were expanses of
+heavy tree and bush growth that they could not penetrate. Some
+of these trees grew where the pictures showed cleared fields,
+buildings, truck gardens, cattle pastures.</p>
+
+<p>"Those big trees didn't grow up in a month, since the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+colonist report," Louie said positively. He still clung to his belief
+that it was all a hoax.</p>
+
+<p>Cal made no comment. He was intent on the scanner screen.
+There were heavy foliage spots, but there were also bare areas
+covered by a soft, springy turf and patches of wild flowers. But
+there was no sign of man or his works. There was not so much
+as a board, the glint of a nail, not a furrow, not even the scar of a
+campfire. And no indication that there had ever been.</p>
+
+<p>In the sandy patches along the banks of the small meandering
+river, there was not even a footprint.</p>
+
+<p>They swept the scanner down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," Cal said. "There are some cows and horses."
+He held the scanner fixed while they studied the animals. In two
+small herds, the animals grazed contentedly near a patch of woods.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in the right time slot, then," Tom said, with an attempt
+to pick up the spirit of treating it lightly. "They've been here. Else
+the cows and horses wouldn't be."</p>
+
+<p>"Funny thing about those horses," Frank commented in a
+puzzled voice. "I grew up on a farm. Those are work horses, but
+field horses always have harness marks on them where the hair
+gets rubbed off or the skin gets calloused. If they used these
+horses for work, there ought to be collar and hames rubs on their
+necks. There ought to be worn streaks left by the traces on their
+sides. There isn't. Far as the evidence shows, they might have
+been wild all their lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever happened didn't seem to hurt them any," Cal agreed.</p>
+
+<p>He swept the scanner on down the valley to the sandy shore
+of the sea. They were close enough to pick up the brown streaks
+of beached seaweed. A flock of shore birds were busy running up
+the sand away from the gentle, beaching waves, then following
+the water line back down to dig their beaks into the soft, wet
+sand for food. The birds showed no alarm, no sign of lurking
+presence near them.</p>
+
+<p>Cal brought the scanner back up the valley and over to one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+the ridges bordering it. High on the crest of the ridge, the undergrowth
+was less luxuriant than down in the valley.</p>
+
+<p>And it was here they caught their first glimpse of a human
+being.</p>
+
+<p>He was hunkered down behind some rocks at the crest, peering
+over them at the valley below. From the shape of his shoulders and
+back, the set of his head, they knew it to be a man. As far as they
+could tell, he had no clothes on. Apparently they had caught him
+at the moment of his arrival at the crest.</p>
+
+<p>They watched him turn his head as he looked quickly, then
+searchingly, up and down the valley. They watched his hand
+come up to shade his eyes against the light from Ceti as he
+attempted to see into the dark patches of foliage where the
+village ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>What he saw, or did not see, seemed to stun him. He squatted,
+as frozen as a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees,
+they saw him back away from the crest. Now they saw he did not
+wear even so much as a breechclout. When the height of the
+ridge concealed him from the other side, he sprang to his feet and
+began to run, zigzagging in the manner of an obstacle racer to
+avoid the bushes.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it,"
+Lynwood commented.</p>
+
+<p>"And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people
+wouldn't come out to break it up," Louie persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why should he be so scared?" Frank asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Notice that patch of bare dirt he's crossing?" Cal asked. "See
+the little spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look
+behind him."</p>
+
+<p>The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at
+the scanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus
+on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"No footprints!" Lynwood exclaimed. "He doesn't leave any
+footprints!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three of them looked at Cal, wide-eyed. Cal didn't like what
+he saw in Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with
+life's little petty tricks was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The look had been replaced with fear, and something more.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+<h2>11</h2>
+
+<p>The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope,
+disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the
+other side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine,
+stumbled, recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a
+larger growth of trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there
+lay another valley with its own stream.</p>
+
+<p>They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight
+on tan skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the
+stream. It was their last sight of him. They watched for a while
+longer, but he did not reappear under the green canopy of forest.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a guess," Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope
+the casualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes.
+"That's probably one of the dissident men who broke away from
+the main colony and set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley.
+Apparently the same things have happened to him as happened
+to the main colony, whatever it was.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now
+worked up courage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say
+whatever happened wasn't very long ago, not more than a week.
+Just a guess."</p>
+
+<p>None of the crew answered him. It was obviously not the case of
+a voyeur spying on others&mdash;not with the kind of excitement the
+running man had shown. Running away&mdash;that is.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let's drop down into the atmosphere," Cal suggested. "I'd
+assume it is breathable from the fact we've seen earth animals
+and a human being. Still we'd better make tests."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Louie said unexpectedly. "If the man isn't making any
+footprints maybe he isn't breathing, either." He tried to make it a
+joke, to fight his fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody
+laughed. He swallowed hard and studied the charts again for no
+apparent reason.</p>
+
+<p>Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's
+face showed him Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the
+progress of shock. Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's
+sense of responsibility for his crew that was helping the pilot
+to maintain a better control. But there was a white line around
+Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of his jaw. Caused by
+clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep them from
+chattering?</p>
+
+<p>However experienced a man became, however dependable the
+reactions, one never knew how to predict reaction in the face of
+the completely unknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked
+any of the men if they feared to take him down it would be an
+insult never forgotten. It was their job to take an E where he
+wanted to go. It wouldn't be the first time they had gambled
+their lives on the judgment of an E.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-oh," Tom exclaimed. "We have company." He pointed to
+an indicator on the panel.</p>
+
+<p>They swept the space around them with the scanner, and
+hovering off to one side they picked up another ship. They watched
+it for a while, as it hovered there. It made no move to come closer,
+no move to communicate with them.</p>
+
+<p>"From its markings," Tom said at last, "I think that's a special
+investigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder what
+they're doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>"To make first-hand observation of my failure," Cal said shortly.
+"Let's get on with our work."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+whatever might happen to them would not only be heard on the
+E.H.Q. channel back to Earth, but would also be seen by these
+special observers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that
+they were being watched, that faltering uncertainty would be
+noted and scorned. Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air
+sampling and testing as they lowered the ship by degrees.</p>
+
+<p>Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood
+handled the ship on manual control with ease, almost with flourish.
+But Louie's hands, gripping the edges of the chart table, still
+showed bloodless white at the knuckles. Perhaps because there
+was nothing for him to do at the moment, he alone wasn't snapping
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with
+the readings for this altitude established by the surveying scientists.
+To complete the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the
+open communicator would carry the information back to Earth
+where, by now, not only McGinnis and Hayes would be listening,
+but probably a group of scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too,
+gripped the edges of tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?</p>
+
+<p>To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more
+tenseness than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through
+the ship's speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he
+were at Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he
+didn't. He made no comment.</p>
+
+<p>Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for
+an air sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village
+of Appletree should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely
+idea of a superimposed mirage was dispelled. The disappearance
+of the colony was no trick of vision. The ship hovered, at the last,
+not more than fifty feet from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was
+placing the responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+himself, nor so much to assure they were willing to follow an E's
+orders without question, as to remind Louie that there was, after
+all, an E with them. And if he were willing to face this unknown,
+they could hardly do less themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground
+below them. He was frozen and unheeding.</p>
+
+<p>The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily,
+glanced out of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us,
+so far."</p>
+
+<p>Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the
+ramp unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by
+Tom and Frank, looked through the opening into the woods
+beyond.</p>
+
+<p>And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening
+protection of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other
+men. All of them were completely naked.</p>
+
+<p>"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out,"
+Cal instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off
+from the planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish
+and try to help me."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own
+knowledge, heroics might do more harm than good.</p>
+
+<p>Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.</p>
+
+<p>The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward
+him, also slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet
+their faces were breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him.
+He whirled around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on
+the ground. There was no ship. The three crewmen were completely
+naked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at
+his own body. He also was nude.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in
+front of him. Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet.
+A quick glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around,
+dazed and uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent
+blade of grass to show where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie
+sank down suddenly on the ground and buried his face in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to
+shield some wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication
+with Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see
+the observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no
+doubt seen them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was
+telling Earth what it had seen&mdash;the attorney general's office, at any
+rate. Doubtful that it was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical
+that the attorney general would tell E.H.Q. what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to
+land.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+<h2>12</h2>
+
+<p>A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he
+was personally involved?</p>
+
+<p>For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to
+function rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the
+unknown he froze, shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet
+far down within his mind, there was still detached observation,
+as if a part of him were removed from all this, still in the role
+of disinterested observer.</p>
+
+<p>The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the
+colonists in front of him. A balance in number, with himself in
+between, a still picture from a modernist ballet.</p>
+
+<p>Or a charade. Guess what this is!</p>
+
+<p>He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the
+beginning of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.</p>
+
+<p>With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind
+functioning, darting frantically here and there for rational explanation,
+and momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all
+being done with trick photography! Such a sudden transition could
+take place in a motion picture, a transition from reality into a
+dream sequence lying discarded on the cutting-room floor.</p>
+
+<p>Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by
+devising a mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+of the omnipotent parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent
+substitute, the creation of a god in his parent's image without the
+weakness of his parent, so that he might go on in perpetual
+irresponsibility since he could now place responsibility outside
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of
+enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic,
+the first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and
+science if you do."</p>
+
+<p>In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used
+the statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the
+science of E. The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least
+to man because he is part of that universe, of its essence. There
+can be nothing in the universe that is wrong, or out of place,
+except and only as the limited interpretation of man who sees
+a force in terms of a threat to the ascendancy of himself-and-his
+at the center of things. This is the sole basis of morality, and
+prevents man's appreciation of total reality.</p>
+
+<p>He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting
+these phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But
+what if this were not the whole of reality, what then?</p>
+
+<p>Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven
+stages of E science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If
+there is only one natural law, and we see it only in seemingly
+unrelated facets because of our ignorance, because we cannot
+apperceive the whole, then this, too, is no more than another
+facet.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the
+movement of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing,
+walking backward step by step. Their faces were masks of despair,
+and in them Cal read the knowledge that what had just happened
+to him, his men, his ship, had previously happened to them.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+the shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing.
+There they paused.</p>
+
+<p>It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the
+proportions of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled
+group, cowering beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the
+suggestion of a wary crouch, uncertain whether to flee precipitously,
+or freeze to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew.
+And at the turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank
+began the pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked
+at the two standing men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried
+to grin wryly, apologetically, for what his nervous system was
+doing to his body against his will.</p>
+
+<p>The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just
+the kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into
+his eyes for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a
+grimace of terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage
+swamped in funk.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he
+had spoken in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was
+a part of the classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was
+getting him under the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the
+eyes of the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank
+half-carrying, half-dragging Louie&mdash;and he still trying to make his
+legs behave, support him&mdash;the colonists made a fluttering movement
+of uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and
+farther back into sheltering protection of the deep forest.</p>
+
+<p>But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came
+together under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection?
+From what?</p>
+
+<p>Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree,
+as if, on a high place, he feared falling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help
+it."</p>
+
+<p>One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced, spare-framed
+one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable
+impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that
+can be made responsive to man's needs only through strength,
+his will to survive against all odds.</p>
+
+<p>"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been
+like that for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin'
+all right. Better than some."</p>
+
+<p>Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders,
+fought off the urge to like dejection.</p>
+
+<p>"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods,
+and mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down
+at himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added.
+"We've seen naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell
+somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself.
+Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of
+responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding
+himself that he was a man.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony,
+I reckon you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree.
+I don't rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here
+is Ahmed Hussein, and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van
+Tassel. Manner of speakin'," he amended. "He ain't no more
+miserable than the rest of us."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This
+is Tom Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good
+men. Just under the weather right now."</p>
+
+<p>"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with
+feeling. "I reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't
+communicate?" He spread his open hands and waved them to
+indicate the area around him. "Now you see why we didn't.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the job, and that's all we
+got left."</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the
+familiar formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with
+a shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share
+with you."</p>
+
+<p>"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal
+reassured him. Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading
+branches of the tree, as if to reassure himself also; then grinned
+in self-consciousness at the pantomime of fear. "First thing is to
+find out what happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed
+said. "One place is good as another right now."</p>
+
+<p>The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted
+the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain
+from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer
+will.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up,
+then cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We
+cannot even provide a cup of coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"</p>
+
+<p>He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him.
+He began rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating
+fire. The two sticks flew apart and out of his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Try it," he invited Cal.</p>
+
+<p>Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches.
+He started to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched,
+and pulled out of his hands. He saw them flying through the air
+with a force he had not provided. He got up, picked them up
+again, sat back down, and held the sticks very tightly in his hands.
+He tried to bring them together. Suddenly, he simply lost interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the
+sticks. His astonishment at himself was a shock.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without
+mirth. "Kind of gets you, doesn't it?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed
+unimportant to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here?
+What's been going on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an
+E, and all ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the
+beginning when everything was normal...."</p>
+
+<p>"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He
+looked at Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he
+added. "Can't keep our minds on anything for more than a minute
+or so. In fact, I'm a little surprised that we've been able to carry on
+the conversation this long. From the way we've been behaving, I
+would have expected more that we'd have wandered away back
+into the woods before now&mdash;simply left you to your own devices
+without interest in you. Strange."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing.
+Right now I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ...
+Well, while I'm in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how
+long I can keep interested.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about
+a week ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember
+it was around noon...."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+<h2>13</h2>
+
+<p>It was one day around noon.</p>
+
+<p>Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to
+get his dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd
+be ready afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd
+eaten his lunch, all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity
+of food on Eden. Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything,
+a man ate too much and didn't have to work hard enough to get
+it. That was the main thing that had been wrong with Eden,
+right from the start. Man was ordained to earn his bread by the
+sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for it on Eden.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two
+big trees in the front yard of his house. The house was set a little
+way off from the rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards
+more or less, not so far he couldn't be handy when he was needed
+by the colony, but still far enough to give a man some space.</p>
+
+<p>The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the
+kitchen window where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner.
+It was a drowsy, peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought
+from Earth were buzzing the flowers Martha had planted all
+around. A bird was singing up in the trees above him. A man
+ought to be pretty contented with a life like that, he remembered
+telling himself. Ought to be.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because
+the committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to
+wake up all groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the
+daytime. Couldn't afford to be groggy because the committee was
+all set up to scrap out something that was splitting the colony
+right down the middle.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and
+vegetables were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here&mdash;plenty
+of rain, plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the
+crops, not even enough insect pests to worry a man. He looked
+out at the fenced pastures where the colony's community stock
+grazed.</p>
+
+<p>The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the
+drinking pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the
+shade of some trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were
+already lying down in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing
+their cuds. The green grass around them was so tall he could
+barely see their heads and backs.</p>
+
+<p>His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it.
+Martha, like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all
+you could see, as the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles
+and miles. She never could stand not being able to see a long ways
+off, and she'd picked out this spot herself. They could see all
+the valley and the sea, and some dim shapes of islands in the
+distance. Right nice.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was all very peaceful&mdash;and tame.</p>
+
+<p>That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of
+them got restless. They argued the five-year test was all right
+for most planets. You needed every bit of it to prove that man
+could make it there, or couldn't, or how much help he would need
+from Earth, maybe for a while, maybe always.</p>
+
+<p>On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't
+anything to make a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe
+that would be all right for ordinary folks, but for experimental
+colonists it was a slow death&mdash;almost as bad as living on Earth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times
+or maybe more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and
+see for himself, and see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed
+put it right up to E.H.Q. that they were plumb ruining a prime
+batch of colonists with this easy living.</p>
+
+<p>A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to
+grow tall.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching
+and were even talking about maybe just staying on here
+after the experimental was over&mdash;maybe getting a doctor to reverse
+the operation so they could have kids&mdash;which, of course,
+you couldn't have in an experimental colony.</p>
+
+<p>And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as
+was normal to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful
+that Earth could afford to lose any.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the colonists wanted to leave this&mdash;well, they called it a
+Lotus Land, whatever that was&mdash;right away, before everybody
+went under, got plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape
+ship and hightailing it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be
+a stink, and they'd get a little black mark in somebody's book for
+not obeying orders to stick it out. But that was better than losing
+their trade, their desire to follow it. Maybe there'd be a penalty
+and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth for a while. But they'd
+bet there was a hundred planets laying idle right now because
+there weren't enough experimentals to go around.</p>
+
+<p>They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another
+job too. Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them
+than living here.</p>
+
+<p>Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half
+wanted to leave right now. That was what the committee was
+going to decide today. He'd done some checking around, and it
+looked like they were going to vote to go. He'd also checked
+with them who wanted to stay permanently, and it looked like,
+in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to be men,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty
+sure of it.</p>
+
+<p>Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That
+was the trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship
+to bind the community together. People forgot how to be kind to
+one another and get along when there wasn't any hardship to
+share among themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his
+sympathies were with the ones who wanted to go, Jed felt there
+was something wrong, real bad, about deserting the planet. Still
+and all, if they voted to go he couldn't stop them.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on
+out without the total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E.H.Q.
+would decide that Eden was too hard to colonize because it was
+too easy. Maybe they'd abandon the planet entirely. There'd be no
+more humans here, and no more coming.</p>
+
+<p>That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump!</p>
+
+<p>He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from
+under him, and he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man
+blames something else for his own fault. There wasn't any
+hammock.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck
+quickly in the direction of the house. There wasn't any house.
+Martha was standing there on bare ground, and there wasn't a
+dad-blamed thing else, not a stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.</p>
+
+<p>And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!</p>
+
+<p>His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to
+stand right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter
+with her anyhow? He peered quickly down toward the village
+to see if anybody was looking up in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There
+wasn't any hammock. There wasn't any house.</p>
+
+<p>There wasn't any village.</p>
+
+<p>He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+where the village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched,
+or lying around as if they'd fallen down.</p>
+
+<p>And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.</p>
+
+<p>And so was he! He'd just realized it.</p>
+
+<p>It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the
+tree was still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing
+like that stood out above all the rest. Still singing.</p>
+
+<p>Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged
+behind a tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor
+if anybody saw him standing out in his front yard naked as a
+jay bird.</p>
+
+<p>The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes
+beyond the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be
+in its hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should
+go wrong, real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar
+wasn't there. Nothing.</p>
+
+<p>For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong
+direction. He'd got turned around or something in the confusion,
+because there was a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be.
+And it was the same grove they'd cleared away over two years
+ago. He recognized one of the trees because it had a peculiar
+shape.</p>
+
+<p>And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into
+the power saw for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha
+had asked him to save the wood for furniture because it was real
+pretty. That was the tree, there on the edge of the grove.</p>
+
+<p>He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and
+looked out where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd
+cleared that whole area of timber and brush because it was a
+good, flat land. Only they hadn't, because that was virgin forest,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he'd gone insane? He felt a flood of relief. Sure, that
+was it. He'd just gone insane, that was all. Everything else was
+all right.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The calves have got loose to the cows and they're going to
+take all the milk, Jed."</p>
+
+<p>He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so
+was she. Her eyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time
+like this to be worrying about them fool calves getting out. It took
+all the comfort away from him. Her face was white, her eyes were
+dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha," he heard himself
+saying. "And for Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The
+committee's coming over, and you running around like that!"</p>
+
+<p>He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the
+hammock after all, while he was waiting for the committee, and
+he was dreaming. Of course, he ought to have known all along.
+This was just the way things happened in a dream&mdash;even him
+and Martha running around naked. He even chuckled to himself.
+He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow after all, because even in
+a dream it was his own wife that was next to him there, naked&mdash;not
+some other man's.</p>
+
+<p>The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most
+of it. He took her into his arms, and she clung to him.</p>
+
+<p>Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him,
+and he was dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any
+sheet in the hammock when he went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>And he wasn't dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was
+shaking with fear, and her arms were wound around his neck so
+tight now he could hardly breathe.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now, Martha," he cautioned. "Don't you go getting
+hysterical."</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" she asked again.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said. They were both talking in low tones.</p>
+
+<p>"It's some kind of a miracle," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Now there's a woman's thinking for you," he chided her fondly,
+joshing her a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ... Well
+any scientist would tell you that ..." And then he stopped.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+He was pretty sure the frameworks of science, as he knew them,
+wouldn't be able to tell you.</p>
+
+<p>He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another,
+they both went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he
+guessed. You'd have the feeling of sinking down and down, and
+there'd be nothing but blinding, swirling chaos all around you.
+Then you'd kind of come to for a minute, and there'd be the trees,
+the sky, the farm animals, the sea in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note,
+almost absently, that people were getting to their feet now, some
+of them clinging together the way you and Martha were&mdash;and
+then back down into mental chaos you'd go again.</p>
+
+<p>That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun
+to snap out of it a little.</p>
+
+<p>"But the funniest thing of all," Jed said, and looked at Cal
+quickly, penetratingly. "I had the feeling all the time that we
+were being watched!"</p>
+
+<p>Cal said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a
+trap? Then watching it, to see what it will do?"</p>
+
+<p>Cal nodded, without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"It was just another crazy thought, I guess," Jed said deprecatingly.
+"Plumb crazy."</p>
+
+<p>But, clearly, he didn't believe it was.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+<h2>14</h2>
+
+<p>At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The
+operator sat back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or
+fade. A glance at the adjacent recording instrument told him it
+was taking down everything said&mdash;had been for hours.</p>
+
+<p>Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator
+on the E cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to
+nature, all the way back.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists.
+And how far did that word experimental take you? Some
+experiment! He realized his interest was running deeper than
+that of a detached technician's concern for well-operated equipment&mdash;mechanical,
+that is. Well, let it. Live a little once in a
+while. At least dream.</p>
+
+<p>The department supervisor hovered near the back of the
+operator's chair, breathing down his neck. He gnawed at the
+knuckles of his hand, and hoped nothing would go wrong this
+time. That astronavigator, Louie LeBeau, was probably right.
+Those colonists had turned nudist, and were afraid to report what
+they'd done back to Earth!</p>
+
+<p>Well!</p>
+
+<p>He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud.
+He decided he hadn't.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If <i>he</i> were out there, instead of that E, <i>he'd</i> make them put
+their clothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset,
+causing all this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E.H.Q.
+aroused, taking up the time of an E&mdash;just because they wanted
+to frolic around without any clothes on!</p>
+
+<p>If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should
+be spanked like irresponsible children.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists
+who ought to be spanked.</p>
+
+<p>"... E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp," the pilot
+out there was reporting. "He is walking toward the three
+colonists. Now they have started walking toward him. They do
+not seem hostile. They seem glad to see us. My crew and I are
+still at our stations, ready for ..."</p>
+
+<p>Silence.</p>
+
+<p>The set simply didn't register anything more except that faint
+sigh of uncompleted force fields in space.</p>
+
+<p>"What now? What now?" the supervisor pushed the operator
+to one side, and barely restrained the impulse to cuff him on the
+side of the head. "Now what did you do? Why did you meddle
+with it when it was coming in so clear and strong? What's happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know
+what's happened," the operator flared back. "The signal just
+stopped. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line
+that had been rigged to give direct connection of the running
+report to Hayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped
+open the key, as if he were touching a rattlesnake.</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly,
+without diplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what happened. I don't know," the supervisor
+quarreled back. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing
+anything to the equipment."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+made the far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe.
+"There's no reason for an occlusion," he said to Hayes. "And the
+set here is alive. It must be at the other end."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the operator, and said loudly, "Bounce a beam on
+Eden's surface. Just see if any booster has gone out between here
+and there." Most of it was making a show of efficiency for Hayes.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we go again," the operator mumbled to himself, and
+pressed down a key. The returning pips showed the signal was
+getting through to Eden.</p>
+
+<p>"Pilot Lynwood! Pilot Lynwood!" the supervisor nagged into
+the mike. "Speak up! Do you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>The operator sighed deeply. His panel partner grimaced something
+halfway between a grin and a sneer of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"They don't answer," the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's
+the same as before."</p>
+
+<p>"Here we go again," Hayes groaned, but not only to himself.
+"All right," he said wearily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the
+channel open. Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if
+signal resumes."</p>
+
+<p>But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It
+was too much of the same pattern as before. What could have
+happened?</p>
+
+<p>There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer
+and more detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd
+overlooked in the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so
+many who wanted to speculate in that first one? But in the interests
+of time!</p>
+
+<p>The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because
+now each one of them would be worried lest it was his own field
+of knowledge that had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was
+easy. At least you knew what a needle looked like, could recognize
+it when you saw it.</p>
+
+<p>It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis
+would go out in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+would be available in an emergency, and this looked like an
+emergency. And that would leave E.H.Q. without a single E in
+residence.</p>
+
+<p>Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more
+E's? It shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think!
+There was something mighty wrong with the way kids were
+brought up if only one in a million could still think by the time he
+was grown. Less than one in a million could qualify as an E.</p>
+
+<p>A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he
+believed what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther
+than the people who said it. And if he didn't believe what they
+told him, they punished him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced
+him into submission if they could. If they couldn't they shut him
+up in a prison, labeled him dangerous to society.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between
+rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were
+still of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a
+base. Ah, there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the
+inquisitiveness, the skepticism; and at the same time teach him
+the basics he must have for constructive thought? For if he were
+not beaten into submission by the punitive methods of society,
+he was persuaded into it by his teachers, who were ever so sure
+of their facts and proofs.</p>
+
+<p>Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough
+at all if a guy could just think. But what could have happened?</p>
+
+<p>He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out
+by the attorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably
+was&mdash;to the attorney general's office. Fine lot of good E.H.Q.
+would get out of that. He was no fool. He knew the attorney
+general would gladly sacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it
+would give him a weapon to fight E.H.Q.</p>
+
+<p>Why hadn't E.H.Q. sent along an observer ship also? These
+cocky E's! Probably hadn't thought it necessary. Always ready to
+assume they could handle the situation by themselves!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review,
+get it on record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of
+playing it safe. Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too
+concerned with his own skin, too willing to play it safe. But an
+employee of E.H.Q. to make a public criticism of an E! No, better
+play it safe.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E
+McGinnis would talk to him.</p>
+
+<p>He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the
+planet and wait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to
+have happened while E Gray's cruiser was out in space. It must
+be something connected with landing, being on the surface of the
+planet.</p>
+
+<p>But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists!
+Why hadn't they signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out
+of their bushes and signaled the danger? Surely they must know
+what it was. They were alive and healthy, three of them at least.
+Why hadn't they used their stupid heads?</p>
+
+<p>But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space,
+or even in their stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't
+they? Or did they? Sure they did. No matter what happened to
+the buildings, they must have all sorts of equipment hidden under
+the trees, or in caves.</p>
+
+<p>Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing
+in there like a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions.
+That's what came from sending out a boy to do a man's
+job. Maybe the attorney general's office had been right in its
+attempt to prevent a Junior from going. What was the use of all
+that E training, if the boy didn't have enough sense ...</p>
+
+<p>At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off,
+not go rushing in blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there
+was a <i>real</i> product of E science, the veritable dean of the E's.</p>
+
+<p>E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be
+followed by a rescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+between an E out in space and another on the ground, they
+shouldn't have any trouble in working it out. He wondered if he
+should suggest that to E McGinnis as soon as the operator located
+him. Even if the grand, lovable old man thought of it for himself,
+he'd compliment Hayes for thinking it, reasoning it all out!</p>
+
+<p>The intercom operator came on his line.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," she said, and cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp.
+Her voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted
+E McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly
+what he said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I
+could."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed
+to give her courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you.
+He says the foggy, rambling way that review was conducted was
+a disgrace. He says why don't you get on with what you have to
+do instead of bothering people. He says not to waste any more of
+his time unless you can come up with something he doesn't already
+know. He says he doubts you'd know what that was even if it hit
+you in the face. He said to tell you the exact words, so I took it
+down in shorthand, so I could. Because&mdash;he said to."</p>
+
+<p>She was all but wailing, as she finished.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Hayes sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder
+things were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send
+me your notes so I can follow them carefully," he told the operator.</p>
+
+<p>"So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the
+joint," she mumbled, but she had already thrown the key so he
+couldn't hear her.</p>
+
+<p>Resignedly, because he knew he was going to catch it from the
+scientists just as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself
+that he must always be in the middle of things, he began to arouse
+the scientists.</p>
+
+<p>He felt so sorry for himself that he dropped his tentative plan
+to have the midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+individual colonists out there&mdash;to see if some of them might be
+young, pretty, female&mdash;34-24-34.</p>
+
+<p>As if the idea were now red hot, he dropped the plan of telling
+General Administration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps
+he should go out there, personally.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+<h2>15</h2>
+
+<p>The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was,
+indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office&mdash;to
+Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had
+to be secret. All right for them to know, because they were very
+special persons, but the people should not be told.</p>
+
+<p>"Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He
+is starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent
+weapons. Making a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the
+crew isn't covering him. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The
+three unclothed men are moving toward him, spread out a little,
+crouching, obviously going to attack. The stupid fool doesn't seem
+to realize it. He's ...</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. I don't believe it...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what?" Gunderson exploded from his end.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," the assistant gulped, "the ship disappeared, just like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. It did. The three crewmen are sprawled on the ground.
+Now two of them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the
+ramp, or anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't be. Has to be around somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. Isn't. Sorry to contradict you, sir. It isn't anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"They probably set controls to send the ship back into space,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+and jumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it.
+Ships don't just disappear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll search, of course. But this ship just disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, what's going on? What else?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're naked. Naked as the day they were born. All four of
+them. Same as the colonists."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get
+the evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they
+were fully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could
+have undressed inside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed&mdash;and
+then he wasn't. Just like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I land, sir? Place them under arrest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. Let's think of a good charge. Something to
+stand up in court. Have to make this airtight right from the
+beginning in case some stupid judge decides to make a show of
+independence."</p>
+
+<p>"Indecent exposure, sir? Lewd public behavior?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty weak, in view of what's involved."</p>
+
+<p>"A suggestion, sir. Maybe a morals charge is the most effective
+weapon we could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of
+bad scientific judgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel
+compelled to rise up in their defense&mdash;except, of course, those
+employed by the government. But on a morals charge there
+wouldn't be one voice raised&mdash;fear of being tarred with the same
+brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are already discredited.
+Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused against us,
+but a morals charge&mdash;think of the backing we'd get from the
+women's clubs, P.T.A., all the pressure groups determined to
+dictate to the rest of the world how it should behave. It's worked
+for hundreds of years, sir. Never fails."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m," Gunderson mused. "You may be right."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I land, sir, make the arrest?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got plenty of photographic evidence?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All we'd need, sir, at least for the lewd, public indecent exposure
+charge."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. How about the colonists? Got pictures of
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"The three men, sir. No others."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's don't rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a
+ship they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures.
+Maybe we can get something stronger on Gray than just an
+indecent exposure, or at least get some pictures that could be
+interpreted as more than just that. Get pictures of as many
+colonists as possible, too, in case they've gone nudist."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd
+been gunning for the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites.
+Hm-m, even if we decided not to prosecute, we'd have the
+pictures in their dossiers, so that anytime in the future, for the
+rest of their lives, if any of them gave us any trouble, we could
+quietly let them know what we've got, and they'll just fold up
+and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir." The assistant knew that already
+Gunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job
+he'd better let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the
+idea should backfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly
+enough where it had originated.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m, you know," Gunderson was saying. "This could work
+out all right. If their ship's gone they're not communicating with
+E.H.Q. And if they're not communicating, E.H.Q. will send out
+another ship to see why. Maybe there'll be an E on it. I hear the
+only one available is McGinnis&mdash;that guy who's planning to fight
+us on that injunction.</p>
+
+<p>"Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could
+make pictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress
+sometime, take a bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody
+with a public reputation ever fights a charge like that, guilty or
+innocent. They pay up or knuckle under to keep it quiet. Have,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+for hundreds of years; always will, as long as a bunch of fat, old,
+ugly biddies, male and female, who nobody wants that way are
+viciously resentful that they can't have what somebody else is
+enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped with frustrations
+they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're even
+worse. Yeah, a morals charge is the way to get at him."</p>
+
+<p>"But I understood there was a law, that we couldn't charge an
+E for any offense."</p>
+
+<p>"We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the
+televiewers. That's the whole point. We can't charge an E now,
+but wait until we get things stirred up on a morals basis. That
+law'll be changed in a hurry, because any legislator that tried to
+hold out against changing it would be drawn and quartered by
+his constituents&mdash;and has enough sense to know it.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go
+about it. Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you
+guys would read your history of how police enforcement officers
+got things back under control each time some idealist started
+squawking about human rights, you'd think of these things, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on
+every move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those
+E's back under police control, the way scientists were before, I've
+got to have information.</p>
+
+<p>"And keep taking pictures!"</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+<h2>16</h2>
+
+<p>"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship,
+everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself
+crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard,
+without any clothes on&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He
+looked toward his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked
+at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there
+beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was
+the end of everything," he said in retrospect, "but we found out
+quick that things had just begun."</p>
+
+<p>Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious
+emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across&mdash;and
+thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see
+how they were faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control
+over his nerves, and yet the way he sat there staring at nothing
+showed he was enduring some special horror of his own. Frank
+Norton shifted his position, pulled a dry stick from beneath the
+leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed it aside. He settled
+back down and indicated by his expression that now he could be
+more comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree
+was gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+comfort. Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really
+needed; and perhaps the shock of being without them would pass.
+Nudists, on Earth, claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness
+if no one were clothed; that such was part of the
+value; that sex, for instance, became less of an issue instead of
+more because, without concealment, one could see instead of
+imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than enticed.
+Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the
+idea that clothes encouraged immorality.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like
+a natural thing&mdash;like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood.
+Nothin' like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's
+dyin', at least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I
+never thought I'd hear myself say it would be a comfort to know
+what you was dyin' of, but, believe me ..."</p>
+
+<p>He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on
+a note of perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little
+kids screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at
+all&mdash;only scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real
+truthful," he said, "most of the yellin' came from the men. The
+women, by and large, was real swell.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect
+ever seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course.
+Say she's tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay
+public blame on him for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger,
+womenfolks, our kind of womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in
+and help. It takes a man to make a jackass outta himself at the
+wrong time."</p>
+
+<p>Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow
+laugh from Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize
+it, and made no apology about present company being excepted.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said,
+"where you begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We&mdash;we
+couldn't pick up any pieces."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than
+the disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care
+of those that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials
+and tools to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them
+that's hurt, taking care of them as much as possible, first thing
+they think of is making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.</p>
+
+<p>That was when they began to realize this was more than the
+desolation following a cyclone or other freak of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still
+sort of hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of
+it first, who insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain
+duty to get down to the village where they could help somebody.
+He'd need other men to help him get things back in shape; she
+could help the other women take care of the needy.</p>
+
+<p>And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded
+him then, pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being
+naked too wasn't likely to start up a passel of gossip.</p>
+
+<p>He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came
+out from behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to
+be walking down that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody.
+Thing that helped was that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and
+stare at them.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a
+funny thing happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that
+everybody else was naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness
+disappeared all of a sudden, and they didn't think any more
+about it&mdash;not right then, anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the
+crowd of people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other
+things to think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought
+to have done. She was the one who thought of giving the men
+something to do, get them over their hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out,
+as soon as they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to
+drink is what we need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They
+didn't have a pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because
+right away he heard her asking other women if any of them knew
+where there might be some dried gourds. He remembered then
+an old pioneer trick&mdash;cutting open a gourd, scooping out the seed,
+filling it with water, dropping hot stones into it until it boiled,
+Indian style.</p>
+
+<p>It might seem funny to city women, always protected against
+everything, that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First
+place, she had her man already, and didn't need to put on such a
+show. Second place, she was a colonist woman, an experimental
+colonist woman, trained all her life to take care of the unexpected;
+and for the experimentals something unexpected was always
+happening.</p>
+
+<p>Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged,
+now that he'd been set straight by Martha's example,
+everybody began to settle down a little, like they would after the
+first shock of a fire or flood. It was all over. Now it was time to
+start picking up the pieces, rebuilding.</p>
+
+<p>Only it wasn't all over.</p>
+
+<p>That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a
+stick in a hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to
+find a piece of flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and
+hope one will set a wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing
+two dry sticks together will do it if you can rub them fast enough,
+get them hot enough to make the powdered fibers burst into flame.
+Or if they'd had some of those quartz crystals from the top of
+the mountain to focus sun rays....</p>
+
+<p>But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together,
+or rub two sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen
+for himself what happened when it was tried. All the men were
+trying it, and for a little bit everybody thought it was only happening
+to him, that he must have lost the knack, or something. For
+a little bit there the men were more worried about how their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+wife would bring it up for weeks or months, how he had let the
+rest of the men show him up when it came to building a fire.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men tore it then.</p>
+
+<p>He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him
+over his shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire.</p>
+
+<p>Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was
+staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation
+of that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on
+with the telling.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were
+having the same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might
+have panicked right there if the man had let it rest, but he started
+explaining it, the way a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women.
+That it was in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the
+mistake of listening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged
+Adam into eating that apple because a woman was never satisfied
+to leave well enough alone. And now, he said, in this new Eden,
+man was being given another chance. If he was smart, if he's
+learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't listen to no woman.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of
+eased the tension a little.</p>
+
+<p>A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless
+to start a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry
+leaves because in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no
+magic, watchers or no watchers, night would fall, and she for
+one liked a soft bed. That caused them to look up at the sky,
+and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was already half way down the
+sky from where it had been at noon. At least the world was
+turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three hours
+had passed in what seemed like minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they
+go a little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they
+get busy and knock together some shelters in case it rained during
+the night&mdash;the way it often did.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able
+to put up a small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it,
+even without no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig
+holes in the ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them,
+stick them upright in the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard,
+lash them together with vines, lash other poles together to make
+the frame of the roof, lift that onto the poles and lash them all
+together with braces. Thatch it with grass, and there you were.</p>
+
+<p>But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.</p>
+
+<p>Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled
+right up again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the
+sharp stone, the only tool they had, would fly out of their hands.
+They even tried lashing some saplings together where they grew,
+and the saplings were like things alive. They wouldn't be bound.
+The vines slithered out of their hands and dropped to the ground,
+and the saplings sprang up again straight.</p>
+
+<p>Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a
+pile, all right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the
+leaves would scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't
+any wind.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks.
+They tried it themselves, and the same things happened. After
+that, they was a little more forgiving.</p>
+
+<p>A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that.
+The sun got low. People began to realize they were getting hungry,
+and they began to realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.</p>
+
+<p>Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd
+been hurt. Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.</p>
+
+<p>The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do
+was go down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands,
+lift it to their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower
+their faces into the water. They could do that. It helped a little
+to know they could.</p>
+
+<p>The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and
+nuts to eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+to depend on seasons. There was always something ripe, and
+plenty of it.</p>
+
+<p>The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage
+their supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture.
+They sort of hung together, in herds, glad to be together&mdash;then.</p>
+
+<p>By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way
+people in the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without
+a campfire. The darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you
+thought about it, the stranger it got. The excitement had begun
+to wear off, and people were starting to think a little. It got
+stranger and stranger. In the dusk you could see the same
+thought in all the gleaming eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They couldn't have fire!</p>
+
+<p>Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain
+what had happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right
+in there with an explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the
+right one, maybe, looking back, it's a silly one&mdash;but at the time he
+believes it, and that's a comfort.</p>
+
+<p>But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing
+it can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained.
+And yet, isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation
+for what's happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?</p>
+
+<p>Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some
+sleep. Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any
+children. That was one of the hardships of being an experimental
+colonist, you couldn't have children. Wouldn't be right to expose
+children to hardships they'd have to suffer helpless. Only here,
+the way kids were, he wouldn't have been surprised if kids would
+have taken to it a lot easier than the grown folks.</p>
+
+<p>The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd
+of animals take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort
+from the presence and protection of the others. They bedded
+around on the ground, making themselves comfortable as possible.
+One thing you could say, experimental colonists might not be long
+on brains, the way scientists are, but they weren't picked for that.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+They were picked for endurance, and the brainy will often crack
+up under a strain that the enduring kind hardly notices. Far as
+endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad.</p>
+
+<p>Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars
+were as bright as ever&mdash;brighter because there wasn't no fire to dim
+their glow. They couldn't see Earth, of course, but everybody knew
+right where to look for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light
+in its constellation. It was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days
+until the regular monthly communication with Earth was due.
+That as soon as E.H.Q. didn't hear from them, there'd be a rescue
+party out here in nothing flat. So, at worst, it meant living this way
+only five or six more days.</p>
+
+<p>That made everybody feel better. It was a comforting thing
+to look up through the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they
+weren't forgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be
+buzzing around like a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers
+cocked and ready as soon as the message didn't get through.</p>
+
+<p>Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western
+movies where the U.S. cavalry always got there in time. At least
+they weren't being attacked by no Indians, somebody said.</p>
+
+<p>Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but
+nobody said it.</p>
+
+<p>Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any
+discomfort just showed them how soft they were getting with
+easy living. Considering everything, they were coming along just
+fine. And in a few days everything would be all right again. They
+went to sleep thinking that even if there was some equivalent to
+the old-time Indians attacking them, rescue would soon be here
+and they would be safe.</p>
+
+<p>Because man always wins.</p>
+
+<p>Most people were wide awake by dawn. Some had slept in
+little bits, waking often enough to keep a sense of continuity.
+Others, those who slept better, awoke with a start; looked around
+themselves wildly, realized they were lying out in the open plumb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+naked in front of other people; maybe wondered for an instant
+what kind of party they'd been to the night before; and nearly
+bolted in panic before they remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Most everyone felt sort of surprised that things weren't back to
+normal, with yesterday being something soonest forgot soonest
+mended. It takes time for folks to realize&mdash;things.</p>
+
+<p>Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship,
+a reminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained.
+Seemed like everybody had woke with a determination to make
+the best of things and help one another do the same. Everybody
+was pitching in together to make the best of things. Once they
+bit into the cool fruit on the trees around them, even not having
+a hot drink to start the day didn't seem to matter.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the women got together and decided it would help
+things get back to normal if the people covered their nakedness,
+or least parts of it. It might be all right just among themselves,
+they said, because everybody was in the same fix and knew
+what happened&mdash;but how would they feel when the rescue ship
+landed and they had to walk out in front of strange men with
+nothing on?</p>
+
+<p>They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But
+when they strove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns
+just slipped out and fell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the
+leaves together with bindweed. Same thing. The bindweed
+slithered out and fell to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick
+mud from the river and paste them with more mud on her body.
+It wouldn't stick, peeled right off like she was oiled. One man
+said he could do it without leaves, just cover himself with mud.
+He lay down in a muddy pool and got himself covered with wet
+clay.</p>
+
+<p>He was a sight. All at once he looked vulgar, obscene. And
+nobody had, before. That did it. Somebody said they were
+humans, not pigs, and if the men on the rescue ship had never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+seen a naked body before it was time they did. What was so
+wrong about the human body, anyhow?</p>
+
+<p>They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and
+gave up trying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to
+cover themselves was a nasty kind of thinking, something to be
+ashamed of.</p>
+
+<p>Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists
+who'd broken off from the main colony and moved across the
+ridge were all right.</p>
+
+<p>Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What
+fools they'd all been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep
+a man from thinking straight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping
+like animals when, all the while, just across the ridge there'd
+be houses and beds, fires and clothes. Sure, those folks might
+differ in some opinions, but humans always stood ready to help
+one another in distress, differences forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just
+where the dissidents had built their homes. But when they got
+to the top of the ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but
+virgin woods, same as this side. That shook them up. They'd been
+so sure.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we
+still weren't thinking straight, something&mdash;they didn't go on down
+and join forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back
+down and congregated around where the village had been. Maybe
+it was the beginning of something that would come later, something
+Cal would see for himself. That they were already not thinking
+the way humans do. Thinking and behaving more the way dumb
+animals do.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the
+next. In some ways it was still like a dream. The way people were
+just accepting things, without question, maybe without curiosity.
+Jed remembered one time an E had said there was a wider gap
+between the thinking man and the average man than there
+was between that average man and the ape. He'd resented it at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+the time, of course, but now he thought of it again and began to
+realize what the E had meant.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back
+to nature, wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How
+stupid it was for man to knock himself out chasing all over the
+universe, undergoing such hardships, when all a man could ever
+want was right here.</p>
+
+<p>Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He
+reminded them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the
+ruination of a prime bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd
+been through hardships worse than this, and had ought to keep
+their wits about them.</p>
+
+<p>Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it.
+Just did it because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong,
+maybe because once upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered,
+it had been his duty.</p>
+
+<p>It was the next day that things got real rough.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be
+sure when the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers
+came and didn't see any village they wouldn't know what to
+think&mdash;maybe they'd just go away. Shows we weren't thinking so
+straight after all, to believe that you'd go away just because you
+didn't find our village.</p>
+
+<p>Anyhow, hadn't we ought to work out some kind of a message?
+Maybe scrape some kind of a message on the ground? They
+decided the smooth sand above the tide line down on the sea
+shore was the best place for it.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had anything else to do, so the whole colony, all
+forty of them, walked the couple of miles down to the seashore.
+They picked out a nice stretch of white sand, and with a broken
+piece of driftwood they started to scratch a message, just a big
+SOS. The driftwood wriggled out of their hands like a snake.
+Nobody could hold it. Several men tried together, made no
+difference.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+furrow closed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody
+tried piling up sand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no
+difference. Sand smoothed right out again.</p>
+
+<p>Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't
+need to use a stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They
+had their bare feet, didn't they? They could tromp out the letters
+that way. Footprints, close together, would be as good as a
+furrow.</p>
+
+<p>That's when it happened.</p>
+
+<p>Jed tried it himself. And his footprints disappeared. They just
+weren't there. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been
+walking. Nobody was leaving any footprints.</p>
+
+<p>That's when they bolted in panic.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+<h2>17</h2>
+
+<p>Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had
+spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe that seems funny to you," he commented. "After taking
+so much we'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods
+over not making footprints."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty fundamental thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are
+aware of spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep
+down into fundamental being, a thing like that."</p>
+
+<p>Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances,
+as if confirming their belief that an E would understand their
+problems. Cal appreciated the confidence expressed in that
+glance, but did not feel it was justified. It was now pretty obvious
+that this was some alien co-ordinate system, never before encountered
+by man. But how to get hold of it? How to reconcile with it?
+Coexist with it?</p>
+
+<p>Never before encountered by man? What if the myths of early
+man be true? And too authentic the legends of his being a pawn
+to the will of the gods? Could there have been some factual basis
+for the gods? And not, as was supposed, rationalizations dreamed
+up by man to account for the control of phenomena at a level
+beyond his own power to control?</p>
+
+<p>"It's been bad since then," Jed continued. "Seems like once they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+got the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like
+cattle in a stampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They
+didn't even stay together. They scattered in all directions, hid out
+in the bushes from each other.</p>
+
+<p>"You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You
+could pass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they
+wouldn't say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a
+hunted animal, not even breathin' lest you discover them.</p>
+
+<p>"After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves
+together&mdash;me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen
+of us now have got together again. Funny thing though, even so,
+all we want is to hide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's
+why you didn't see us from the air. We was hidin' from you.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to
+push us out of the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They
+wouldn't come themselves, being naked and all. They told us,
+first thing was to get some clothes for them from the ship.</p>
+
+<p>"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest
+of the colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet,
+not since the footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from
+hidin' places, if they also saw your ship disappear&mdash;well now, I
+just don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of
+fifteen or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the
+time. They'll know we didn't cut out through choice."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off
+in the middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not
+an E.H.Q. ship, but one that would have seen what happened.
+We'll not count on anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will
+be here soon, probably with an E on board&mdash;McGinnis."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently.
+"That ship might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next,
+and the next."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk
+to the ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on
+whatever this is."</p>
+
+<p>"You figger to solve this one?" Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to try," Cal said with more confidence than he felt.
+"It's what I'm here for. Maybe I can't solve it, but I can try."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how you're going to start," Dirk spoke up. "We're
+just like animals here. We can't use tools."</p>
+
+<p>"But animals do use tools," Cal answered after a moment.
+"Materials, anyway. Birds build nests using sticks, grass, clay.
+Monkeys and apes throw sticks and stones. Even insects use
+materials. Basic difference between man and the rest is that man
+gives special shapes to tools, where mainly the rest use whatever
+falls to hand. But all higher, organized protoplasmic life uses
+tools in one form or another."</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't allowed to," Jed said emphatically. "Not even what's
+at hand. Somebody, or somethin', is bound and determined we
+ain't goin' to."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Cal felt close to a solution, or at least an
+understanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first
+step toward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the
+corner of the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the
+concept disappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using
+materials. Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet
+the definitions of what constitute life? As compared with our
+evolution, from its earliest beginning finding some other approach
+to the manipulation of the physical universe? A totally alien kind
+of science? Come to think of it, the use of material to affect other
+material was a cumbersome, indirect, awkward way of going
+about it, as compared with ...</p>
+
+<p>Compared with what?</p>
+
+<p>The concept would not yet allow him full focus upon it. He
+filed it away for future contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>He saw Dawkins and the other colonists looking at him defiantly,
+as if interpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+the taboo on tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them,
+to find out for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Other than the feeling of being watched," he said carefully,
+"have you had any sign, any other evidence or indication of
+somebody, or something? I know about the feeling, because I feel
+it too. And very strongly, right now. But any specific evidence?"</p>
+
+<p>Jed Dawkins looked relieved at the confession.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything's the evidence. Everything that's happened. What
+more evidence would you want?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the strongest arguments in favor of something, or some
+kind of intelligence," Cal said slowly, "is that nobody's been hurt.
+All natural law hasn't been canceled. We still have light radiation,
+heat radiation, gravity, water still flows, the planet still turns.
+Trees still grow and fruit still ripens. We can talk and be understood,
+using our tongues and minds as tools. We can still eat and
+drink. We can still know.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no chaotic co-ordinate system that defies all natural law.
+This is a deliberate manipulation of some natural laws to get a
+result. Man manipulates natural laws by the use of tools and
+materials, but he doesn't suspend them. Here, apparently without
+tools, at least tools we can perceive, natural law is manipulated,
+but not suspended.</p>
+
+<p>"When the village disappeared, no one was hurt. A lot of
+people were caught in awkward positions and fell, some of them
+several feet. There should have been at least a few broken bones,
+pulled ligaments. There weren't. Our ship landed safely. We were
+a long time in the atmosphere of Eden, and for a few minutes
+there on the ground we were still using tools of a high order.
+It was only when danger of real harm to us was past that the ship
+disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon it's comfortin' to know we ain't meant to be hurt," Jed
+said, and looked at his two companions. "I guess it is," he repeated
+doubtfully. "Maybe it ain't something as nice and familiar as a
+cyclone, or a den of rattlesnakes, something you could understand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+but you got to admit we ain't been hurt yet." It was as if he were
+arguing the point with his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Something I've been noting, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. "A
+discrepancy of a sort that has me puzzled. Sun reckoning, we've
+been able to keep our minds on this subject for over two hours
+now. As if, whatever this is manipulating natural laws can also
+manipulate the way our minds work."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Jed admitted slowly, his face thoughtful. He turned to
+Cal. "Like I said at the start. Our minds have sort of wandered of
+late. Start to do something, and first thing y'know, we're doin'
+something else. Can't keep our minds on one thing very long&mdash;like
+animals."</p>
+
+<p>"That might be no more than the aftermath of deep shock,"
+Cal said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's for a purpose!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled at the outburst, they all turned and looked at Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"It's for a purpose," Louie repeated in a kind of rapture. "They
+want us to understand we are being watched over, cared for.
+That colonist you all laughed at was right. This is the first Garden
+of Eden, where man lived in complete innocence. Now man has
+been returned to it, to live again in complete innocence. You do
+not think straight because there is no reason. You will be cared
+for. Woe unto him who seeks to despoil it again by seeking vain
+knowledge!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were wild, his face contorted with a mixture of
+exaltation and condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Louie," Tom said in a low, firm voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We understand," Jed said tolerantly. "Some of the colonists
+are talkin' the same way. He's got plenty of company."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+<h2>18</h2>
+
+<p>All the rest of that day, and throughout the following, Cal and Tom
+worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them
+living together again.</p>
+
+<p>By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of
+colonists that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together
+again. Louie frankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his
+time with the colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood
+farming days, occupied himself with trying to round up the stock.
+He tried to keep the cows separated from their calves so the
+colonists would have milk to drink, but without ropes or corrals
+it was hopeless. He finally gave up his attempt to husband the
+stock, and he too seemed content then to mingle with the colonists.</p>
+
+<p>The marked change in Louie could not be ignored, for he was
+not idling away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had
+dropped his lifelong pose of superficial complaint that the fates
+always gave him the dirty end of the stick, and now he spent
+his time preaching to the little band of colonists. Or wandering
+through the forests and undergrowth calling, praying, comforting.</p>
+
+<p>Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man,
+seemingly dedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries
+beyond his power to comprehend, reverted to childlike superstitious
+awe for an explanation. In the face of mystery or catastrophe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+it takes a faith beyond the capacity of most to continue believing
+that the universe has a rational order to its laws that can be
+comprehended if man persists. It is temptingly easy for man to
+revert back to the irresponsibility of childhood, assuming that the
+control of phenomena is in the hands of those stronger, wiser
+than he. It takes a strength, in the face of this temptation, to go on
+believing that man <i>can</i> know, that it is not morally wrong for
+him to know.</p>
+
+<p>No blame then for Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that
+away from E.H.Q. the crew become the E's attendants, and that
+their first duty is always to the E. But separation from the other
+two men of his crew was like the loss of a part of himself. To
+these also he had a duty. He tried to solve his problem by
+alternating his time, spending part of it with Cal, the remainder
+with his crew.</p>
+
+<p>Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge,
+and found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror.
+They had seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere
+and, all together, they had climbed the ridge, where one of their
+scouts had recently gone, to watch the ship's landing&mdash;and its
+disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>Once they were found, it took little persuasion to convince
+them they should return to the other colonists, that differences
+of opinion meant nothing now as against the need of human
+beings to cling together in the face of catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>But they too were having trouble thinking in a straight line,
+and even though they first appeared eager to join the other
+colonists, it took some doing to keep them all together and moving
+forward to cross the ridge, to come down the other side, to
+assemble again at the site of the village with the others.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, within minutes, neither band seemed to remember
+that they had ever been separated.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they had returned, it was apparent that Louie was
+succeeding where Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+few hours that had elapsed, the nucleus had tripled in size.
+Louie's wandering through the brush, calling, pleading with them
+to follow him, promising there was no danger if they would
+allow him to watch over them, intercede for them with Those who
+had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them from their hiding
+places, calmed their fears.</p>
+
+<p>And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing
+them back into the fold, one and two and three at a time, until,
+at last, by Jed's count, all were there, no more missing.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, in spite of his success, there was a kind of hurt and
+disappointment in Louie's eyes. For once back, they not only forgot
+their fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced
+into a placid herd, without memory of their panic. Without
+memory of the shepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned
+them to the fold.</p>
+
+<p>They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and
+nuts, eating leaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered
+down to the river to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces
+into the clear cold water to drink. During the heat of the day
+they bathed in the river, and as they lay on white sand or grassy
+slopes to dry, they slept contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>The phenomenon was not as startling to Cal as it might have
+seemed to others.</p>
+
+<p>On Earth, gradually learned through trial and error, experimental
+colonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible,
+incisive, or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary. The basic test of
+a successful colonist was endurance&mdash;the endurance of hardship,
+privation, the stoic indifference to conditions of discomfort,
+monotony, pain, uncleanliness, immodesty&mdash;conditions which
+would send a more imaginative or sensitive temperament into
+a downward-spiraling syndrome of failure. They were the kind
+of men and women who, on Earth in an earlier time, had been
+able to endure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease,
+desert heat; to make those first steps in taming a hostile
+environment, so that men with less endurance, but with more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+delicately poised and sensitive minds, following them might then
+endure.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of such men and women, even under
+Earth conditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for
+these things. They simply went, and endured, and tamed. Even
+on Earth, when the taming had been done, they moved on. This
+was the stuff of the experimental colonist.</p>
+
+<p>Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in
+panic, but now they had returned to their original purpose&mdash;to
+endure. It was enough.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious
+about scientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal
+failure to be curious about philosophical implications. They
+listened idly to his exhortations, but their eyes did not light with
+fire nor cloud with doubt. They simply wandered away after
+a time and ate or slept.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening of that second day, Cal sat with Tom and Jed
+down by the bank of the river where the sky was clear and the
+stars beginning to shine. They were talking quietly of home, of
+Eden, of the colonists who, more and more, seemed to take on
+the character of a contented herd of animals. So far there had
+been no attempt of the old males to drive the young ones out of
+the herd, destroy them, but that might come in time; as surely
+as the old males on Earth by tacit agreement on both sides, were
+always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out
+and destroying lusty young male competition.</p>
+
+<p>They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them
+seemed able to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their
+minds to a subject, while all the rest grew more vague, less
+retentive, more content to live from moment to moment, without
+concern for past or future.</p>
+
+<p>Except Louie. He too seemed able to hold his thinking in a
+straight line, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours,
+to have turned wholly mystical, to a stronger belief that they
+were being watched and cared for by some higher power, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+that this was for a purpose. Yet not so tangential, for Cal had
+come to the same conclusion, although his interpretation differed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't doubt that there is an intelligent direction of this
+peculiar co-ordinate system," he said to Tom and Jed. "But I
+must doubt it is supernatural in the way Louie interprets. Anything
+appears to be magic when we don't understand how it
+happens, and becomes science when we do."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and looked at his companions' faces in the starshine.
+They were quiet, reposed, listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since man got up off the bottom of his ocean of air," he
+said, "and out into space, we've been prepared to run into some
+form of intelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not
+prepared to do anything about it, you understand," he said with
+a shrug. "Just theoretically prepared that it might happen. It was
+a possibility. Now it does seem to have happened. E McGinnis
+asked me, before I left Earth, if I thought Eden was an alluring
+trap, especially baited to catch some human beings. It begins to
+appear that it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I've caught many a wild animal in my day," Jed said slowly,
+thoughtfully. "I've pinned 'em up in cages, watched how they
+behaved. I guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to
+hurt 'em, fact make 'em as comfortable as they can&mdash;just want to
+know about 'em. Sometimes, after I watched them awhile I'd
+turn 'em aloose and watch 'em scoot back to their natural world.
+That could happen to us. Sometimes they'd die, and I wouldn't
+know why. That could happen. Some animals won't bear young
+in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever's
+holdin' us don't know that, and might turn us aloose when, after
+a time, we don't bear any young."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked even more thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," he added slowly, "after I studied 'em, found out
+how they would behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, because
+they was too dangerous to let run around among humans. That
+could happen."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't done much trapping," Tom said. "But in zoos I've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+watched animals in cages. The thought always came to me that
+if they could think the way we do, they could just open their
+cages and walk away."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you take turkeys," Jed answered. "Pin 'em up with a high
+fence, they'll back up, take off and fly over it. But pin 'em with
+a low fence, and they won't. Seems like they know they have to
+fly over a high obstruction, but don't figger on it for a low one.
+Sometimes they flutter up against it, or try to push it over, but
+most of the time they just walk around and around in the yard
+lookin' for an opening."</p>
+
+<p>"Natural survival pattern," Cal commented. "In the woods, in
+their natural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it
+took more effort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it
+took to walk around the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior
+to walk around it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they do with a low fence then," Jed said. "They
+just keep tryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense
+to treat it like a high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use
+tryin' to tell 'em it's high, because they know it ain't. So they
+can't solve it. Seems awful stupid, somehow, a little low fence,
+all that blue sky above 'em, and they can't figger it out."</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect that's what's happening to us," Cal said. "We've always
+argued that wherever there is matter and energy in the
+universe, certain natural laws will prevail. We've learned ways
+to take advantage of those natural laws, to do certain things that
+will make them work for us instead of against us.</p>
+
+<p>"We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise
+in the universe it, too, would have to become aware of these
+natural laws; that it, too, would have to do these same certain
+things to take advantage of those laws; that because the laws
+and what to do about them would always be similar man would
+have a lot in common with that other intelligence, and a means
+of communicating because of that similarity.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd argue that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this
+wasn't so important as its mental evolution&mdash;because that mental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+evolution would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't
+be truly alien, because science would be a common denominator.</p>
+
+<p>"Now it appears we could be wrong. Maybe our concept of
+science is too narrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become
+so fixed in our pattern of solving a problem we can't change, can't
+back off and take another look, see the problem not as it appears
+but as it really is."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't that the science of E?" Tom asked curiously. "To be
+able to extrapolate any co-ordinate system? I'm not criticizing,"
+he added hastily. "Just asking."</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too
+based on the relationship of things and forces to each other, too
+set in the notion that only physical tools can affect physical things.
+We may be looking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore
+not able to understand why we can't walk around the
+obstruction in the usual manner." He stopped, and added with
+a shrug. "Stupid, maybe. Or like the turkey, the yard is so big
+that he never gets a picture of it as a whole enclosure. By the
+time he's wandered down this side of the fence he's forgot what
+he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thing together
+in his mind. That's my trouble, anyhow. So far, I'm not able to
+put the whole thing together, see it all as one piece.</p>
+
+<p>"When I do, if I do, then maybe like a caged animal I'll see
+how to unlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is
+to fly."</p>
+
+<p>There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying
+natural law without any trouble, the three men broke off their
+discussion when they saw a bright flash high in the sky above
+them. All three knew what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>Another E ship had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists
+in acknowledgment of their space flare.</p>
+
+<p>If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still
+in daylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+no equipment for direct communication. They may even have
+reasoned there was no means of signaling with artificial light.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could
+not build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men
+could anticipate what must be happening there. Right now they
+would be anxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring
+up like signal fires on a lonely island where a marooned man has,
+at last, sighted a ship on the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists were no longer hiding, but were freely wandering
+in open spaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk they would
+have seen the men and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk,
+they still might have spotted them in the infrared viewers which
+picked up the heat differentials and gave a fair approximation of
+shapes.</p>
+
+<p>The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their
+watches. How long, they would be asking, does it take those
+colonists, that E down there, to get a signal fire going?</p>
+
+<p>About five minutes passed, and another flare lighted the
+heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"Get off the dime down there!" it seemed to say. "Acknowledge
+us!"</p>
+
+<p>Cal took the chance that they might have an infrared viewscope
+directly on him, and he waved his arms above his head.
+But apparently they had not spotted him, for there was no
+answering flare.</p>
+
+<p>At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to fifteen
+minutes, throughout the long night the flares continued to light
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to us," the flares begged. "Surely you were expecting us.
+Surely you would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light
+could not rouse you."</p>
+
+<p>Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms,
+but it brought no answer from the ship. In the darkness perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+the equipment wasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze
+bushes and trees also swayed with movement.</p>
+
+<p>Once there was a rustle in the brush, and in the starlight they
+recognized the figure of Louie approaching them.</p>
+
+<p>"This has got to stop," he said worriedly as he came up to
+them. "That light is an unnatural thing. It will anger Them. It
+is not meant for the peace of Eden to be disturbed by any
+artificial thing. And if They should turn Their wrath upon us&mdash;woe,
+woe!"</p>
+
+<p>His face was stricken in the light of a new flare, and as suddenly
+as he had come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees
+to seek his people, be beside them, comforting them when
+disaster struck down.</p>
+
+<p>After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their
+acknowledgment of the flares in darkness. They watched for an
+hour or so, and then tried to sleep. The periodic flares continued
+to come throughout the long night, as if now no longer pleading
+for acknowledgment, but rather reassuring men in such deep distress
+that they could not answer. Reassuring them that help was
+at hand and morning would come.</p>
+
+<p>They tried to sleep, and although fitfully disturbed by the
+continuing flares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn,
+Cal awoke and aroused his two companions, and by the time
+there was enough light for the ship to see clear detail upon the
+ground, the three men were ready for a better attempt at answering
+the ship's signal.</p>
+
+<p>They went up to the village site, where the colonists were sleeping
+in the way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke
+Frank and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their
+plan. Louie, too, awoke, heard the plan, and tried to warn them
+against it. Any attempt, he said, to communicate with those not
+on Eden would surely increase the wrath of Those who wanted
+only the natural state here&mdash;a wrath still withheld because of
+superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating with him,
+got together enough colonists to carry out his plan.</p>
+
+<p>Good-naturedly, the colonists did as they were told, but with
+the attitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing
+they'd rather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency
+about communicating with home seemed to have been washed
+from their minds.</p>
+
+<p>In a clear space, on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit
+or lie in certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of
+ancient signal patterns, those certain positions took the shape of
+space-navy patterns.</p>
+
+<p>Three men lay in a triangle. Next to that, six men sat in a
+circle, and last three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped
+someone on the ship would be able to read the ancient message.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty."</p>
+
+<p>The signal had no more than formed when there was a flash
+from the ship so bright that it could be seen in the morning sky.
+They had read his signal, and now they began a series of flashes,
+of questions. "What's going on down there?" was the essence of
+their questioning.</p>
+
+<p>It was well the ship had caught the first signal, for the colonists
+lost all interest in the game which had no point. They simply
+stood up and wandered away in search of their breakfasts from
+the trees and bushes.</p>
+
+<p>Louie, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge
+of them again and shepherded them to a grove of trees where
+the fruit seemed especially large and succulent.</p>
+
+<p>But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone.
+He lay down on the ground, himself, to move his arms in
+semaphore positions. But even as he lay back, he became conscious
+that he, too, could hardly care less. With a detached interest
+that amounted to amusement at such childish, primitive
+things, he watched his arms spell out one more message.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep off! No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate
+system."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stood up then, and made a farewell gesture toward the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant he felt strangely that he had passed into another
+stage of growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment
+that had held him back. What the ship did, in response to
+his warnings, no longer mattered. If it landed, its personnel too
+would join the colonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might
+circle there indefinitely.</p>
+
+<p>Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence,
+unable to aid them, release them.</p>
+
+<p>He did not particularly care what they did.</p>
+
+<p>They could go on, spluttering out their signals, trying to
+question him. He didn't even try to read their messages. It didn't
+matter. Their science had nothing to do with him, nothing to
+offer him. Through it he could not reach a solution.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow he knew that already.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+<h2>19</h2>
+
+<p>"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness
+he could muster, "this time there must not be any interference
+with communication. There just absolutely must not be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it wasn't my fault," the operator retorted with an exasperation
+that blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E
+McGinnis said&mdash;that they could identify E Gray, and the ship's
+crew, and many of the colonists, but that there was no sign of
+the ship that took them there. If there wasn't any ship there
+couldn't be any communication. It's not my fault. I can't receive
+something that wasn't sent."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know," the supervisor said, and then, worried that
+he may be giving the appearance of backing down, commanded
+savagely, "just watch it, that's all!" He chewed violently at his
+knuckle and glared at the operator.</p>
+
+<p>"Just watch it," the operator mumbled bitterly. "Just watch it,
+the man says. And what will I watch if the message stops coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now, now, now," the supervisor nagged, "we'll have no
+insubordination, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>And upstairs this time more than Bill Hayes, sector chief,
+were monitoring the message. The top administrative brass
+of E.H.Q. were assembled in their big plush conference room
+used for arriving at major policy decisions that sometimes affected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+the whole course of man's progress and direction in occupying
+the universe.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in worried silence as E McGinnis reported the two
+messages he had received from Junior E Gray.</p>
+
+<p>First: Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Then: Keep off. No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate
+system.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at one another under beetled brows. They
+wondered, at first privately and then openly if that Junior E had
+blown his stack. They had looked at many a problem finally
+solved by the E's, but never before had such a ridiculous situation
+come up.</p>
+
+<p>And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided
+to place a curb on E.H.Q.'s freedom of movement, its control
+over the experimental phases of planet development. The injunction
+to halt a Junior E from taking over the Eden problem fooled
+none of them. They knew that Gunderson wasn't concerned for
+those colonists out there, that he was merely using the public
+furor to advance his own personal power. They knew that the
+police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and ever to
+bring every phase of human activity under their control. They
+knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation
+to arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing
+some law which seemed only to apply to this given condition but
+in actuality broadened police powers over a wide area of man's
+actions.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, there was far more at stake here than the fate of fifty
+colonists. In a sense E.H.Q. itself was the stake. The whole science
+of E was at stake.</p>
+
+<p>And E McGinnis had played right into Gunderson's hands. It
+was he who had been the E influence in deciding to allow a
+Junior to handle the problem in the first place. It was he who
+was standing off from the planet, not landing and taking over
+things as he should.</p>
+
+<p>There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+on Eden were in good health, and from their apparent actions, not
+even distressed.</p>
+
+<p>This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for
+example. Did the Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it?
+Must mean that. What else could prevent it? But when an E, a
+real E, took charge in an experimental colony, the colonists had
+nothing further to say about the matter. True, when the five-year
+experimental period was over and the three-generation colonists
+took over a planet, then it came more under civil control, and
+E.H.Q. largely withdrew with the provision that it could step
+back in at any time the problem seemed not to have been solved
+after all.</p>
+
+<p>But while under the five-year test ... The E was the final
+word, or should be. The colonists knew it. The E knew it, or
+should know it. Obviously then it was weakness on the part of
+the Junior if he allowed the colonists to dictate that there could
+be no mechanical science. Proof of his inability to handle the job.</p>
+
+<p>A perfect setup for Gunderson!</p>
+
+<p>They decided they were forced to take a strong hand with
+McGinnis. Ordinarily the E was the final word, not only with the
+colonists, but with the administration at E.H.Q. But maybe there
+were times when he shouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take
+a hand. After all, Gray was still a Junior, hardly more than a
+boy. Was it right that a mere boy could stop investigation by
+anyone except himself? Tell Earth with all its power and might
+what to do?</p>
+
+<p>Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E
+policy should be made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing
+else, they must take a strong hand to prevent Gunderson from
+moving in with his police powers. Protect the E science from
+Gunderson, or at least salvage what they might.</p>
+
+<p>Their conference over, they asked for a connection with
+McGinnis.</p>
+
+<p>"We assume you will land and take charge, E McGinnis?" the
+board chairman asked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," McGinnis snapped back. "An E has forbidden
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well now," the chairman argued, and sweat began to come
+out on his forehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his
+judgment isn't mature enough for this problem."</p>
+
+<p>"I have every confidence in Junior E Gray," McGinnis said
+acidly. "And every E in the system will back me. It makes no
+difference what you have decided. Either the science of E means
+something, or it doesn't. Either we have complete freedom to
+handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remind you, gentlemen,
+this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E is a fool
+and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to
+repeat past disasters?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"&mdash;the chairman was all
+but pleading now&mdash;"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must
+land a ship to take a firmer control over the situation. Public
+sentiment demands it. Policy demands it. Perhaps the whole future
+of E demands it."</p>
+
+<p>A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," she said, "this is Linda Gray. I requested that
+I be cut in on any communication concerning my husband, and
+E McGinnis made it an order before he left. If another ship does
+land, I must be on it. I want to be with my husband."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not be landing on Eden, Linda," E McGinnis said
+firmly. "An E has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E
+in the universe. No other E will land. Your husband is all right.
+He is in good health, and apparently mentally sound. At least
+sound enough to warn us against landing. He must have a reason.
+We don't know, yet, what it is.</p>
+
+<p>"Now he has stopped communicating, we don't know why. He
+must have a reason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason.
+E science has been drilled into him until it is a part of his every
+mind cell, perhaps even every body cell.</p>
+
+<p>"I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+because communicating with us distracts him from solving the
+problem. If E.H.Q. decides to send out a ship on its own, and
+risk landing in an unknown co-ordinate system, against the orders
+of two E's, which will become the combined orders of all E's in
+the universe, that is their decision. If you wish to be on it, that
+is your decision.</p>
+
+<p>"I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E.H.Q. cannot
+connect with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted
+any further. I'm trying to think."</p>
+
+<p>The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board
+hanging in a vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination
+to do something, anything.</p>
+
+<p>They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity
+it was their duty to serve and from whom they should be able
+to expect help, and the obvious determination of Gunderson to
+use this incident as his means of regaining control over the E's
+and E.H.Q. for civil authority. Didn't the stupid E see the danger?
+Wasn't it the same danger that men of science had always faced,
+the same mistake they had always made&mdash;leaving out the human
+element in a problem?</p>
+
+<p>The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man
+doesn't give a tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really.
+He wants only that he and his shall be ascendant at the center
+of things, the inevitable, the only possible goal of the non-science
+mind. Surely the history of science versus non-science should have
+made this evident long ago! Surely there had been enough
+incidents in history....</p>
+
+<p>Very well, it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself.
+If he refused the see the clear danger to his whole structure&mdash;and
+their own ascendant position at the center of it&mdash;it was their
+clear duty to protect him nonetheless.</p>
+
+<p>They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating
+laboratory, a miniature E.H.Q., at least to be there on the scene;
+to help in any way they could, perhaps to counter the moves
+Gunderson's police might make, at least to stand by.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At least, in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to
+show their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it
+masterfully, without once mentioning that their real concern was
+to remain ascendant at the center of things at all costs, and thereby
+maintained the tradition of all non-science endeavors.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility
+not only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In
+every system, in every rule, there must be provision for the exception.
+Gray is only a Junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our
+position. Herein lies Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying
+the sentiment of the people. A Junior E is not mature enough
+to make the decisions affecting the life or death of fifty people.
+More than that, perhaps the future progress of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should
+become necessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in
+spite of the Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we
+will not be overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who
+has not yet proved his capacity to merit an E.</p>
+
+<p>"We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree
+with Gunderson on that. If we must honor the command of the
+Junior E, then why not the Associate E? Why not the student E?
+Why not the apprentice student E? Why not any kid in the
+universe who thinks he is extra smart?</p>
+
+<p>"The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over
+the individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never
+been clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at
+all, but it has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to
+bring the E structure back under civil control. We must salvage
+what we can. Perhaps if we concede his control over the Juniors
+on down, we can maintain the immunity of the Senior E. We must
+work to save at least that much."</p>
+
+<p>The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue
+ship, left six hours later.</p>
+
+<p>Linda was on it.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>20</h2>
+
+<p>There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind.</p>
+
+<p>His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the
+messages spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on
+the grass, and in the semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms.
+The photographs taken were all the evidence he needed to prove
+the morals charges he intended to bring.</p>
+
+<p>It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show
+in the newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here
+and there who might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures
+of the individuals, separated from the total, disporting themselves
+in lewd, naked positions would do the job.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every
+organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of
+others on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up
+in opposition.</p>
+
+<p>There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that
+Junior E, place him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps
+it might be wise to let the colonists off easy&mdash;he could easily show
+that it was the influence of the Junior which had made a disgusting
+orgy develop there on Eden. Never mind that they were
+naked before the Junior arrived. The public could always be
+razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence, its order and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and political trick to
+separate a few items from the total context, but still a good one;
+for the public never bothered to know the whole context of anything.
+An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an
+attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all
+the public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on
+a jury, observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter
+of evidence, only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor
+and insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these
+bits he formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and
+tried to set up his case accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>His own course was clear.</p>
+
+<p>His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally
+clear:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="pa3"><i>1. Proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>2. Ignore any protests from the E ship already out there,
+or any other ship E.H.Q. might have sent.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>3. Ignore any signals from the Junior E on the planet.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>4. Land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main
+site of the lewd and obscene crime.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>5. Place Junior E Calvin Gray under arrest.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>6. Place the crew of the Junior E's ship, Thomas Lynwood,
+Franklin Norton, Louis LeBeau, under arrest.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>7. Place any colonist who opposed the police under arrest.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>8. Place the remainder of the colonists in detention under
+protective custody.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pa3"><i>9. Place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any
+way with the police in carrying out the foregoing
+orders.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final
+order.</p>
+
+<p>Place a Senior E under arrest?</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, a Senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+wander around, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing
+to let them get away with making such statements as "The police
+attitude toward the people is the major cause of crime." It was
+something else, and time the E's found it out, for them to make
+any overt move to interfere with the police in their performance
+of duty.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist.
+It would strengthen his case.</p>
+
+<p>The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a
+hitch. He proceeded to the scene of the crime.</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E
+McGinnis, received over the ship's communicator when they
+arrived at the scene of the crime, to stand clear of the planet.
+What policeman moving in to make an arrest for an illegal act&mdash;and
+certainly running around stark naked, posing in lewd and
+indecent postures in full view of the public, was an illegal act&mdash;would
+pay any attention to the request of an onlooker which
+amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"?</p>
+
+<p>There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the
+planet's surface, so the third order did not apply.</p>
+
+<p>It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>He passed inside the orbits of the three other ships now
+circling the planet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship,
+the E.H.Q. floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship
+into Eden's atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled.</p>
+
+<p>And nothing happened.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not
+lower the ship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal
+precautions against crashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full
+power. And nothing happened. They lowered not another inch.</p>
+
+<p>A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever
+this barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to
+land on the proper site. They backed the ship farther out into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+space. They made their thrust with full speed and momentum.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they
+did not penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped
+across slick ice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent
+penetration would not do.</p>
+
+<p>Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be
+prepared to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they
+crash the ship at full power against the surface.</p>
+
+<p>And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they
+came to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without
+any feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.</p>
+
+<p>What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact
+E McGinnis. E science apparently had some kind of shield which
+they'd kept secret from the people&mdash;and wouldn't there be a stink
+over that one, once he released that information! Contact E
+McGinnis and find out!</p>
+
+<p>"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure
+there's a shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I
+don't know what's causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think
+They've caught the specimen They want. There's an E down
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+<h2>21</h2>
+
+<p>Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal
+McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't
+have known, that he himself was the specimen They had hoped
+to catch. That having caught what They wanted They would
+naturally close the door to the trap to prevent any possibility of
+escape, as yet, or any interference with their experiment.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where
+he had signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone
+detached from ordinary existence. As he walked away from the
+slope, ignoring the frantic signals from the ship out in space, he
+felt he was also walking out of a shell of superficial cerebration
+and into a deeper sense of reality. It was as if, in spite of E
+training, for the first time in his life, he could commit himself
+wholly, in all areas of his being, to the consideration of a problem.</p>
+
+<p>His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing
+he needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him
+nothing he needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock
+the door which led into this new area of reality. He must find,
+must define, some new concept of man's relation to the universe.
+He must again travel that road, that million-year-long road man
+had traveled in trying to determine his position in reality.</p>
+
+<p>He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+boulder that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging
+over the edge. He watched some young colonists wade through
+the pool to drive fish into the shallows where they could pin them,
+with their legs, catch them with their hands. In their need for
+protein, the colonists were finding, as many Earth peoples had
+found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and texture as food.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was
+awareness, awareness of self as something separate from environment.
+There was awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain
+things to and with that environment. There was awareness of self
+always at the center of things, and therefore awareness of his
+importance in the scheme of things. But there was awareness of
+more.</p>
+
+<p>There was awareness of things happening to his environment
+which he, in all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness
+gives rise to reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If
+things happened in his environment which he himself could not
+do, then there must be something stronger and more important
+than he.</p>
+
+<p>To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant,
+meant that all things of lesser importance, outside the center,
+must be made subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost.
+And if they would not assume positions of subservience, they
+must be destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than
+he, who could do unexplained things to his environment; then it
+was plain that he must assume positions of subservience to those
+beings, lest he himself be destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>So man created his gods in his own image, with his own
+attributes magnified.</p>
+
+<p>Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness
+carries with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have
+an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength
+and importance became the only answer open to him at that
+stage of his mental evolution. And served the important need of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not do, and therefore
+could not understand, be attributed to those higher beings.
+Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would
+have driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man
+could not have survived to remain aware.</p>
+
+<p>But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their
+penalties. The penalty being that when one thinks he has the
+answer he stops looking for it. The command being that he must
+conduct himself in accord with the answer.</p>
+
+<p>The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads
+untold millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is
+failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide
+any answer beyond the primitive one was self-evident.</p>
+
+<p>To some, then, it became evident that the question must be
+reopened. Through the long written history of man, here and
+there, by accident often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of
+the brain with which he was endowed, man found on occasion
+he could do things to his environment that heretofore had been
+the province of the gods&mdash;and in the doing had not become a
+god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the foolhardy
+questions then that demanded new answers.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time
+was asked by Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of
+the universe, the reason for its creation?</p>
+
+<p>He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question
+was too new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp,
+for the non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the
+center of things, to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was
+on his followers, those who saw sense in the question, that the
+wrath of non-science descended. Non-science used the only
+method it had ever devised to achieve the only result it had
+ever been able to countenance&mdash;torture and force to make dissidents
+kneel in subservience.</p>
+
+<p>But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could
+not be erased!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of
+science, as something understood and communicable, as a calculated
+point of view, had not yet been discovered. The key that
+would unlock its door had not yet been found.</p>
+
+<p>Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti,
+almost to doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded.
+The splashing and the laughter of the colonists below the rock
+were no more than accompanying music.</p>
+
+<p>The key which opened the door to physical science was not
+discovered until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells,
+beatniks, who hung around the coffee shops of London. Later,
+because non-science always persecutes those who dare ask questions
+and thereby demonstrate some subversion to subservience,
+many had to flee to Oxford which, at that time, was sanctuary
+for those who differed from popular thought.</p>
+
+<p>As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent
+his vision back through the card index of his mind to find the
+reference, the key that opened the door to physical science, the
+pregnant point of view that would give birth to a whole new
+concept of man's relationship to the universe. He found the
+passages in Thomas Sprat's <i>History of the Royal Society of
+London (1667)</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art
+which can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make
+it, not only an enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity;
+but a business of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an
+uninterrupted work."</p>
+
+<p>He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head
+on one arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps
+the most significant sentence ever written by man.</p>
+
+<p>"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors,
+and passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind
+may obtain a dominion over <i>Things</i>, and not only over one
+another's judgements."</p>
+
+<p>That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+for the only method ever discovered until then was the
+non-science method of making its judgments prevail over all
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased
+in spite of all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man
+had come this far.</p>
+
+<p>And now?</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial
+answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man
+must travel? Something as limited in its way as non-science was
+limited? Something too narrow to contain the whole of reality?
+Something also to be left behind? A milestone passed, instead
+of the goal?</p>
+
+<p>What comes after science? What new door must be opened
+into a still newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of
+his relationship to reality must man now discover before he could
+continue his journey down the long road toward total comprehension?</p>
+
+<p>He could ask the question, but it was not the right question;
+for it contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself,
+almost as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head
+in disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of
+the colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the
+men had caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands.
+Delightedly, the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed
+their efforts. He lay back down again, and stretched his cramped
+muscles.</p>
+
+<p>Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He
+had missed something, something early. Something man had
+known in pre-science, and had forgotten in science.</p>
+
+<p>These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they
+seemed only to be a part of their environment, without curiosity,
+their fears of even the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as
+though it had never been, was their memory of a previous existence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+to this. They were wholly at one with their environment&mdash;unaware.</p>
+
+<p>Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance?
+Would they be able to continue living without peopling the trees,
+the streams, the clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and
+vengeful&mdash;created in their own image? Could they continue to live
+alone in the universe?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his
+kinship with them. And so he found companionship with the gods.
+And cutting himself off from the gods ...</p>
+
+<p>Loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What
+purpose then his exploration of it? What might he find that he
+had not already found?</p>
+
+<p>Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony
+of exploding exploration, the questions of the artists were already
+finding themselves woven into music, painting, literature.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there
+none other than we who are aware?"</p>
+
+<p>The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing
+still more and more worlds became wider known. The minor
+would become major, the recessive dominant. The endless aim
+of non-science to make all others subservient had lost its purpose
+for those who could still think. The dominion over things instead
+of people, the goal of science&mdash;was that also to lose its purpose
+for those who could still think? Until man, defeated by purposelessness,
+sank back in apathy, lost the very willingness to live&mdash;and
+so died?</p>
+
+<p>What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient&mdash;and
+lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was
+feeling that apathy? Facing that dissolution?</p>
+
+<p>When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship!
+To discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the
+alone&mdash;or at least hope to discover it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For companionship there must be communication. And yet the
+exasperation, the futility of trying to communicate with a friend
+who always interpreted everything one said and did as meaning
+something entirely different from the intent.</p>
+
+<p>Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there
+were no other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break
+through that closed mind be made?</p>
+
+<p>All right.</p>
+
+<p>Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if
+Their frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted
+all his efforts?</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on
+grass that sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A
+young colonist and his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were
+coming toward him. The man was carrying a fresh-caught fish.
+They came to a stop at the base of his rock and looked up at
+him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling faces.</p>
+
+<p>"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the
+young man said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps
+it is our duty to give you one too."</p>
+
+<p>At least they were being impartial.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+<h2>22</h2>
+
+<p>When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the
+flesh, the flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay
+back on the rock again, to doze, to continue his search for a means
+of communicating.</p>
+
+<p>He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency,
+of Their long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his
+greedy delight in occupying more and more of the universe simply
+because he could, to protect himself against the cosmic loneliness
+that must follow, he too would be searching for awareness.</p>
+
+<p>But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it
+did not meet those terms.</p>
+
+<p>That there was some other intelligence which had found man
+instead, Cal did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the
+manipulation of natural laws, the denial of physical tools&mdash;for what
+purpose? To clear away the debris which prevented communication
+of awareness as They defined it?</p>
+
+<p>There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not
+dependent upon the tools and artifacts of physical science&mdash;extra-sensory
+perception, psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical
+tools its development had been made unnecessary? Because having
+found the answers with physical tools, man stopped looking
+for answers other than these?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without
+the use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the
+crude manipulation of things and forces through tools to a
+manipulation without them? There was precedent in man's science.
+The elaborate wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets,
+that gave way to a printed diagram of such wirings on a card
+to obtain the same result?</p>
+
+<p>A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the
+diagram to obtain the same result? But how?</p>
+
+<p>To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical
+tools (for the material printed on the card diagram was the
+physical carrier of the current) how to cause the current to follow
+the mental image of that diagram? With voice and music bathing
+one's senses simply because one thought of the diagram of a receiver?
+How?</p>
+
+<p>He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a
+fence too low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying,
+he was walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking
+in an endless circle.</p>
+
+<p>Circle?</p>
+
+<p>Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a
+patch of bare sand at the river's edge.</p>
+
+<p>In every framework of thought which man had ever devised,
+the circle was prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed
+of every race, of every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts
+of magic as to the current methods of science. It played its part
+in the movement of planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence
+of the total universe.</p>
+
+<p>Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop
+a physical science comparable to his own, but surely awareness,
+whatever form it took, would know the circle.</p>
+
+<p>He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and
+with the tip of his finger he quickly drew a circle.</p>
+
+<p>The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!</p>
+
+<p>He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+if the invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware
+of a circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else
+do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he
+dotted the center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a
+radius to the perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another
+line, approximating the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small
+2. Beside this he wrote R&sup2;. He drew an equals sign. He scratched
+the pi sign.</p>
+
+<p>Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand
+he smoothed all its interior. That should be plain enough. The
+symbols stayed. They understood his mathematics, then. The
+equation seemed undisturbed, yet there was something wrong
+with it. He had to look closely at the sand before he saw what
+it was.</p>
+
+<p>The = had changed to : !</p>
+
+<p>Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate
+to" for "equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure,
+without tools he could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them
+entirely equal. It was pedantic of them to split hairs over that?
+He must practice, without tools, to draw a perfect circle?</p>
+
+<p>Or was that running around inside his low fence?</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was
+now smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't
+got what they meant.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."</p>
+
+<p>Again = changed to : .</p>
+
+<p>Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by
+his string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved.
+They were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet
+the numbers could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved.
+He looked down again, and the equation was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Wrong track again.</p>
+
+<p>He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.</p>
+
+<p>The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+it as a constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference
+between physical science and psi science based in this
+insignificant difference in exactness? Try something else. See
+what happens. There was an equation which had proved its effectiveness,
+upon which the whole science of atomics was based.</p>
+
+<p>"E = MC&sup2;," he wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Again = changed to : .</p>
+
+<p>What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals
+sign? That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals
+was one of the possible proportions. Had we become walled in
+our low fence because we were too dependent upon the exact
+balance? Been satisfied to find that answer, and therefore stopped
+looking for the possibilities inherent in unbalanced equations?</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see
+them erased. But they were still there. So he was starting on the
+right track. But wait.</p>
+
+<p>Before his eyes he saw the C&sup2; smooth out, disappear. Only
+"E : M" remained. Were they saying that dependence upon
+constants was the low fence? That man must learn to do without
+his firm absolutes? That was the ultimate in relativity: Energy is
+proportionate to matter. But so all-inclusive as to be too vague
+for use.</p>
+
+<p>For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over
+Einstein's use of C&sup2; in his expression. Some held that it was a
+product of his time, that he was able to make only one step beyond
+classical physics where all things must be related to a fixed value.
+Others held that its inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that
+Einstein, by his other work, had shown he knew it was a fallacy;
+that, tongue in cheek, he inserted it into his equation in full
+knowledge that his fellow scientists of his day could not even bear
+to think of the awesome concept of things without orientation
+to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him entirely, refuse
+even to consider his thought unless he catered that much to
+their superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+but emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be
+the center of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a
+familiar, fixed cave where he might run and hide, close himself
+in securely when the chaos of storm outside became too frightening
+to bear. The need of a fixed absolute, whether in philosophy
+or science, a fixed spot that would not shift.</p>
+
+<p>The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the
+track.</p>
+
+<p>It had changed again. Now it read "E&#948;M": The form of the
+function of energy to matter is variable.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function
+and the independent variable of the function vary together.</p>
+
+<p>Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of
+energy to matter.</p>
+
+<p>And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship
+between energy and matter.</p>
+
+<p>He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means
+about as much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is
+fly'."</p>
+
+<p>There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw
+Louie. A deep sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared
+down at the symbols in the sand.</p>
+
+<p>"They talked to <i>you</i>," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to
+serve Them, but it was to <i>you</i> They talked."</p>
+
+<p>And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.</p>
+
+<p>Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's
+shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked
+down at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read
+"There is an infinity of relationships between matter and energy,
+an infinity of forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."</p>
+
+<p>The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was
+gone. Cal felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+He did not regret it, he had enough to think about. But first,
+there was Louie, racked with broken sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties,
+absolutes that would not shift under the weight of his questioning.
+No doubt in his youth he had turned to the religions of the day&mdash;and
+found them a tissue of rationalizations without contact in
+reality. Then to science&mdash;and found it, too, constantly shifting in
+its interpretations, making new evaluations as evidence discounted
+the old. The shock of landing on Eden to drive him back into
+childhood interpretations again&mdash;at last, the clear evidence that
+had been denied his belief in youth.</p>
+
+<p>Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They
+had talked.</p>
+
+<p>"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if
+you had searched through the years for companionship, and
+thought you might have found it, would it please you to have
+that companion drop to his knees, grovel before you? Would this
+be your idea of companionship?</p>
+
+<p>"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What
+but the incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant
+nothing more than conquering or being conquered, could imagine
+such conduct would be pleasing to another intelligence?</p>
+
+<p>"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another
+intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of
+abasement? The use of that intelligence to know, to understand,
+instead of a denial of it?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling
+toward the depths of the forest.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+<h2>23</h2>
+
+<p>For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement
+had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched
+their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the
+speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as
+the simplifying of their idea-content no longer required its use.</p>
+
+<p>Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the
+past, the clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together,
+seemed always available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude
+upon his thought. Frank now seemed one with the colonists.
+Louie lived on the outskirts of the herd, near the colonists but
+not of them. He had ceased to exhort, warn, command, argue.
+His face was closed, told nothing of what he was thinking.</p>
+
+<p>And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was
+gathering his own food, catching his own fish.</p>
+
+<p>And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.</p>
+
+<p>Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact
+with the old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the
+colonists. At night they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch
+the ships, now grown to four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a
+constellation of bright stars above them. They read the intermittent
+flashes of light from McGinnis, and from the E.H.Q. laboratory.
+McGinnis told of the police ship's attempts to break through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+the barrier surrounding Eden, and its failure. The laboratory told
+of Linda's presence on board, and now and then flashed out a
+message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness, her faith
+in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.</p>
+
+<p>McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson
+in person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable
+to believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come
+in person to take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in
+idleness, unable to do anything with the situation, unwilling to
+go back to Earth and leave it alone.</p>
+
+<p>Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to
+Cal the reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from
+far away and unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda
+seemed the haunting strains of a song remembered from long ago.</p>
+
+<p>For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had
+been given the key&mdash;reality is a matter of proportion, change the
+concept of proportion and you change the material form&mdash;but he
+had not found the lock and the door it would open. He knew it,
+but he couldn't do it.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had
+to be for his job as pilot.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him
+the night's messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground
+and brushed away some leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the
+equals sign." He scratched a formula in the dirt:</p>
+
+<p class="center">"2 + 2 = 4"</p>
+
+<p>The = changed to : . Then to &#948;. Then through the series of
+variable relationships.</p>
+
+<p>Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.</p>
+
+<p>"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't
+variable. It equals."</p>
+
+<p>Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+They have to say than in trying to convince Them that They're
+wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom
+argued, "then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate
+relationship might be dependent solely upon choice.
+Nothing would be solid, dependable."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly.
+"Not a house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter
+the choice of proportion&mdash;and they aren't there anymore."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+<h2>24</h2>
+
+<p>Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show
+him the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge
+of how to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still
+it is useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps
+of physical science, the essence of why so few were able to get
+beyond step two of E science. Anyone could disagree with a
+statement, but in answer to "What if it not be true, how then to
+account for the phenomena?" most bogged down at that point,
+unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of some other
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone knew the equation E = MC&sup2;, but few could implement
+it to build an atomic power plant.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of
+a balanced equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was
+not to be countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing
+though he might be to consider something else.</p>
+
+<p>In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts,
+stems and leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the
+clear water of the stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that
+he was unaware he was taking care of his body's needs, Cal built<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+up whole structures of alien philosophies on the nature of the
+universe, and saw them topple of their own weight.</p>
+
+<p>Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning.
+He was too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and
+all physical science was built on the balanced equation. Even in
+trying to consider the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting
+to determine the exact nature of the unbalance, and to supply
+it as an X factor on the other side of the equation to restore
+balance.</p>
+
+<p>To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical
+reality. To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must
+change the physical reality to balance the equation, rather than
+supply the X factor to keep reality unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>But how to do it still eluded him.</p>
+
+<p>At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close
+to a solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic
+wiring was necessary only because the human mind could not
+visualize the whole without that aid, that music did not come
+through because in incomplete visualization some little part was
+left dangling, unconnected. And the long history of non-science
+belief in the magic properties of cabalistic signs and designs rose
+up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility that perhaps
+man had once come close to the answer of how to control
+physical properties without the use of tools; that the development
+of a physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead
+of farther along the direct route toward his goal.</p>
+
+<p>Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or
+forgot. Yet kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be
+changed if he could only draw the right design.</p>
+
+<p>Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his
+mind. It seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he
+came to grasping the problem; the nearer the seashore, the more
+it eluded him.</p>
+
+<p>One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal
+Palace Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+the winds of the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his
+thought would be blown away? Perhaps the arrangement of the
+crystalline structures, the arches and spires, might catch his brain
+waves, modulate them, transform them, strengthen them, feed
+them back, himself a part of the design instead of outside it?</p>
+
+<p>In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But
+what harm to try?</p>
+
+<p>He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the
+two who would care.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And
+you can't carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain
+once. It's mighty purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable
+enough to cover its shipping costs back to Earth. The ground
+is too rocky to farm. Not much in the way of food growing there.
+So we never went back."</p>
+
+<p>"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered,"
+Cal said. "One of the first places they went because it was so
+outstanding. But they found nothing interesting and useful either.
+Still, I think I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should
+lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food
+and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either
+direction. And, I reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin'
+to hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all gettin'
+along all right, so you needn't worry about us either."</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to come with you, Cal?" Tom asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Cal answered, "I think better if I'm alone."</p>
+
+<p>He left them then, went past some colonists who were picking
+berries and eating them, and on up the valley that ran between
+two ridges.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the
+valley floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream,
+a gradual drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at
+last became a ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the
+scent of flowers and ripening fruit was sweet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before he left the ravine to begin his climb he ate some of the
+fruit, and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with
+a long, cool drink of water from one of the many springs that fed
+the stream.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at the mountain above him, and his eye picked
+out the most likely approach to its summit. It was not a high
+mountain, not in terms of those tremendous, tortured skin folds
+of other planets. Hardly more than a high hill in terms of those.
+Nor, as far as he could see, would the climb be difficult or
+hazardous.</p>
+
+<p>The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into
+his mind, although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched
+and barren. The gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter
+place, although they might not have lived so long in the minds of
+man, since the mountain was more easily climbed, and therefore
+man would have been the more easily convinced after repeated
+explorations that no gods lived there after all.</p>
+
+<p>Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the
+site of heaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly,
+as man explored the earlier site and found no heaven there?
+Retreat after retreat until at last the whole idea was patently
+ridiculous?</p>
+
+<p>Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet&mdash;to what may man
+now turn in rapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all
+physical science, filled the deep human need of these expressions?</p>
+
+<p>The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he
+intended to follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked
+behind him, at the valley of the colonists below, and far down
+where the valley merged into the sea, and far on out at the
+hazy purple line of another island. As he started to turn back
+again, to resume his climb, his eye caught a flash of something
+moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown, bare skin.</p>
+
+<p>He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees.
+As he had suspected it was Louie, still trying to keep him always
+in sight.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His first impulse was to call out, to wait for Louie, ask him to
+join in the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get
+away from all others. And sympathetic and compassionate though
+he might be, the confusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon
+his own. Nor had his earlier attempts to comfort Louie met success.</p>
+
+<p>Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would
+clear his mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's
+tortured mind intended it. There were no tools to strike at him
+from a distance. Even a boulder pushed from a height above him
+would not strike, for that would be the physical use of a tool
+to gain an end. He feared no bodily attack from ambush, for
+his own strength and knowledge were dependable.</p>
+
+<p>He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where
+it swept upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going
+was not difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and
+provided clear spaces for him to wind among them. The stones,
+at first a problem to his bare feet, bothered him less and less
+until he forgot them. He felt no physical discomfort, neither from
+tiredness nor thirst, nor from the branches scraping his bare skin,
+nor anything to drag his mind into trivialities.</p>
+
+<p>Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to
+reason out the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness,
+a merging of the often quite separated areas of thought,
+intuition, and appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so
+tall that they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he
+climbed they were replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist
+high, then merely low, creeping growths which his feet avoided
+without mental direction.</p>
+
+<p>A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of
+crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the
+geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been
+broken away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist
+or colonist had ever passed this way.</p>
+
+<p>The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly
+and without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and
+matter seemed to have receded far into the background of
+consciousness. Man's star-strewn civilization was no more than a
+dream. It was as if he, alone and complete, occupied the whole of
+the universe, encompassed it as he was encompassed by it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on
+the valley floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as
+if, at any instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They
+would stand revealed.</p>
+
+<p>Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way
+through higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz,
+with deeper amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light,
+diffracted not only in the purples but into greens and reds and
+blues.</p>
+
+<p>As he came around the base of one of these, there towering
+above he caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles,
+buttresses, and arches of the mountain's crest.</p>
+
+<p>It was the crystal palace.</p>
+
+<p>The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from
+below, yet his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry
+from thirst, nor were his muscles protesting the effort. He did
+not need to stop and rest, to gather his energy for the last steep
+assault upon the peak.</p>
+
+<p>Far below him he saw Louie toiling up a slope, then dropping
+with every appearance of exhaustion when he came to each
+level place. Still he would rest no more than a minute, and
+always his head was turned to keep sight of Cal above him. He
+would push himself to his knees, then to his feet; and slowly,
+step by step, begin his climb again.</p>
+
+<p>As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the
+self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the
+guilt of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+developed moral sense of man had not, after all, done more harm
+than good. For in the ordered universe, where everything fitted
+into the whole, what could be either good or bad, right or wrong,
+except as a reflection of man's inadequacies in his imaginings?
+Rightness and good, wrongness and evil, these could not possibly
+be other than assessments of furtherance or threat to the ascendancy
+of me-and-mine at the center of things, and had no meaning
+beyond that context.</p>
+
+<p>He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the
+last sharp climb with no more effort than the whole had been.
+Now he drew near to the towering structures of the crest, now
+he was beside them. Now he walked beneath and through an
+arch which seemed almost a gothic entrance.</p>
+
+<p>And stood transfixed in ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and
+stone and glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the
+intricacy, the sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline
+structures where light from the noonday sun separated prismatically
+until it filled the air with myriads of living, darting,
+colored sparks of fire above him. Where the breeze that blew
+through the vibrating spires made blended sounds the ear could
+barely endure in rapture.</p>
+
+<p>As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees
+that laced their limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again
+he stood, lost in time and space and being, lost in vision and in
+music which neither had nor needed form nor beginning nor end.</p>
+
+<p>And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of
+man, to bridge the gap between Their minds and his.</p>
+
+<p>Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf
+of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to
+blended line until they seemed mirrored into infinity.</p>
+
+<p>The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down,
+clockwise, then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding
+him ...</p>
+
+<p>... the internal structure of crystals....</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+<h2>25</h2>
+
+<p>Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet
+coalesced from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space;
+gases compelled by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened
+matter, forming a crust over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere
+of metallic salts and gases, tortured and rent by electrical
+storms of incalculable fury, among the vibrating crystals one
+formed that was aware.</p>
+
+<p>Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only
+ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of
+molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on
+another planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage
+where affinity to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity
+began marked the distinction here as in that protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p>As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba,
+these crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold&mdash;to food.
+Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals
+about them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the
+rich and soupy atmosphere those elements necessary to growth,
+to branching, to cleavage into new individuals.</p>
+
+<p>What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life
+does it appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces
+itself, and blunders blindly through its environment in search
+for condition more favorable to its continuance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do
+no more than that.</p>
+
+<p>Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness
+of me-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel,
+know? A protoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all
+possibility of awareness in other kinds of growth because they
+are not a part of me-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know
+awareness?</p>
+
+<p>Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and
+on that planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness
+of self. Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure,
+and self-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time,
+awareness of self and surroundings grew into awareness of wider
+peripheries, to sensing their world, its structure, its nature.</p>
+
+<p>Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other
+worlds, of other stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly
+akin to the vibrating fields of force which compose the material
+universe, and the vibrations of fields of force can be altered. To
+change their surroundings to a more suitable environment
+through vibration rates of things led surely to negation of distance.
+To change from crystal form to fields of energy and back again
+combined with negation of distance&mdash;they too spread out and out
+among the stars.</p>
+
+<p>At first it was enough. But awareness is never still. Questions
+form.</p>
+
+<p>In all the universe were they the only sentient thing? Did any
+cry but theirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the
+nature of their being their search was unconcerned with the
+outer shape of things which could be changed by them at will,
+but rather with the inner vibratory rate which would signal
+sentience, awareness.</p>
+
+<p>They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces.
+Water runs down hill without knowing that it does, without the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+internal structure to provide the vibratory rate which would permit
+knowing.</p>
+
+<p>For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of a
+me-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to
+conceive that other structures than the crystalline might have a
+form of awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which
+must be acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline
+substance, protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p>On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated
+and specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most
+complex of its organization there were degrees of awareness, and
+in the most complex of these there was undeniable evidence of
+sentience outside of self.</p>
+
+<p>Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!</p>
+
+<p>Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience
+in communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the
+values of their kind of awareness might not be the values of this
+differing kind, they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a
+joyful rapturous pyrotechnical display of material manipulation
+to show this new life form that they too were aware&mdash;to communicate
+that the loneliness of one might now be softened by the
+presence of the other.</p>
+
+<p>And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay
+in adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the
+dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.</p>
+
+<p>But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought
+something which they could share with this new life form. The
+rock could be a tree! See!</p>
+
+<p>And lo, the rock was a tree.</p>
+
+<p>And the people were sore afraid.</p>
+
+<p>For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+This mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to
+migration into a new and richer valley was rent asunder, so!
+And beyond, the new valley beckoned. But the people huddled in
+their caves and dared not venture forth.</p>
+
+<p>The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their
+crystalline forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one
+life form, awareness composed of the outer shape of things, the
+relationship of those shapes, security in the unchanging shape.
+To the other life form, awareness composed of the inner vibration,
+the relationships of those vibrations, with outer shapes changed
+at will, and therefore meaningless.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes
+of things. The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed
+that became root and stem and leaf and flower; the infant that
+became man, and man that decomposed as corpse. Surely this life
+form must see an inner cause! Surely they must see that even
+the permanent rock changed slowly into dust, that the eternal
+sea was restless, never still; that stars moved in the vault of
+heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. How did they
+account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause?</p>
+
+<p>They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the
+seed ground into meal, the moving animal shot down with stick
+or stone and stilled and changed to food, the moving of the smaller
+rocks, erection of a dwelling made of poles and thatch to change
+environment for the man inside. Change, then, man knew; why
+fear the greater change, the easier one? Why tug and lift and
+strain to move the boulder from the path, when all was needed
+was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance the equation of
+relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone no longer
+barred the way?</p>
+
+<p>Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot
+their own once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine,
+forgot to credit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength
+to serve a purpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+could do. To see it lifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a
+greater strength than his, and purpose that he could not understand.
+And man fell to his knees in fear and awe.</p>
+
+<p>For man knew only one relation to all things&mdash;to conquer if he
+could, and force acknowledgment of superior strength and purpose.
+To kill if that acknowledgment was not given. To survive
+by giving that acknowledgment to a stronger one than he.</p>
+
+<p>Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he
+knew when strength beyond his own was shown. But even while
+he knelt, to scheme a way that he-and-his might find ascendancy
+in future days. The one invariable pattern persisting from the
+cave man dressed in furs to diplomat in striped pants, the only
+pattern possible while me-and-mine ascendant is the aim and
+goal.</p>
+
+<p>To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy
+of me-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness
+lower than intelligence that they could meet in partnership.
+Instruct them, then. No joy or purpose in conquering them. No
+companionship in these disgusting grovelings. Show them the
+inner forces that controlled the outer shapes of things.</p>
+
+<p>Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer
+shape of things was no longer a consideration in their life; but
+for this form of life, still dependent for that life upon the
+maintenance of material form, no doubt the shapes and forms of
+things were paramount to them. Well then, show them the true
+relationship, sketch out upon the sands the diagram of how the
+forces that control the shapes of things are interwoven, interact.</p>
+
+<p>Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape,
+and lo, a spring of water flowed from dry and barren stone.</p>
+
+<p>But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and
+form. A sacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw
+with finger in the air or in the sand, protection from the evil
+forces that surrounded him.</p>
+
+<p>The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man
+was not ready for communication. Too soon, too soon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But man did not forget, the memory lived on. And fathers
+spoke to sons, and made the outer forms of gestures, drew the
+cabalistic signs, and told of magic things and powers that these
+signs could do. To some, one diagram was shown, a way to build
+a house of stone that better weathered the storms of Earth. The
+house of stone became a holy place, a thing existing in its own
+right, and not, as was intended, an example of one use to which
+this arrangement of forces might be put.</p>
+
+<p>And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time
+to slay an animal for food. And men fought wars over these
+differing symbols, each side determined to make its symbol
+ascendant over the other.</p>
+
+<p>Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the
+memories lived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams
+beyond their outer shape had gained sway. The racial memory
+persisted, and in the latter Pleistocene epoch the knowledge of
+altering shapes through force of mind became a racial memory,
+coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated into forms and phrases;
+but from generation to generation the memory was kept alive
+that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeed
+changed by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had
+pointed his finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped
+forth clad in jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed
+a mountain and a voice spoke unto him, and proof of this were
+letters cut in stone. Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some
+water into wine, and fed a multitude from five small loaves and
+fishes.</p>
+
+<p>A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the
+inner meanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward
+through the world.</p>
+
+<p>But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner
+meanings, another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with
+the outer shape and size and weight and measurement of things,
+and how the size and shape and weight of one interacted with
+another. The Dravidian culture, which grasped only the idea but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+not the method of how the inner vibration could change the
+outer shape receded and became submerged in the Western cult
+that found a method in the measurement of shape and weight of
+things to make them change.</p>
+
+<p>It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the
+essential difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization
+as that between a forest culture which had known no walls,
+and a city culture where everything has limit and every inch must
+be mapped.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed
+into bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories
+grown into tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach
+that man could master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led
+to the Oxford definition of how to make scientific inquiry into
+the properties of things.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights,
+led inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a
+specific vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid
+to the senses, as a range of light vibrations translate into color
+through the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>E = MC&sup2;!</p>
+
+<p>It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!</p>
+
+<p>Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the
+sentient fields of force. This time they did not rush in with
+pyrotechnic displays to show the wondrous power they knew.
+Observing patiently through the centuries, by now they knew
+man well. They knew his weakness, yet by making thing react
+with thing, he'd proved his strength. For here he was among the
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he
+would not prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone
+said, "Hello!"</p>
+
+<p>But careful, perhaps he would.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude
+telescope he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+rings, but rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light
+on either side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the
+tilting of the planet back had made the rings edge on, and so
+they disappeared. He never looked again, nor told of what he'd
+seen; for legend had it that the god Saturn periodically devoured
+his own children, and this phenomenon he'd seen, if it became
+widely known, would be interpreted as the proof the legend was
+correct&mdash;and do incalculable damage to scientific inquiry. He'd
+known the temper of his fellow man well enough to take no
+chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works, perhaps
+discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further fuel
+to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds and
+seared out possibility of rational thought.</p>
+
+<p>So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite
+the fact that some men know how to reach the stars.</p>
+
+<p>To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet,
+of barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the
+garden of man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline
+structure, a thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool,
+to amplify and clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary
+but nevertheless present centers of man's mind&mdash;some certain
+man who might be ready to receive that thought.</p>
+
+<p>Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long
+until man found it. They had not led him to it through any
+intuitive change of course that he might find suspect. The explorers
+landed, claimed it for Earth, and went away. None among them
+felt any pull from the crystal tool upon the mountaintop.</p>
+
+<p>The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy
+minds were full of weight and size and the relationship of thing
+to thing. Perhaps by now they too were so committed to the
+use of a thing to act upon another thing that they could not
+countenance the thought that thought could act upon a thing direct.
+They measured the crystal tool, and recorded all their measurements,
+but found no meaning in its arches and its spires. If any
+felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of force, he made no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his status and
+reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared admit a
+meaning that could not be measured with his instruments.
+Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought
+their science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning
+there. And to scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man
+means more than truth. At least to most. But are there some to
+whom the truth is paramount?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked
+and lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps
+today there are such men.</p>
+
+<p>So walk with care, and wait.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled
+with measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds
+were filled with cabins, fields, food.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly
+captured on the one hand by formless superstition; and on the
+other hand not bound within the tightly narrowed circle of weight
+and measurement! Surely man must know by now he could not
+capture the inner meaning of a thing through a description of its
+outer surface.</p>
+
+<p>But as long as man got by, and did great things by using
+physical things to act upon other physical things, even in
+considering the universal energy as a thing, he would look no
+farther.</p>
+
+<p>All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the
+concept of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon
+another, no tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary.
+Let that happen, and out from Earth a man would come,
+perhaps a dozen men, perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men,
+and all to find their ships, their tools, were gone. But someday
+there would come a man with mind trained in the ability to
+conceive that there might be a road to truth outside the useless
+superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust at each small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because he
+had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.</p>
+
+<p>And they would know when that mind came.</p>
+
+<p>The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not
+fall to earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously.
+Enough. The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest
+that he be undisturbed in his thought.</p>
+
+<p>Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools,
+that it was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd
+made their move. Could he respond?</p>
+
+<p>He drew a circle in the sand!</p>
+
+<p>Joy! Ecstasy!</p>
+
+<p>This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two
+intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each
+bringing to the other thought not yet considered, and together
+going on to find ... to find ...</p>
+
+<p>Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now
+let him think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status
+quo of things in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities,
+to realize that he can change his measurements to balance an
+equation designed to express the status quo, or with equal
+truth, at his desire, he can change the status quo, the shape of
+things, to fit the equation he desires.</p>
+
+<p>Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out
+himself, for experience from long ago had taught them that if
+man was not ready to accept an alien thought he could not,
+would not, accept but in his own interpreting.</p>
+
+<p>Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
+conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they
+are, bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool,
+that communication might be direct.</p>
+
+<p>He holds the key.</p>
+
+<p>He knows the lock.</p>
+
+<p>He finds the door.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Show him the one small step remaining&mdash;the diagram, the
+design, the movement of the forces of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>To turn the key.</p>
+
+<p>Unlock the lock.</p>
+
+<p>Throw wide the door.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+<h2>26</h2>
+
+<p>As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal
+opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's
+dreams, of yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory,
+the unbroken thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive
+thing, always just barely beyond my reach, I would not need the
+ox, the wagon, the train, the plane, the spaceship to transport me
+from here to there.</p>
+
+<p>And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the
+things and forces balanced in equation to describe them as they
+are; or, equally, to alter the things and forces instead to fit the
+equation balance one had in mind; purely a matter of choice.
+Each was the use of natural law. No chaos here, no magic, one
+as much true science as the other.</p>
+
+<p>How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An
+hour? Or by chance was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to
+find the colonists aged or dead?</p>
+
+<p>But why wonder?</p>
+
+<p>A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
+test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
+amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the
+forces in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected
+them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was standing outside the entrance arch.</p>
+
+<p>With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while
+through the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in
+uncertainty, then fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not
+know you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess.
+Woe! Woe! I saw you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in
+blasphemy by your sleep. But when I tried to enter, I could not.
+Their will prevented me. Some shielding force protected you.
+And then I knew you were a Holy One. Forgive me. Let me
+live to expiate my sin."</p>
+
+<p>"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.</p>
+
+<p>As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and
+warped by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in
+childhood, seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in
+concept of relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized,
+the untangling, straightening of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while,
+shock and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me.
+I'll get on back to the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.</p>
+
+<p>A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from
+behind a bush to approach Jed and Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when
+he looked up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon,
+I reckon. Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."</p>
+
+<p>"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
+continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of
+day that everything happened a couple of weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at
+him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously,
+sensing a difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at
+Cal with puzzlement on his face.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's something important about it being around this time
+of day, Cal?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I
+could restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything
+just as it was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to
+the people. It being the same time of day would help the illusion
+that no time had passed, nothing had happened."</p>
+
+<p>Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.</p>
+
+<p>"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's
+quite a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed.
+"How about it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock
+to put things back as they were?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath,
+firmed his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's
+chair at the approach of the drill.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different
+in kind.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar
+with the metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture
+fences with the calves separated from the cows. A few people,
+clothed, were walking on the dirt street between the houses. They
+looked at one another. They looked up at the sky, at the fields
+around them, the forests beyond. They looked back at one another.
+They shook their heads, and blinked their eyes, as if suddenly
+wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest dream.</p>
+
+<p>Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help
+piece together, and feel the shock, and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed,
+in the hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of
+the house, clothed.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep
+or something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him.
+"And I had the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+sometimes we'll dream about being out in front of folks, all
+naked ..."</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin.
+"All the people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty
+soon. They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them
+people across the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over
+here first thing you know. And something else, there's an E ship
+here, come to find out why we didn't communicate."</p>
+
+<p>"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked
+curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days
+yet. You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or
+you and the boys fermenting something? Here, let me smell your
+breath!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out
+of the hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her
+tightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front
+of everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on
+in front of everybody right along."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've
+been dreamin'," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream,
+Martha," he cautioned.</p>
+
+<p>"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+<h2>27</h2>
+
+<p>The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came
+down the aisle toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just
+fine," he said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided
+he'd better repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his
+irritation with the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut
+off his nose to spite his face.</p>
+
+<p>"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He
+recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he
+wouldn't have any more insubordination, was willing to let bygones
+be bygones&mdash;after a suitable period of punishment. "What's been
+happening?" he asked with a curiosity that got the better of his
+desire to discipline.</p>
+
+<p>"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where
+we lost him. He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who
+followed him up the mountain."</p>
+
+<p>"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's
+happened for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He
+turned and started back down the aisle toward his own office.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."</p>
+
+<p>Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+on with your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your
+business."</p>
+
+<p>But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different
+was everybody's business. All over the world everybody was
+wondering about the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating,
+everybody with a different answer. Some were gleeful that science
+had finally got its comeuppance, and felt no more than a pleasure
+that the bigdomes had proved they weren't any smarter than
+anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in crying woe, woe,
+at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's knowing, woe,
+woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know what
+he was not meant to know.</p>
+
+<p>The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's
+admonishments, to listen frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No,
+wait a minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from
+behind a bush to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten
+or twelve miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship
+has garbled their reporting. Probably got behind in reporting
+and then just decided to skip the journey back, and pick up to
+make it current. There's going to be complaints about this."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were
+listening. I didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."</p>
+
+<p>The supervisor's eyes grew round.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't be," he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the
+operator said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way
+they report it."</p>
+
+<p>"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably.
+"Have to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all
+those buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just
+take the reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship
+out there's doing."</p>
+
+<p>"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said
+loudly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're
+scanning all over, trying to find him."</p>
+
+<p>The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way
+this reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over
+these skips and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best
+thing is to make the complaint first," he said to the room at
+large. "Now you call me if there's any more of this bollix," he
+said to the operator as he left.</p>
+
+<p>An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
+furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and
+threw them in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started
+afresh to write some more. How to report without stepping on
+anybody's toes?</p>
+
+<p>His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked
+up from a virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden
+operator again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half
+trotted up the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes
+at once," the operator called out. "Something very important."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."</p>
+
+<p>But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
+tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the
+line opened.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the
+signal. "What now?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard
+ship," the Captain said without any preliminaries.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could
+she disappear in deep space? Have you looked everywhere?
+Checked the lifeboats? Maybe she took one and tried to get down
+to her husband by herself."</p>
+
+<p>"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has
+opened. You ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd
+checked everything out first."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes
+quarreled back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was
+she last seen?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's&mdash;ah&mdash;that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain
+said. "A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed
+her stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked
+in, the way anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her
+cabin embracing a man. Says he didn't stop to look close, but he
+was pretty sure it was E Gray. Says he knows because he's had
+access to the viewscope and has watched E Gray on the surface
+of Eden."</p>
+
+<p>"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you,
+Captain," Hayes said accusingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back.
+"So it can't have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why
+I called you. Looks like we're going to have some petty scandal
+mixed up with everything else."</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some
+member of your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep
+looking. Somebody's hiding her, probably to keep the scandal
+from breaking. But it seems odd to me that she was so anxious
+to get out there near her husband and then in ten days she'd ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already
+assigned to the ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to
+consider all the possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+E McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here
+that could lead us to the guy who's hiding her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board <i>my</i> ship," the captain
+said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.</p>
+
+<p>Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a
+few minutes to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the
+Board to decide direct intervention.</p>
+
+<p>"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship,"
+the operator said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to
+know if E McGinnis will talk to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded
+urgently.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.</p>
+
+<p>The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds
+that testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's
+pilot was quite explicit.</p>
+
+<p>"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he
+to be disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are
+in his cabin, in conference."</p>
+
+<p>"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How
+the devil did they get into your ship?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here.
+I'm sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's
+door open. He leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look
+past him and I see E Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room.
+Don't ask me how they got in there. I don't know. But I do know
+this, I'm going to get myself a nice quiet milk run to Saturn or
+someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I ever do get back."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a
+simple explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the
+universe were hard to find.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even
+want to hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
+communication.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+<h2>28</h2>
+
+<p>Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's
+stateroom he would have seen still another visitor, another who
+had not entered his ship by any normal means.</p>
+
+<p>Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's
+and Linda. He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his
+eyes were alive, darting here and there, unbelieving. There is
+limit to the number of shocks the mind can withstand, and the
+series had come too fast for him to adjust to them.</p>
+
+<p>He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through
+the arch of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the
+structure that somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to
+penetrate and see what went on inside. He had been watching
+when Gray suddenly disappeared from where he had been talking
+with the astronavigator. That had been a shock, immediately
+followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator had scanned
+the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the chief
+of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could
+have been made that rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape
+ship, the E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes.
+And the people were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he
+had seen it. But he kept his head. E science must be farther along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+than he'd realized, to produce a miracle such as this&mdash;but it was
+science. He must hold to that, otherwise ...</p>
+
+<p>He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he
+made one more effort to regain some measure of control. He gave
+his own pilot orders to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted
+orders to the other two police ships to follow in close formation;
+the three of them to land and take custody.</p>
+
+<p>But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in
+control of Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All
+those photographs! Some of the press and commentators might
+desert him, now that the Junior had proved adequate to the job.
+Unless he chose carefully, some stupid judge might decide the
+means were justified by the end result. But there were those
+photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might
+have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior
+E, but Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on
+the morals issue&mdash;when he released some of the photographs, and
+titillated her nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent
+to release.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him,
+and told him that the photographs, every one of them, had
+disappeared from the ship's vault where they had been locked,
+and the only thing remaining in the vault was one little slip of
+paper which read, "Shame on you for taking feelthy pictures.
+Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."</p>
+
+<p>The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had
+witnesses. He thought for a minute and began to wonder about
+those witnesses. Any judge, anybody around the courts, anybody
+connected with the press, and maybe even some of the public
+knew that any police officer will swear to any lie to back up
+another police officer because he might need the favor returned
+tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Without concrete evidence ...<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship,
+confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He
+sank down in a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes
+were alive, darting frantically here and there as if expecting
+some hole to open up and swallow him&mdash;perhaps wishing one
+would.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly,
+ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor
+nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were
+dangerous. As far back as man's history goes the growth of police
+powers immediately preceded and caused the fall and destruction
+of each culture.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the
+ascendancy of any special me-and-mine group over him; that this
+resistance will grow until man will even destroy himself in the
+attempt to destroy that ascendancy. In more recent history it
+was the growth, extension, and severity of the police in controlling
+every activity of man that destroyed both the United States and
+Russia.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in
+world government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy
+himself in trying to destroy you.</p>
+
+<p>"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it.
+We have already warned that the attitude of the police toward
+the public is the major cause of crime, that crime will increase
+with each increase of police power and severity until the whole
+structure rots and crumbles.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to
+maintain an organized society without some special body to
+enforce that organization. It's a problem which the E's haven't
+solved, probably because we know too little about the natural
+laws affecting the behavior of man. Perhaps it is still a field
+belonging to non-science, because science doesn't know enough
+yet to take hold of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+your organization to solving this problem of how to build an
+organized society instead of destroying it."</p>
+
+<p>The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.</p>
+
+<p>E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and
+immobile. But E science had inured him to shock. He waited
+because it was E Gray's show, and he was letting Cal handle it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?" McGinnis asked when he saw the empty
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth," Cal said with a
+grin. "Our boy has a few things to think about."</p>
+
+<p>"You've explained the theory back of all this"&mdash;McGinnis changed
+the subject&mdash;"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two,
+you first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how
+it is done, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn
+how to apply the theory.</p>
+
+<p>"When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The
+whole basis of science is that anybody can do it, anybody who
+follows the step-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts
+that can't be trained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people,
+in possession of this theory and method before they were wise
+enough to use it, and chaos.</p>
+
+<p>"But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods
+of science are also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most
+prefer their frustrations and their miseries to making the effort
+which will solve them. For centuries the libraries containing all the
+accumulated knowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free
+and open to anybody who wants to read, but few have bothered
+to absorb that knowledge and that wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>"This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista
+of knowledge, another point of view whereby we can change
+material things to suit our desire, is merely another advance of
+science. For science, after all, is no more than organized knowledge
+of reality. You can't multiply six times six until you've learned how
+to add two and two. Most people won't bother.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It will be a long, long time before any significant number will
+graduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become
+ready for the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know
+how few E's there are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom,
+and selflessness to use this new knowledge for the benefit of man
+instead of his detriment.</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to
+make me-and-mine ascendant over others before he can absorb
+this knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe that's my trouble," McGinnis said slowly. "I've been
+thinking, all along, of how much power this gives the E's. Wondering
+if even the E's should have that much power over others."</p>
+
+<p>Linda spoke up.</p>
+
+<p>"E McGinnis," she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what
+happened to the colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you
+think this will qualify him for his big E?"</p>
+
+<p>Both men burst into laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"No question of it, Linda," E McGinnis said with a chuckle.
+"But I doubt it really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things
+none of the rest of us can do, and the real question now is
+whether we have the right to call ourselves Seniors until we can
+match his ability."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E.H.Q.
+that the colonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere
+else. I've left the shield around the planet so none can enter or
+leave without the eighth key. I can unlock the door and close it
+again. Perhaps Eden should become the next step for the E, the
+next hurdle he must cross.</p>
+
+<p>"When I've sent my ship and crew back to Earth, and we've
+removed all the colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden
+to what it was when I arrived&mdash;a place where no tools will work,
+no physical tools. To qualify for E, a man will be put on the
+island, where he can live as we lived, to work out the step-by-step
+method. When he's ready, he can go into the thought-amplifier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+on top of the mountain, and if his mind is open enough to the
+potentials he'll receive the final step of instruction&mdash;as I did.</p>
+
+<p>"One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they
+can take this next step."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not working on any project right now," E McGinnis said
+hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be right back," Cal said with a grin, "and we'll get started
+on it."</p>
+
+<p>The chair where he had been sitting was empty.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+<h2>29</h2>
+
+<p>Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and
+watched the interplay of lights until he felt communion come.</p>
+
+<p>Rapture! Joy!</p>
+
+<p>Question?</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more.</p>
+
+<p>"You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with
+a crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible
+in protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way.</p>
+
+<p>"But we have come up.</p>
+
+<p>"You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives
+every inch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries,
+millennia. It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept
+has dominated all our thought, and does still. Without it,
+we'd not have survived at all.</p>
+
+<p>"It takes time to outgrow it, to learn we can survive without
+it. Five hundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high
+school students in the United States revealed that a third of
+them still rejected his knowledge, still believed the Earth to be
+at the center of the universe and man was the reason why the
+universe had been created at all. But two thirds had adjusted.</p>
+
+<p>"More important, there <i>was</i> a Copernicus.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+impatient for fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality.
+He has much to offer you, as you to him. Competition for survival
+has given him ingenuity.</p>
+
+<p>"Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of
+the universe, but there <i>was</i> a Copernicus who asked the question,
+'What if it isn't so?'</p>
+
+<p>"Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one
+<i>did</i> ask if this might not be the key to the structure of the universe,
+the balance of the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"Billions watched the stars, but finally one <i>did</i> ask, 'What if the
+light be curved instead of straight?'</p>
+
+<p>"There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to
+learn an ingenuity which might surpass even yours.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still other
+doors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may
+need these special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed
+this new room of thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the
+method that can change things to fit the equation of desire, before
+one comes who asks a question even you have not conceived.</p>
+
+<p>"But someday he <i>will</i> come&mdash;and ask."</p>
+
+<p>The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
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@@ -0,0 +1,6967 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Eight Keys to Eden
+
+Author: Mark Irvin Clifton
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27595]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Geoffrey Kidd, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+BY MARK CLIFTON
+
+
+ NOVELS
+       Eight Keys To Eden
+       They'd Rather Be Right*
+       The Forever Machine*
+
+ NON-FICTION BOOK
+       Opportunity Unlimited
+
+ NOVELETTES
+       Remembrance and Reflection
+       How Allied
+       What Thin Partitions**
+       Sense From Thought Divide
+       Star, Bright
+       Hide! Hide! Witch!
+       A Woman's Place
+       Clerical Error
+       What Now, Little Man?
+       Do Unto Others
+
+ SHORT STORIES
+       What Have I Done?
+       The Conqueror
+       Kenzie Report
+       Bow Down To Them
+       Reward For Valour
+       Progress Report**
+       Crazy Joey**
+       We're Civilized**
+       Solution Delayed**
+
+ ARTICLES
+       It Can't Be Done
+       The Dread Tomato Affliction
+
+ * _In collaboration with Frank Riley_
+ ** _In collaboration with Alex Apostolides_
+
+
+
+
+        EIGHT KEYS
+          TO EDEN
+
+            by
+       Mark Clifton
+
+
+ Doubleday & Company, Inc.
+   Garden City, New York
+           1960
+
+
+
+
+ _All of the characters in this book
+ are fictitious, and any resemblance
+ to actual persons, living or dead,
+ is purely coincidental._
+
+
+ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470
+ Copyright (C) 1960 by Mark Clifton
+ All Rights Reserved
+ Printed in the United States of America
+ First Edition
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant and
+    dialect spellings remain as printed. Superscript text is preceded by
+    the ^ symbol, bold text is shown as =bold=, and {d} represents the
+    Greek letter _delta_.
+
+
+
+
+                To
+
+        Charles Steinberg
+
+ who made writing possible for me
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT
+
+
+ =1= Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without
+       question.
+
+ =2= Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general
+       contrariness.
+
+ =3= Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to
+       account for the phenomenon?
+
+ =4= How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that
+       he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?
+
+ =5= What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the
+       obscure prevalent?
+
+ =6= What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered
+       effect is really cause?
+
+ =7= What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates
+       unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there be only
+       one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in many facets
+       because we cannot apperceive the whole, of which we have gained
+       only the most elementary glimpses, with which we can cope only at
+       the crudest level?
+
+ =And are those still other doors, yet undefined, on down the corridor?=
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was
+overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger
+hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and
+pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle,
+half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched
+over their panels.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop.
+
+"Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it
+came out sullen.
+
+The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punched
+irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second
+star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect
+there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel.
+The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include such
+blunders. But he had to check.
+
+There weren't.
+
+He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on his
+shift, never anybody else's.
+
+"Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he
+rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and
+hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.
+
+The operator looked skeptical instead.
+
+Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental
+colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, some
+unprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothing
+else apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as the
+Extrapolators.
+
+But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.
+
+"Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications by
+inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully tried out
+another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last more
+than an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using the
+E frequency, anyway.
+
+He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the other
+operators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw him
+away from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problem
+would have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewed
+on a knuckle and stared angrily at the operator who was sitting back,
+relaxed, looking at him, waiting.
+
+"You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the supervisor
+asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"
+
+The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer
+with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for
+supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the
+surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the
+supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention.
+In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly
+nagged employee over his features.
+
+"Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor muttered
+savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--their
+pants out there!"
+
+The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was about time,
+and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down.
+Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow
+three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten
+miles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring.
+
+The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the gnawing at his
+knuckles to his fingernails.
+
+He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry colonist to
+come through and scream at them to turn off that unprintable-phrases
+siren. He braced himself and worked up some choice phrases of his own to
+scream back at the colonist for neglecting his duty--getting
+Extrapolation Headquarters here on Earth all worked up over nothing. He
+wondered if he dared threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to check
+them over.
+
+He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay no attention
+to his recommendation. He knew it, and the colonist would know it too.
+
+He began to wonder what excuse the colonist would have.
+
+"Just wanted to see if you home-office boys were on your toes," the
+insolent colonist would drawl. Probably something like that.
+
+He hoped the right words wouldn't fail him.
+
+But there was no response to the siren.
+
+"Lock the key down," he told the operator. "Keep it blasting until they
+wake up."
+
+He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near operators were
+now frankly listening.
+
+"Get on with your work," he said loudly. "Pay attention to what you're
+recording."
+
+It was enough to cause several more heads to raise.
+
+"Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is nothing to
+concern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's all. Haven't you
+ever heard of a delayed report before?"
+
+He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It was like
+asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor
+edge of a precipice suddenly go slack.
+
+"But there's nothing any of you can do," he said. He tried to cover the
+plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your own messages ..."
+But he had threatened them so often that there was no longer any menace.
+
+He spent the next ten minutes hauling out the logs of Eden to see if
+they'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a fraction
+years, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit scanner didn't pick
+up a single symbol to show that Eden had been even two seconds off
+schedule. The first year daily, the second year weekly, and now monthly.
+There wasn't a single hiccough from the machine to kick out an
+Extrapolator's signal to watch for anything unusual.
+
+Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an _outre_ problem as an
+Iowa cornfield.
+
+"You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again as he
+came back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They haven't answered
+yet."
+
+The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists hadn't
+answered. And what should he do about it? Go out there personally and
+shake his finger at them--naughty, naughty?
+
+"Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface, to see?" the
+supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myself
+that you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a space
+hurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe
+some star has exploded and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it,
+man. Bounce it! What are you waiting for?"
+
+"Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for you to give
+the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can't
+just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood."
+
+"Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the supervisor
+cautioned.
+
+Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung
+out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set
+up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous
+communication, but that was only relative. It took time.
+
+The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector
+chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated
+the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting
+the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the
+forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when
+an E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to
+questions, the thrill of merely being in the same room.
+
+He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration to
+an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentary
+secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he was
+a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gone
+farther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed.
+
+"Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told him
+with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind to
+a lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice in
+full confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself before
+you hit bottom."
+
+It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself
+the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.
+
+"To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester had
+continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist.
+Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellent
+career in engineering."
+
+It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science
+said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was it
+said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, live
+with. No certainties on which to stand.
+
+He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated on the
+flashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's screen. There
+was nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing wrong with the
+communication channels between Eden and Earth.
+
+"Blasted colonists," the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam on
+their planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet they've
+let all the sets at their end get out of order."
+
+He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face hadn't
+told him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman--and there were fifty
+of them on Eden--could build a communicator. That was regulation.
+
+"You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?" he asked
+the operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering up some neglect
+in not notifying me? If you're covering up, you'd better tell me now.
+I'll find out. It'll all come out in the investigation, and ..."
+
+The operator turned around and looked at him levelly. He looked him
+over, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed feet. Then he coolly
+turned his back. There was a limit to just how much a man could stand,
+even to hold a job at E Headquarters.
+
+It was about time the supervisor got somebody with brains onto the job.
+The sector chief should be called immediately. Supervisors were supposed
+to have enough brains to think of something so obvious as that. That
+much brains at least.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayed
+report" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn't
+happen to him.
+
+To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor, his first act
+was to rush down to communications and go through all the routines for
+rousing the colonists the supervisor had tried. His worry was mounting
+so rapidly that he hardly noticed the resigned expression of the
+operator who knew he would have to go through all these useless motions
+again and again before it was all over, and somebody did something.
+
+"Well," the chief said to the supervisor. "It's my problem now." He
+sighed, and unconsciously squared his shoulders.
+
+"Yes, Chief Hayes," the supervisor agreed quickly. Perhaps too quickly,
+with too much relief? "Well, that is, I mean ..." his voice trailed off.
+After all, it was.
+
+"You understand my check of your routines was no reflection on you or
+your department," Hayes said diplomatically. "It's a heavy
+responsibility to alert E.H.Q., pull the scientists off who knows what
+delicate, critical work--maybe even hope to get the attention of an
+E--all that. I had to make sure, you know."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said, and relaxed some of his
+resentment. "Serious matter," he chattered. "Disgrace if an E, without
+half trying, put his finger on our oversight. We all understand that."
+He tried to include the nearby operators, his boys, in his eager
+agreement, but they were all busy showing how intensely they had to
+concentrate on their work.
+
+"That's probably all it is--an oversight," Hayes said with unconvincing
+reassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's face, added,
+"Beyond our control here, of course. Something it would take at least a
+scientist to spot, something we couldn't be expected ... What I mean is,
+we shouldn't get alarmed until we know, for sure. And--ah--keep it
+confidential."
+
+"Of course, Chief Hayes," the supervisor said in a near whisper. He
+looked meaningfully around at the room of operators, but did manage not
+to put his finger to his lips. Those who were observing out of the
+corners of their eyes were grateful for at least that.
+
+On his way back to his own office Chief William Hayes reflected that the
+bit about keeping it confidential was on the corny side. Within fifteen
+minutes he'd start spreading it all over E.H.Q., himself. Every
+scientist, every lab assistant would know it. Every clerk, every janitor
+would know it. E.H.Q. would have to work full blast all night long, and
+some of the lesser personnel had homes down in Yellow Sands at the foot
+of the mountain.
+
+These would be calling their husbands and wives, telling them not to fix
+dinner, not to worry if they didn't come home all night. No matter how
+guarded, the news would leak out, the word spread, and the newscast
+reporters would pick it up for the delectation of the public. Eden
+colony cut off from communication. Nobody knows ... Wonder ... Fear ...
+Delicious ... Exciting....
+
+Or was this the kind of thinking that had kept him from qualifying as an
+E? What was it the examiner had asked? "Mr. Hayes, why do you feel it is
+all right for you to view, to read, to know--but that others should be
+protected from seeing, reading, knowing? What are these sterling
+qualities you have that make it all right for you to censor what would
+not be right for others?"
+
+He abruptly brought his mind back to the present. Perhaps he'd first
+better prepare a news statement before he did anything else, something
+noncommittal, reassuring. No point in getting the populace stirred up.
+
+As he sat down behind his desk, a big man in a brown suit, natural
+iron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began to realize that
+for the next twenty-four hours, at least, he would be in the spotlight.
+Well, he'd give a good account of himself. Demonstrate that he had an
+executive capacity beyond the needs of his present job. More than a mere
+requisition signer, interoffice memo initialer.
+
+For one thing the scientists would give him trouble. If he had been
+deeply hurt that they thought he couldn't open up his mind enough to
+become an E, what about scientists whose limits were reached still
+farther along? He must remember to keep his temper, use persuasion,
+maybe kid them a little. The blasted experts were almost as bad as
+E's--worse, in a way, because the E didn't have to remind anybody of his
+dignity, or how important the work was he was doing.
+
+But then, you never asked an E to drop what he was doing, and listen.
+You never asked an E to do anything. He either noticed and was
+interested, or he didn't notice, or wasn't interested.
+
+But nobody ever told an E that he must apply himself to a problem. Once
+a man became a full-fledged Extrapolator he was outside all law, all
+frameworks, all duty, all social mores. That was the essence of E
+science, that any requirement outside of his own making didn't exist. It
+had to be that way. That kind of mind could not tolerate barriers, but
+spent itself constantly in destroying them. Erect barriers of
+triviality, and it would waste its substance upon trivial matters. The
+only answer was to remove all possible barriers for the E, lest
+immersion in something trivial prevent that mind from seeking out a
+barrier to knowledge, a problem of significance.
+
+But the scientists! Hayes sighed. If only the scientists wouldn't keep
+thinking they were cut from the same cloth as the E. They had to have
+restrictions, organization imposed upon them. Yes indeed!
+
+They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble a review
+of all the known facts about Eden--a dead issue as far as their own work
+was concerned, for Eden had been assayed and filed away as solved.
+They'd moan and groan about having to drag up the facts that had been
+analyzed and settled long ago.
+
+He saw himself compared with the producer of a show, and theatrical
+performers didn't come any more temperamental than scientists. He'd be
+hearing about how much of their time he'd wasted for months to come.
+Every time any administrator asked why they hadn't produced whatever it
+was they were working on, it would be because Chief Hayes had
+interrupted them at the most crucial moment and they'd had to begin all
+over again.
+
+Oh, they'd drag their heels, all right, and he'd have to remind them,
+tactfully, that their prime duty was to serve the Extrapolators; that
+they were employed here only because someday, in some co-ordinate
+system, somebody might be able to supply a key fact that some E might
+want to know.
+
+They'd ask him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would be
+listening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex, knowing he
+could give no such guarantee.
+
+They'd drag their heels because, deep down, they carried a basic
+resentment against the E--because, experts though they were, each of
+them, somewhere along the line, had learned the bitter limits in his
+mind that prevented him from going on to become an E.
+
+They'd drag their heels because the E's, each blasted one of them, would
+regard the absolutely true facts proved beyond question by science with
+an attitude of skepticism, temporarily accepting the uncontestably
+immutable as only provisionary, and probably quite wrong.
+
+Oh, they'd grumble, and they'd drag their heels at first; but they would
+get into it. They'd get into it, not because the sector chief had babied
+them along, kidded them, coaxed them, but because, as surely as his
+name was Bill Hayes, some unprintable E would ask a question for which
+they had no answer. Or even worse, some question that made no sense, but
+left the scientist feeling that perhaps it should have!
+
+That was the E brand of thinking which gave everybody trouble--and
+without which man could never have gone on creeping outward and outward
+among the stars. Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blasted
+asteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws. Sometimes an
+entirely new co-ordinate system had to be resolved. Oh, science was
+easy, a veritable snap, while man crawled around on the muddy bottom of
+his ocean of air and concluded that throughout all the universe things
+must conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as a
+damned halibut must be of the works and thoughts of man.
+
+And often the E was unable to resolve the co-ordinate system--which was
+simply a euphemistic way of saying that he didn't come back. And without
+him, man could go no farther. An E, therefore, was the rarest and most
+valuable piece of property in the universe. Whatever else man might be,
+he will go to any lengths to protect the value of his property.
+
+All right, Bill, perhaps a part of that is true. But give the scientists
+their full due. They'd work with a will once they grew aware of the need
+of it, because they were just as concerned as anybody else with what
+might have happened to those colonists.
+
+But first they would argue.
+
+His secretary interrupted his thought by coming in from her own office.
+She had an inch-thick stack of midgit-idgit cards in her hand.
+
+"Here's that batch of scientists who worked on the original Eden
+survey," she said.
+
+"So many?" Hayes asked ruefully. "Maybe I'd better send an all-points
+bulletin."
+
+"You're the boss," she said easily. "But if I know scientists, they
+don't read bulletins."
+
+"Yeah, sure," he agreed. "You made sure this is everybody? Nobody is
+slighted? They'll scream like stuck pigs when I ask them, but they'll be
+even worse if I slight anybody by not asking."
+
+"Double checked with Personnel's own midgit-idgit," she replied. "The
+machine says if anybody is left out, it's not its fault, that it would
+only be because we stupid humans forgot to inform it in the first
+place."
+
+"Sometimes I think that machine complains more than people do," he
+answered. "Certainly it is a lot more insolent."
+
+"Gets more work done, though," she said comfortably. "You want anything
+more?"
+
+"Not right now."
+
+"Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that new
+exploration ship, and it wants service, too," she reminded him. "It's
+worse than you are," she added.
+
+He looked up at her familiarity with a twinkle.
+
+"It can't fire you," he said softly.
+
+"Oh?" she asked. "You think not? Just let me feed it a few wrong data
+and watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary." She winked at
+him, laughed, and went back to her office.
+
+Sector Chief Hayes sighed, and pulled the stack of cards toward him.
+First he must sort them out according to protocol because his diplomacy
+wouldn't be worth the breath used in it if he called the wrong man
+first. At a glance he saw that the idgit had already sorted them
+correctly according to status.
+
+"If you're so smart," he muttered to the absent machine, "why didn't you
+call them too?"
+
+He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. It
+would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....
+
+At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes
+dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key to
+open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.
+
+"How soon," the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this Eden
+matter?"
+
+"I'm setting it up now," he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning, surely.
+That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor that
+wouldn't require an E."
+
+"Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available."
+
+The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been broken. He
+sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet with
+sweat, that his shirt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that he
+was grinning joyfully.
+
+Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question of
+whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybe
+three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, the
+students.
+
+He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind it
+being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize he
+could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. He
+understood.
+
+"Hello, Dr. Mille," he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. "This
+is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration."
+
+"All right! All right!" the voice answered testily. "What is it now?"
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and
+the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved
+methodically through his preflight inspection.
+
+Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E
+wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. To
+Lynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath his
+broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He
+liked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described the
+substance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how
+they behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could
+also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to wait
+until the theorists had turned such equations into machines, controls,
+forces before he got excited.
+
+He was one who, even in childhood, had never wanted to be an E. He
+didn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told him in Personnel that
+was why he was a favorite pilot of the E's, but he discounted that. They
+didn't try to tell him how to run his ship--well, most of them
+didn't--and he didn't try to tell them how to solve their problems.
+
+The men around the hangar had another version of why the E's liked him
+to pilot them around--he was lucky. Somehow he always managed to come
+back, and bring the E with him. Well, sure. He didn't want to get stuck
+somewhere, wind up in a gulio's gullet, gassed by an atmosphere that
+turned from oxygen-nitrogen into pure methane without warning or reason,
+and against all known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of a
+dead star suddenly gone nova.
+
+But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would fiddle
+around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of the
+time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but part
+of it might be because he'd never been sent out with the wrong E.
+
+There could be a first time. Luck ran out if you kept piling your bets
+higher and higher. But until then ...
+
+He was square-jawed, a freckled man with red hair. Contrary to
+superstition, he didn't have a fiery temper. He was forty and had
+already built up a seniority of twenty years in deep space. He was
+captain of his ship and wanted nothing more. Sure, it was only a
+three-man crew--himself, a flight engineer, an astronavigator. But it
+was an E ship, which meant that he outranked even the captains of the
+great luxury liners.
+
+There was a time when the realization caused him to strut a little, but
+he'd got over it. He was single, had no ties, wanted none. He had a good
+job which he took seriously, was doing significant work which he also
+took seriously, was paid premium wages even for a space captain, which
+didn't matter except in terms of recognition. He didn't mind going
+anywhere in the known universe, or how long he would be away. He hoped
+he would get back someday, but he wasn't fanatic about it.
+
+In a routine so well-practiced that it had become ritual, he checked
+over the cruiser point by point. Of course the maintenance men had
+checked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled,
+cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after
+another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a
+gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so
+they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection
+Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there
+and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunch
+of army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war
+and, unconsciously at least, aided in expending them.
+
+Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers, that the
+ship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered such papers
+as so much garbage, and went over the entire ship himself. This might
+have had something to do with his so-called luck.
+
+He wondered if Frank and Louie had checked into the ship this morning.
+Probably had; last night's outing wasn't much to hang over about. A
+steak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands, a couple of drinks at
+Smitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few dances at the Stars and
+Moons. Big night out for his crew before they left for deep space.
+Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubby
+worked up on the hill at E.H.Q., and wifey raised super-bright kids who
+already considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that
+town was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as
+the case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louie
+was dedicated to hell-raising.
+
+When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he saw his flight
+engineer, Frank Norton, had a couple of student E's on his hands.
+
+It was one of the nuisances of being stationed here at E.H.Q. that you'd
+have swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging around, asking
+questions, disputing your answers, arguing with each other, and, if you
+didn't watch them carefully, taking things apart and putting them back
+together in different hookups to see what would happen.
+
+The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everything
+everybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody had ever
+had the sense to think about the problem before; to doubt most of all
+the opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the experts were right then
+there would be no problem. Most of them didn't have to be taught it,
+they seemed to have been born with it. Time was you batted a young smart
+aleck down, told him to go get dry behind the ears before he shot off
+his mouth. But not these days. These days you looked at him hopefully,
+and crossed your fingers. He might grow up to be an E.
+
+Tom wondered what it would be like to doubt the realities, the very
+machinery under his hands, to assume that although it had always worked
+it might not work this time. He could not conceive that state of mind,
+or how a man could live in it without going insane. Every time he saw
+these tortured kids saying, "Well, maybe, but what if ..." he was glad
+to be nothing more than a ship captain who knew his machinery was
+exactly what it was supposed to be and nothing else.
+
+But, in a way, it was nice for the lads too. After thousands of years of
+man's almost rabid determination to destroy the brightest and best of
+his young, the world had finally found a place for the bright boy.
+
+This morning, probably because of the early dawn hour, there were only
+two of them in the generator room. As expected, they were arguing over
+the space-jump band. Frank was standing over to one side, observing but
+not participating. His cap was pushed back on his blond head, his big
+face expressionless. It was common gossip throughout flight crews
+everywhere that Frank, blindfolded, could take a cruiser apart and put
+it back together without missing a motion.
+
+"The jump band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip," one
+student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field in
+the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Its
+width is as variable as we need it, up to a light-year."
+
+"Only it hasn't any width at all," the other student argued. "That's the
+whole point. The Moebius strip has only one edge, so it can't have
+width. We enter that edge, go through a line that doesn't exist, and
+come out a light-year away, without taking any longer than the time to
+pass a point."
+
+"But that's _what_ happens, not _how_," the other shouted angrily.
+"Everybody knows _what_ happens. Tell me _how_ and maybe I'll listen."
+
+Tom caught his flight engineer's eye and signaled with his head that it
+might be a good idea to get rid of the students. Any other time it would
+be all right, a part of their stand-by job, but they'd got word last
+night to have the ship in readiness from six o'clock on. They might have
+to wait all day, but then again, some E might get an idea and want to go
+shooting out to Eden right off.
+
+Frank caught the signal, grinned, and began to herd the two students
+toward the door. They were in such heated argument now, accusing one
+another of parrot repetition instead of thinking for himself, that they
+didn't realize that they were being nudged out of the ship, down its
+ramp, and out on the field.
+
+"Don't think it hasn't been educational, and all," Frank murmured to
+them as he got them off the ramp. "You get the how of it figured out,
+you let me know."
+
+The two looked at him as if he might be an interesting phenomenon,
+decided he wasn't, and wandered away, back toward the school
+dormitories, still arguing.
+
+"Sometimes I think a quiet milk run out to Saturn would have its
+brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back inside the ship.
+Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding.
+
+There was no tension between them. They had worked together so long that
+they had got over all the attraction-repulsion conflicts which operate
+far beneath the surface mind to cause likes and dislikes. Now they
+accepted one another in the way a man accepts his own hands--proud of
+them when they do something with extra skill, making allowances when
+they fumble; but never considering doing without them.
+
+"Wonder who the E will be this time?" Frank asked, without too much
+concern. It didn't really matter. An E was an E, for better or for
+worse.
+
+"Haven't heard," Tom answered. "Probably not decided yet. If the Senior
+E's think it isn't much of a problem, they might send a Junior. Or if
+they don't want to be bothered, they might send a Junior who's up for
+his solo problem."
+
+"Whoever, or whatever, I'm sure it will be interesting," Frank commented
+with a grin. Tom returned the grin. There wasn't any malice in it, nor
+any of the basic enmity and destructiveness of the stupid toward the
+bright, just a recognition that an E was an E. They had a vast respect
+for an E, but you couldn't get around it that some of them were--well,
+maybe eccentric was the word.
+
+"I hear there's trouble on that planet we're going to--Eden, isn't it?"
+Frank commented.
+
+"You think we'd be hauling an E out there if there weren't?" Tom
+countered wryly.
+
+They continued to check over each item in the generator room, their
+flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation.
+They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some
+quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their
+heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no
+subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into
+position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single
+file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was
+sitting in the astronavigator's seat, checking over his star charts and
+instruments. He glanced up at them as they came level with his cubicle.
+He was the third man of the team, as used to them as they were to him.
+
+"Fourteen hop adjustments to get us past Pluto and out of the heavy
+traffic," he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid brown eyes were
+perpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over at Traffic that they're
+going to provide a freeway out of the solar system so we can take it in
+one hop, but they don't do it. Wonder when we'll ever go modern, start
+doing things scientific?"
+
+They paid no attention to his grumbling. That was just Louie.
+
+"Then how many hops to Eden, after Pluto?" Tom asked.
+
+"I figure twenty," Louie answered. "Can't take full light-year leaps
+every time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff in the way to
+louse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded. There'll be no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden, no trouble _getting_ there. Make it in about
+fourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven lousy little light-years.
+Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch. Wait'll the union agent
+hears you're working me fourteen hours without a relief. And are you
+letting me get my rest now, so I can work fourteen hours? Or are you
+stopping me from resting with a lot of questions?"
+
+"But you think there may be trouble _after_ we get to Eden?" Tom asked.
+
+Louie looked at him. There was no fear in the soft, brown eyes; just an
+enormous indignation that life should always treat him so dirty.
+
+"Don't you?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror
+and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should
+take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned
+forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners
+of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty
+mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth--not yet, anyway.
+Perhaps he should think about that sometime.
+
+Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....
+
+He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom door
+watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.
+
+"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There was a
+questioning note in her voice.
+
+"Want to keep handsome," he said lightly. "Never know when I might have
+to run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one of my other wives to
+catch me with stubble on my face."
+
+It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce the
+topic foremost in his mind.
+
+"This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo to
+qualify me for my big E. I'm due, you know."
+
+Linda chose to avoid coming directly to grips with it.
+
+"Yehudi is already at the door," she said, and made a face of
+exasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals the
+orderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can have you all to
+myself."
+
+"It's better if you get used to him," Cal cautioned. "Turn off the
+signal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi, you'd have
+twenty rushing in to see what was wrong."
+
+"Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take his morning
+shower without an observer standing by to see that he doesn't drown
+himself or swallow the soap," she commented with a touch of acid.
+
+"Get used to it, woman," he commanded. "There's only one observer now.
+When--if I get my Senior rating, there'll be three."
+
+She didn't say anything. Instead she stepped over to him, pressed her
+nude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm.
+
+"Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away," she said, and glittered her
+eyes at him wickedly.
+
+"He won't, but it's a good idea," Cal grinned at her.
+
+"You could tell him to go away," she whispered with a little pout.
+
+She was fighting. She was fighting with the only weapon she had to hold
+him, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown. He knew it, and
+the bitterness in her eyes, back of her teasing, showed she knew he knew
+it.
+
+He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked her
+hair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it in his
+chest. He felt her sobbing.
+
+He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom, laid her
+gently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who stood
+expressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed and held her
+head in his arms.
+
+"Don't fight it," he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has had
+to go."
+
+"It's the first time it ever happened to me," she sobbed.
+
+"You knew when you married me.... You agreed...."
+
+"It was easy to agree, then. There was the glamor of being known as the
+wife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just you, and the thought
+of losing you, never seeing you again."
+
+"I haven't gone yet," he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll get the
+job. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of them might want
+it. Even if I do get the problem, who says I won't be back? You take old
+McGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day. He's been an E for nigh on to fifty
+years. He's still around, you'll notice."
+
+She was quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair,
+blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope
+of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace
+and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty
+she might never see again, feel enfolded around her, enfold with
+herself.
+
+"I'm a little fool," she said through clenched teeth. "Of course you'll
+be back. And you'd better make it quick, or I'll come after you."
+
+He kissed her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled body on
+the bed, pulled the sheet over her.
+
+"Why don't you go back to sleep," he suggested. "Rest. I'll have
+breakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the Eden
+briefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning."
+
+Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently he
+kissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try to hold
+him.
+
+He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept her eyes
+closed. He stood up then, and signaled the orderly.
+
+"I'll take my shower now," he said.
+
+The orderly didn't speak, just followed him into the bathroom to stand
+in the doorway and watch him through the shower glass. He was rigidly
+obeying the cardinal rule of E.H.Q.
+
+Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an E. The
+whole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend on it.
+
+How much of the future of the universe depended upon his not
+interrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him to say. He
+sighed. He thought of his own wife--shrewish, fat, coarse, always
+complaining. He wondered what she would do if he picked her up, carried
+her to bed, closed her eyes with his fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'd
+be speechless.
+
+He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about fifty
+pounds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already there--McGinnis
+and Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade more cordial, a shade
+more interested than usual. They seemed, this time, to be looking at him
+as if he were a person, not merely a Junior E. When he turned away from
+them to greet the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked the
+club-room privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faces
+were frankly envious.
+
+Eden was to be his problem!
+
+He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through his
+shower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment, he'd been
+nagged with the fear he might not be considered; that the grief of Linda
+and her rise above it would lead only to anticlimax. By the time he'd
+got to the club-room door, followed by his orderly, he had already
+conditioned himself to disappointment.
+
+Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he wanted for
+breakfast.
+
+"You fellows join me in something?" he asked both Juniors and Seniors.
+
+"A second cup of coffee," Wong agreed.
+
+"A second bourbon," old McGinnis said drily.
+
+The Juniors shook their heads negatively. Yesterday they had been his
+constant companions, only a few degrees below him in accomplishment,
+pushing rapidly to become his equal competitors for the next solo.
+Today, this morning, there was already a gap between them and him, a
+chasm they would make no move to bridge until they had earned the
+right. They seated themselves at another table, apart.
+
+"Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem," McGinnis
+commented while orderlies placed food and drink in front of them. "We
+ought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?"
+
+"First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly. "Or
+perhaps Malinkoff, if he shows up."
+
+"Malinkoff is too deep in something to come to the briefing," Wong said.
+
+"Wong and I came only to help on your first solo, if we can," McGinnis
+said. "Always think a young fellow needs a little send-off. I remember,
+about fifty years ago, more or less ..."
+
+"Worst thing to guard against," Wong interrupted, "is disappointment.
+This whole thing might add up to nothing. Might not turn out to be a
+genuine solo at all, just something any errand boy could do. In that
+case it wouldn't qualify you. You know that."
+
+"Sure," Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give real
+challenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become an E.
+You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference, something
+that required original thinking, the E kind of thinking. You brought it
+off successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed what you'd done. If
+they thought it was worth something, you got your big E. If they didn't,
+you tried again. And you didn't get it by default, just because somebody
+thought there should be a given quota of Seniors on the list.
+
+"Little or big," he added, "I'd like the problem."
+
+They said no more. He knew the score. He'd had twelve years of the most
+intensive training the E's themselves could devise. He knew that
+sometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve years chasing down jobs
+which anybody on the spot could have solved if they'd used their heads a
+little before they ran on to something that challenged that training.
+He'd be lucky if this was big enough--but not too big.
+
+That was in their minds, too.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+On ordinary days there were only the usual few science reporters in the
+press room of E.H.Q. These held their jobs by the difficult compromise
+between the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and their publishers'
+equal insistence upon sensationalism.
+
+Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like television
+writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass by
+writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; since
+the facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit the open space or time
+slot; even these reporters had a difficult time of maintaining the usual
+odds--that there is only a twenty-to-one chance that anything said in
+the newspapers or on the air may be accurate.
+
+But on this morning the press room was crowded. In spite of all efforts
+of journalism to stir up old animosities to make news, or to force
+factional leaders into rashness which could not be settled without
+violence; the various states of world government insisted upon
+negotiating ethnical differences amicably, and factional leaders
+persisted in keeping their heads. There had been no world-shaking
+discoveries made in the last week or so; the public no longer believed
+that changing a screw thread was exactly a scientific "break-through";
+no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as to
+work the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another's
+aberrations.
+
+In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question
+circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong
+hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a
+summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood.
+
+EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to
+COLONY WIPED OUT.
+
+That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one in
+journalism. If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of the
+news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in the
+press of today's new hate and panic.
+
+The public, with an established addiction to ever increasing daily doses
+of sensationalism, and deprived of its shots through this dry spell,
+snapped out of its apathy to greet this new thrill with vociferous calls
+to editors, wires to congressmen, telegrams to the Administration.
+
+What are we doing about this colony that has been wiped out? Where is
+our space battle fleet? Who is going to be punished?
+
+It was an overnight sensation, and on this morning following the news
+leak there could even be seen some secretaries to the writers for top
+commentators and columnists in the crowded press room.
+
+Naturally these stood in little groups apart and associated only with
+each other to maintain the literary tradition of proper insulation from
+the realities of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviously
+no first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only
+because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own
+spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit his
+capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the
+bias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to
+maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the
+sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in
+such a position.
+
+Now two of these secretaries could be seen over in a corner of the press
+room exchanging their views, probing one another for information. No
+one thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information from
+source for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies in
+what the competition is going to say, not in what happened.
+
+"How long has it been since the first message came through, or didn't?"
+
+"Fourteen hours, about."
+
+"We could have had a rescue fleet out there by now."
+
+"To rescue 'em from what?"
+
+"Whatever's wrong."
+
+"I understand an assistant attorney general is checking into it."
+
+"So Gunderson's still gunning for the E's, eh?"
+
+"Has he ever let up since he became attorney general? Gripes his soul he
+can't arrest them for not doing what he wants, or for doing what he
+doesn't want."
+
+"How'd they ever get immune, anyhow?"
+
+"Skip class that day in history?"
+
+"Must've."
+
+"Vague, myself. Right after the insurrection. Seems there were two
+powers, Russia and America. The people of the world got fed up, gave a
+pox to both their houses, boiled over, formed a world government.
+Somehow the scientists got in their licks in the turmoil, pointed out
+that scientists who have to confine their discoveries to what suits the
+ideology of the non-scientists can only find limited solutions."
+
+"Quite a deal."
+
+"Could only happen in a world turmoil, when everything was fluid.
+Anyhow, they got away with it, for a certain group, Extrapolators, had
+to be free to extrapolate without fear of reprisal."
+
+"Boy, something. Imagine. Take any dame you want. Nobody can squawk.
+Take any money, riches you want. Nobody can stop it."
+
+"Funny thing. Nothing like that happens. Idea seems to be that when you
+don't have to fight against restrictions, they aren't important any
+more. At least not to an E."
+
+"Guess that's why one of 'em pointed out that police are the major cause
+of crime."
+
+"Whether he was right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson into a tail
+spin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped on that
+subject. He'll get 'em one of these days. Even an E can make a mistake,
+and when one of 'em does, he'll be there."
+
+"I dunno, the public has a lot of hero-worship for the E. Pretty tough
+for any politician to buck that."
+
+"The public! You know as well as I do--they think what we tell 'em to
+think, you and me."
+
+"You think that's why he's got a man out here on this Eden thing?
+Looking for a mistake?"
+
+"Maybe. Maybe not. He just never passes up the chance that maybe this
+time he can grab something."
+
+"Between Gunderson and the E's, I'll take the E's."
+
+"Your boss feel the same way?"
+
+"Far as I know."
+
+"But if your boss changed his mind, you would have an agonizing
+reappraisal."
+
+"Well, sure. A guy's got to eat."
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance of
+solidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, where
+the west wall had been, another room seemed to join this one, an office.
+A large man in a brown suit made an entrance through the door of the
+office and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness.
+
+"I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the Eden
+area. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules of
+procedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the scientists involved
+in this problem have been up all night reviewing every known fact about
+Eden. We ask the indulgence of the E's not only for the kind of
+knowledge that may prove too little, but for any strain caused by trying
+to assemble such massive data into order in so short a time.
+
+"For the press, let me say we are aware of some questions of why we
+didn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failed
+to come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle until
+he has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to get
+some idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. It
+would serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out to
+rescue, and might prove the highest folly."
+
+All over E.H.Q., in the various buildings where anybody was directly
+concerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared here in the
+club room. The tri-di screen wall would seem to join the room of the
+person speaking. A pressed button signaled the desire to speak, and like
+the chairman of a meeting, Bill Hayes decided whom to recognize. It was
+a way to conduct a meeting of two or three thousand people as intimately
+as a small conference.
+
+"The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing," Hayes
+continued formally. He faded out his own office, and was immediately
+replaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review of Eden was under
+way.
+
+With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references to
+documentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial position of
+Ceti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II--popularly called,
+he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he preferred a little less
+popularizing of scientific data, a little more exactitude. He would,
+therefore, continue to call it Ceti II.
+
+He reminded Cal of certain teachers in schools he had been asked to
+leave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, they
+clung to their exactitudes--like frightened little children in a chaotic
+world too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, something
+safe, sure, dependable.
+
+The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish the
+position of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction.
+
+In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms of
+third-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found where the
+man said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly, that the essence
+might be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closest
+attention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest he
+find his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, after
+all, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he lay
+peacefully in Linda's arms.
+
+He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little phrase,
+carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure. Didactic
+pedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, not
+vaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them.
+
+A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space to
+the surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just so
+all the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed to
+be humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance to
+chuckle with him.
+
+If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apology
+for this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worth
+breaking up the review to oblige him.
+
+After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present his
+capsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.
+
+There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands of
+islands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. The
+islands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explained
+that Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universe
+exploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientists
+could follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been left
+for future colonists to complete.
+
+He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzled
+by glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jet
+jockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solid
+sciences to keep up with the work to be done.
+
+A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with the
+injection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence,
+and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have the
+grant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to change
+the human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead toward
+humans with super-intelligence.
+
+Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that the
+Eden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get that one out
+of the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions, indicated that
+they did not appreciate being frustrated, hampered, driven--but they did
+comply.
+
+Back to Eden they went.
+
+The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area. Partly this
+was due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly,
+partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted that
+there was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over the
+globe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Some
+differential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no real
+violence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes
+here on Earth.
+
+"Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they could send
+news, then," Wong suggested in an aside to Cal.
+
+"Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because it wasn't
+supposed to happen," Cal said.
+
+Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew Wong had laid a
+little trap to see how easily he might be lulled into a premature
+conclusion.
+
+The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but only to
+the extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked with a springier
+step, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause nausea, even to the
+inexperienced. The oxygen content of the air, in fact the whole make-up
+of the air, was so close to Earth quality there were no breathing
+adaptations necessary.
+
+So much for generalities. He went on to document them with exactitudes.
+He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the distribution of
+rainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air masses. Cal's doubt
+was not appeased. Weather prediction was about on a par with race-horse
+handicapping, and easy to explain after it happened.
+
+Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed their duet
+to the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists.
+
+A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the major
+theme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion of the plant
+forms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems, roots, flowers. A
+choir of zoologists joined their voices here to point out the large
+number of small meat animals, fish, and crustaceans--with the whole
+thing sounding like a pean of thanksgiving.
+
+After two hours, the condensed information added up to a most
+interesting fact. In essence, due to quite _natural_ conditions--odd how
+much the scientists seemed to need stressing the word "natural"--Eden
+was more favorable to easy human life than Earth!
+
+Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student or apprentice
+might distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing question or so. Say
+the range of easily possible conditions on any given planet was a scale
+ten miles in length. Then that area on the scale where man could exist
+without artificial aids would still be less than a hair's breadth. And
+now to find a planet more nearly perfect for man than the one on which
+he evolved....
+
+Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention? He decided
+to nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the too obvious
+brought out things not obvious at all.
+
+"How frequently," he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do we find a
+mass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve at right angles
+to its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?"
+
+"It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of land
+and water masses, such as we have on Ceti II," the first astrophysicist
+answered.
+
+"How frequently do we find that?" Cal repeated.
+
+"I know of no other," the astrophysicist replied shortly.
+
+"Any evidence of tampering with those ocean currents to get them flowing
+so beneficially?" Cal asked.
+
+"None yet discovered," an oceanographer cut in.
+
+Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't been
+and couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself and
+spoiled the effect of open-mindedness.
+
+"There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligence
+for that," the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a feat would
+require enormous engineering works. Such works under the ocean would be
+matched by comparable works on land, and would therefore show up in our
+aerial surveys, however ancient and overgrown."
+
+Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization, yes, that
+would have left traces. But what of some other kind? Perhaps a deep-sea
+kind that had never come out upon the land? Never mind the arguments
+that such a civilization could not have developed--that was looking at
+it from the human point of view again. Had man grown so accustomed to
+not finding comparable intelligence anywhere in the universe he had
+begun to discount, or forget, there could be?
+
+The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the prevalent
+animals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in land animals higher
+than a large rodent, no sea mammals at all, no fish larger than the
+tarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of primates.
+
+A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of minute life
+forms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again expound the old
+theory of space-floating life spores to seed all favorable matter, and
+thus develop similar forms through evolution, wherever found. Quickly
+and tactfully Bill Hayes nudged him back on the track before the
+expected storm of controversy could break out.
+
+Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one. Quite aside
+from the emergency of what might be happening to the colonists, there
+was growing clamor from the people and pressure from various
+governmental bodies to get off the dime and get going--rescue those
+people, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the flood
+of telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted the pressures in favor of doing a
+workmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of a
+haphazard show, but was mindful of them nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial cannot
+help but realize that "government by law instead of man" is a mere
+political phrase without meaning in reality. The ascendancy of
+me-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in the human psyche that
+abstract idealisms must always take second place where such ascendancy
+is threatened. Thus we see that the belly-crawler, meek and subservient
+to the judge, comes off with a token sentence while the man who attempts
+to maintain his pride, his rights, his self-respect gets the book thrown
+at him.
+
+No practical attorney is unaware that the judgment of his case depends
+largely upon who presides, the whims, the prejudices, the moods, the
+viewpoint of the judge; and that the law merely provides justification
+for the imposition of those whims, moods, prejudices, and viewpoints.
+
+And ambitions.
+
+The announcement at E.H.Q. that a Junior E would be given this problem
+gave Gunderson's man the opening he had hoped to find. A hurried call to
+the capitol and a brief conversation with Gunderson himself confirmed
+his conclusions. Perhaps the E was above all law, and it might not be
+expedient to challenge that right now, but immunity did not necessarily
+extend to the Junior E.
+
+In view of the known ambitions of certain judges, it should not be
+difficult to make a test case of this--whether the E's had a right to
+jeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an unqualified man to
+the problem.
+
+A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, the
+apprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle of the E
+extend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out did the
+Administration of E.H.Q. extend to substitute for government? How much
+of a state within a state had E.H.Q. become?
+
+Now, while the public was clamoring for action, and E.H.Q. was, instead,
+droning on through a mass of inconsequential detail, now while public
+sentiment was crystallizing, or could be crystallized into placing human
+welfare over science procedures, now was the time.
+
+It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor the
+request of the attorney general.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the
+review.
+
+The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously
+favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeed
+they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly
+nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on
+Earth.
+
+Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists
+had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were
+temperamentally suited to the work.
+
+As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly as
+possible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitive
+ecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of this
+first colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do only
+what any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible.
+
+In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had been
+more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden of
+their complaint was that they found living too easy. They were
+professionals, accustomed to challenge.
+
+They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred and
+the planet given over to the second-phase colonists.
+
+They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was making
+farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft,
+ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostile
+conditions. There had even been threats that one of these days they
+would all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stopped
+them by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never got
+another assignment.
+
+He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Some
+organisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, to
+make their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until the
+second or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phase
+colonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet could
+be opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning a
+little chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredom
+might be just the very inimical condition they were having to test.
+
+Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
+colonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction from
+their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawing
+attention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps,
+but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treated
+unfairly.
+
+This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let his
+disappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrative
+hassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior.
+
+Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the whole
+of the problem.
+
+The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. In
+the center was a small mountain. It had been given the name of Crystal
+Palace Mountain because it was crested with an outcropping of
+amethystine quartz-crystal structures in _natural_ pillars, domes,
+arches, spires.
+
+Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell away
+from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleys
+watered by perpetual streams.
+
+It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain and
+the sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named the
+first settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, and
+everybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit of
+knowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to the
+planet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone was
+referring to it that way.
+
+"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course we
+still designate it as Ceti II."
+
+As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progress
+pictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they had
+started to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here they
+were converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the first
+houses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship.
+Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earth
+seed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them from
+Earth.
+
+A collection of community buildings came next in the series of
+photographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, with
+a collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it all
+as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio.
+Productive, progressive, and peaceful--from a distance.
+
+But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed normally
+also.
+
+The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. His
+department would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms
+_not_ developed. _That_ would have been an abnormality calling for
+investigation.
+
+Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the common
+temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities
+developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, each
+group considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all who
+disagreed wrong.
+
+The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember the
+classical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He stands
+upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realization
+that he can see about the same distance in all directions.
+
+"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center of
+creation!"
+
+His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was still
+at the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.
+
+"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the most
+important event in all creation!"
+
+Still later comes another realization.
+
+"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, are
+also at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are not
+with me, and not a part of me-and-mine, are not at the center of things,
+and are therefore of an inferior nature!"
+
+It could readily be seen--the psychologist was allowing a note of
+dryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy,
+religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even his
+scientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; the
+supreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the center
+of things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on the
+outside, and therefore inferior.
+
+There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist left
+the generalities behind and came back to the issue.
+
+The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, for
+there was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mine
+organism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided into
+nations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in some
+other nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been able
+to find to keep the nation from disintegrating.
+
+Another nudge.
+
+Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, as
+expected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longer
+tolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with the
+rest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the near
+ridge to settle in an adjacent valley.
+
+Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out in
+classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyone
+knew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man been
+able to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed no
+civilization at all.
+
+Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potent
+of all forces in driving him out to the stars.
+
+Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided he
+could no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cut
+him off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simple
+statement.
+
+The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance or
+not. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal course
+of E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They had been collated and
+extended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trends
+away from norm.
+
+There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as well
+have originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about as
+unusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.
+
+Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following
+the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human
+existence than Earth."
+
+He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness for
+take-off.
+
+McGinnis and Wong looked at one another.
+
+"You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?" Wong asked.
+His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was banished from an
+ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow."
+
+"Not that so much," Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept of evolution
+is haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that far off. Probably
+the colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep thinking that when
+we want to catch rats we set a trap with a better food than they can get
+normally."
+
+There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye.
+
+"You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch human
+beings?" he asked.
+
+"I don't exactly think that. I just keep wondering," Cal answered.
+
+They were interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on the door.
+This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt
+the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors,
+who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stood
+facing the door. The orderlies looked to the E's for instruction. At a
+nod from McGinnis, one of them walked over to the door and opened it.
+
+Bill Hayes was standing there, flushed with embarrassment.
+
+"Your pardon, E's," he said hurriedly. "I'm just an errand boy, under
+instruction from General Administration. We have been served with a
+court injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior to the Eden matter."
+
+Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment to have his
+chance snatched away from him. He should have gone immediately the
+review was over, without waiting for any advice McGinnis and Wong might
+care to give. Now ...
+
+McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door that opened
+on another hallway. He flashed a command with his eyes to get going,
+then turned back to Hayes.
+
+"I was unaware that the E's must heed court orders," he said frostily.
+
+"It's a question of where civil jurisdiction stops and E jurisdiction
+takes over," Hayes explained nervously. "While the colonists are
+employed by E.H.Q., and under their direction, it is held they are also
+Earth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil authority feels it must
+answer for their welfare."
+
+"I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of World Congress
+some seventy years ago," Wong said mildly.
+
+"The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the Senior
+E; just the Junior, who really isn't an E yet."
+
+"It is the decision of the E's that a Junior will handle this problem,"
+McGinnis said, and turned his back as if that settled the matter.
+
+Hayes cleared his throat nervously.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said. "If it were up to me ... Well, the argument before
+the court ran this way: That where there is no restriction upon the E in
+arriving at a solution, there is also no compulsion upon civil
+authority to adopt that solution. They cited instances ... Well, any
+number of instances. It seems ..."
+
+Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's
+perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, he
+slipped out the door.
+
+The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's request
+quickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet.
+
+"Take me out to the Eden ship," Cal said quietly. "You know where it
+is?"
+
+"Yes," the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls and Cal
+slipped into the seat beside him.
+
+They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear exit of the E
+building, down the maze of ramps and out across the landing field to the
+entrance of the ship.
+
+Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction, but
+none were in evidence. As they drew up to the open door, he saw Lynwood
+and Norton, pilot and engineer, standing just inside waiting for him.
+There was no strain in their faces to show they had received orders not
+to take off with him.
+
+He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly drove it
+back to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew would be the E's
+orderlies.
+
+Cal climbed the short ramp and entered the ship.
+
+"You have clearance to take off at once?" he asked Lynwood.
+
+Lynwood nodded. "Since early morning," he answered.
+
+"Fine. Let's get going," Cal said. "I'm in a hurry, of course," he added
+with a grin.
+
+"Of course," the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed and
+returned it. Apparently this E was human.
+
+It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where Louie
+sat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for the ship to
+lift clear. And still no command came over the radio to halt them.
+
+Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really felt that a
+simple injunction would stop everything, that the E's would not
+challenge this encroachment? Was he playing some deeper game, allowing
+the Junior to slip through his fingers in the hope he would louse up the
+Eden rescue, add strength to the campaign to bring the E's back under
+civil control--his control?
+
+Or had someone genuinely slipped?
+
+The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not come until
+their second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit. Then it came from
+space police in charge of shipping traffic at that point.
+
+"I am under orders from E.H.Q. to proceed," Tom answered, after a quick,
+questioning look at Cal.
+
+"The attorney general's office orders you to halt," the voice commanded.
+
+Tom looked at Cal again, questioning. This was bucking the federal
+government, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on if
+he ignored the order. To say nothing of any other punishment they might
+choose to hand him.
+
+"Keep going," Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump as quickly
+as you can."
+
+"I am under orders to keep going," Tom answered the police. If he
+refused the request of an E, a lifetime of work would go down the drain.
+
+Over in his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through the
+intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were working
+as one man.
+
+"I am under orders to disable you if you refuse," the police warned.
+
+"We have an E on board," Tom answered. "You'd be risking a lot."
+
+"I am advised he is a Junior E," the voice said in clipped speech. "Not
+such a risk."
+
+"Far as I'm concerned," Tom answered laconically, "he's an E. I have to
+follow his orders."
+
+He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was an instant
+silence. They were at the approach to the asteroid belt.
+
+"They can get us here," Louie spoke up. "We have to give over controls
+so they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the microsecond on
+these asteroid movements. They have to calculate a path in short hops,
+and take us through a step at a time. I keep saying there ought to be an
+expressway out of the solar system, but ..."
+
+"What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked. "Get over it
+instead of through it?"
+
+"It's illegal," Louie complained.
+
+"Our necks are already out," Tom said quietly.
+
+"Okay, you're the boss. But I'll have to figure it. It takes time to
+figure it."
+
+"Well, get going on it."
+
+"There's stuff all over," Louie explained. "Not just a band, like most
+people think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too. Not so
+thick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a bunch of
+little jumps."
+
+"We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+The radio gave its hum of life, and a voice came through.
+
+"We have orders from space police not to escort you through, to turn you
+back."
+
+"This is an E ship, with an E on board. His command is to come through,"
+Tom said.
+
+"I just work here," the voice answered as if it were bored and tired. "I
+take my orders from Space Control."
+
+Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look out of a
+corner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to bother him. His
+other hand was speeding through the movements of manipulating the
+astrocalculator. Then he nodded his head, still not looking up, and the
+co-ordinates flashed in front of Frank. Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frank
+set up the pattern of the jump band.
+
+"I take my orders from the E's," Tom answered in a voice that matched
+the boredom, tiredness. Then with a nod from Frank, "Now!" he said.
+
+There was silence again.
+
+"It's going to add at least an hour," Louie complained. "I've got to
+pick my way through this muck."
+
+"We've got time now," Tom answered easily. "Not likely they can find us
+out here, away from the regular lanes."
+
+"Not unless we run across a prowl ship," Louie said. "You know there's
+some smuggling, and now and then a shipping company thinks it can beat
+the rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same thing we're doing. The
+prowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're not the first ones to try
+it."
+
+"Just keep figuring, Louie," Tom said.
+
+"All right, all right!" Louie quarreled back.
+
+Tom looked at Cal and grimaced.
+
+"Louie's all right," he said. "Just has to complain."
+
+"I'm sure of it," Cal answered with a grin.
+
+It took closer to two hours. They had no way of knowing how many times
+the space police had made a fix on their position only too late to catch
+them hovering there. There must have been some fix made and a pretty
+careful calculation of where they could go next, for as they neared the
+outer moons of Jupiter the radio crackled into life again.
+
+"This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take over. We
+will disintegrate your ship if you resist."
+
+Cal took the microphone in his own hand to answer.
+
+"We intend to keep going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional dispute
+between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will not allow you
+to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders to
+disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhile
+you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those orders are
+confirmed."
+
+Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed.
+
+In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders from the
+attorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say, Lynwood, what
+is this all about?"
+
+"Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who," Lynwood
+answered. "I just work here," he added tiredly.
+
+"Well," said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in the
+courts now. You understand, we had our orders."
+
+"You understand, so did I." Tom answered.
+
+"Sure," the voice answered, and cut out.
+
+Cal wondered whether the orders to disintegrate had been a bluff. Would
+the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior E
+on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one they
+didn't expect to have called.
+
+Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's hands by
+defying him, and getting that defiance on record was what the man had
+wanted.
+
+Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than merely finding
+out what had happened to some colonists. Whatever it was, he'd better
+find a successful solution, because the attorney general was counting on
+him to fail. And if he did fail, certainly the position of the Junior E
+would be altered, and possibly a deep thrust into the very heart of the
+Senior E position, as well.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no
+trouble getting _to_ Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating the
+globe while still in space.
+
+Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, they
+had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain at
+its center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescope
+viewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like a
+diamond set in jade.
+
+The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when they
+amplified their magnification to get a close look at the Appletree
+village before dropping down to land.
+
+Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and he
+stuck to his claim stubbornly.
+
+But there was no settlement there. No sign there had ever been.
+
+Louie could see that for himself, they told him. There was nothing but
+virgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old. There were splashes of
+rolling meadows spotted here and there by other trees, untilled meadows
+sloping downward from the ridges to the river. And not a blemish nor
+scar to show that man had ever landed there.
+
+"Fine thing," Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get us clear
+across the universe in great shape, and then you can't even find the
+landing field."
+
+But Louie was in no mood for banter. He wished Tom would go back and
+hold the manual controls of the ship instead of letting it hover on
+automatic. He wished Cal would go back to his stateroom and think. He
+wished Frank Norton would shut up. He wished they wouldn't all stand
+over him, reading his charts over his shoulder.
+
+In irritated silence he reduced the viewscope dimensions to scale, and
+snapped a picture of the whole island. He took the fresh picture, still
+moist from its self-developing camera, and laid it beside the chart.
+Wordlessly, for the benefit of them all, he traced his pencil over the
+outlines of the chart and their duplicates in the picture. As in
+comparing fingerprints, he flicked his pencil at the points of identity.
+There were far too many to ignore. He poked the point of his pencil at
+Appletree where it was located on the chart. Then he picked out the same
+location in the picture.
+
+It was not the science of navigation that was wrong.
+
+"It's just one of those dirty tricks life plays on a fellow," Tom said
+over Cal's shoulder. "You got us in the right place, Louie, but probably
+in the wrong time slot. You've warped us right out of our own time, and
+Eden hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe won't be for another million
+years. Maybe, back on Earth, man is just discovering fire."
+
+"Yeah," Norton agreed. "Or maybe in the wrong dimension. You and your
+fancy navigation. Now you take a midgit-idgit navigating machine. It
+wouldn't know how to pull such fancy short cuts. Take a little longer,
+maybe, but when we got there we'd be there."
+
+They were both talking nonsense and knew it. Time and dimensional travel
+were still purely theoretical. Louie ignored the ribbing with elaborate
+patience.
+
+"You know what I think," he asked seriously. "I think the whole thing's
+a hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there. I'll betcha
+the colonists have pulled a whingding all the way through."
+
+"There's a whole raft of pictures to show they were there," Frank
+reminded him.
+
+"Pictures!" Louie answered scornfully. "You think they couldn't fake
+pictures?" He thought for a moment. "And where's their ship, their
+escape ship?" he asked as a clincher. "They didn't like it here and have
+gone off somewhere else, and then covered up by sending reports and
+pictures on how things would have developed if they'd stayed."
+
+There was a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal let the
+talk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a modern ocean
+liner pulled into the harbor of New York--to find an untouched Manhattan
+Island in its virgin state?
+
+It couldn't happen, therefore it wasn't to be treated seriously.
+
+"Better set up communication with Earth," Cal said quietly.
+
+In E science the unpredictable, the incredible, the illogical could
+happen at any time. With a mind more open to acceptance of this, he had
+felt the run of shock sooner. For them, the shock impact was delayed
+since their minds rejected the illogical as unreal. For him the human
+shock came at once, and then, as E thinking took over, passed off.
+
+"Sure, Cal," Lynwood agreed. It was a measure of their acceptance that
+they had quite normally fallen into using his first name.
+
+On the emergency signal it took less than three minutes to clear through
+eleven light-years to E.H.Q.--and then sixteen minutes for the operator
+at base to find Bill Hayes.
+
+"Sector Chief Hayes here," the voice said at last through the speaker.
+
+"Gray here, on the Eden matter," Cal answered. "Any other E's
+available?"
+
+"Hm-m," Hayes answered. "Wong has picked up on a problem in the Pleiades
+sector, and left this morning. Malinkoff has given out word not to
+disturb him if the whole universe falls apart. That leaves McGinnis,
+who, I believe, is spending his time working on the defense against the
+injunction by Gunderson. An example of the way petty restrictions can
+bring a fine mind down to trivial problems. But he said call him if you
+need him."
+
+"Please," Cal said. "And you might stay on while I talk to him, if
+you're not busy."
+
+"Sure, E Gray, sure," Hayes answered. "I'm flashing the operator to
+locate McGinnis. Seen anything of the police ship, yet? I understand one
+is following to observe what you do."
+
+"I'm sure it will be a big help," Cal said drily. "Not that it matters,
+so long as it doesn't get in the way."
+
+McGinnis came on at that point.
+
+"I'm not yelling for help, yet," Cal told him. "But here's what it is
+like at this end." He sketched in the details, and heard a sharp gasp at
+the other end from Hayes.
+
+"Now I'd like to stay on this problem," he concluded his brief summary.
+"But somewhere there's fifty colonists in trouble because this whole
+thing is out of focus. I'm not a full E, and maybe their lives are more
+important than my ambition to do a solo job. Certainly more important.
+Then, trivial as it is, we'd be playing right into Gunderson's hands if
+we've sent out a boy to do a man's job."
+
+"Dismiss the Gunderson side of it," McGinnis said drily. "It's
+inconsequential to the main issue. As for that, I don't know any more
+than you do. There's never been anything like this. Colonists have been
+wiped out on other planets, sure; but what happened left traces. This
+one is an oddball, and I'd say you're as well equipped to handle it as
+anybody else."
+
+"I don't--I don't understand this at all," Hayes said in a worried
+voice.
+
+"Who does?" Cal asked. "I'd say set up for continuous communication.
+I'll leave it wide open here, so that everything we say will come
+through. Then, if anything should happen to us, you'll have the record
+up to that point."
+
+"It's the only thing we can do," Hayes agreed.
+
+"If you think I should come out there to stand by, I'll do it," McGinnis
+said. But the tone of his voice said he hoped Cal would shoulder the
+full responsibility, not weaken out of a chance at a real solo.
+
+"I'm not crying uncle, yet," Cal said. "But I may have to take you up on
+the offer. I hope not."
+
+"But do you _know_ anything is wrong?" Hayes asked incredulously. He was
+having the same trouble facing the reality as the ship's crew.
+
+"If you were flying to Los Angeles and found only desert where the city
+is supposed to be, you might assume something was wrong," Cal answered
+drily. "But I don't know what it is. Do you have a recorder set up, so I
+can begin trying to find out?"
+
+"Yes, yes, E Gray," Hayes said hurriedly. He was suddenly conscious that
+he had been interrupting an E conversation, not once but several times.
+"Pardon the intrusions. It was just that ..."
+
+"I understand," Cal reassured him.
+
+When Cal stood up from the communicator, the eyes of the crew were on
+him. Overhearing his conversation with Earth had sobered them, made
+reality come closer.
+
+"You think it might be a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air current
+reflecting from another island and superimposing over this one?" Then he
+answered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. There aren't enough
+discrepancies."
+
+"Let's pan down to the ground with the scanner," Cal said. "Take it slow
+over the area where the village is supposed to be."
+
+Glad to be doing something with his hands, Lynwood twisted the controls
+to take them instantly, in magnification, to a distance slightly above
+the tops of the trees. The automatic pilot caused the ship to drift with
+the rotation of the planet, keeping them in fixed relative position.
+
+They scanned the ground rod by rod. There were expanses of heavy tree
+and bush growth that they could not penetrate. Some of these trees grew
+where the pictures showed cleared fields, buildings, truck gardens,
+cattle pastures.
+
+"Those big trees didn't grow up in a month, since the last colonist
+report," Louie said positively. He still clung to his belief that it was
+all a hoax.
+
+Cal made no comment. He was intent on the scanner screen. There were
+heavy foliage spots, but there were also bare areas covered by a soft,
+springy turf and patches of wild flowers. But there was no sign of man
+or his works. There was not so much as a board, the glint of a nail, not
+a furrow, not even the scar of a campfire. And no indication that there
+had ever been.
+
+In the sandy patches along the banks of the small meandering river,
+there was not even a footprint.
+
+They swept the scanner down the valley.
+
+"Wait a minute," Cal said. "There are some cows and horses." He held the
+scanner fixed while they studied the animals. In two small herds, the
+animals grazed contentedly near a patch of woods.
+
+"We're in the right time slot, then," Tom said, with an attempt to pick
+up the spirit of treating it lightly. "They've been here. Else the cows
+and horses wouldn't be."
+
+"Funny thing about those horses," Frank commented in a puzzled voice. "I
+grew up on a farm. Those are work horses, but field horses always have
+harness marks on them where the hair gets rubbed off or the skin gets
+calloused. If they used these horses for work, there ought to be collar
+and hames rubs on their necks. There ought to be worn streaks left by
+the traces on their sides. There isn't. Far as the evidence shows, they
+might have been wild all their lives."
+
+"Whatever happened didn't seem to hurt them any," Cal agreed.
+
+He swept the scanner on down the valley to the sandy shore of the sea.
+They were close enough to pick up the brown streaks of beached seaweed.
+A flock of shore birds were busy running up the sand away from the
+gentle, beaching waves, then following the water line back down to dig
+their beaks into the soft, wet sand for food. The birds showed no alarm,
+no sign of lurking presence near them.
+
+Cal brought the scanner back up the valley and over to one of the
+ridges bordering it. High on the crest of the ridge, the undergrowth was
+less luxuriant than down in the valley.
+
+And it was here they caught their first glimpse of a human being.
+
+He was hunkered down behind some rocks at the crest, peering over them
+at the valley below. From the shape of his shoulders and back, the set
+of his head, they knew it to be a man. As far as they could tell, he had
+no clothes on. Apparently they had caught him at the moment of his
+arrival at the crest.
+
+They watched him turn his head as he looked quickly, then searchingly,
+up and down the valley. They watched his hand come up to shade his eyes
+against the light from Ceti as he attempted to see into the dark patches
+of foliage where the village ought to be.
+
+What he saw, or did not see, seemed to stun him. He squatted, as frozen
+as a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees, they saw him
+back away from the crest. Now they saw he did not wear even so much as a
+breechclout. When the height of the ridge concealed him from the other
+side, he sprang to his feet and began to run, zigzagging in the manner
+of an obstacle racer to avoid the bushes.
+
+"Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it," Lynwood
+commented.
+
+"And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people wouldn't come
+out to break it up," Louie persisted.
+
+"Then why should he be so scared?" Frank asked.
+
+"Notice that patch of bare dirt he's crossing?" Cal asked. "See the
+little spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look behind him."
+
+The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at the
+scanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus on the
+ground.
+
+"No footprints!" Lynwood exclaimed. "He doesn't leave any footprints!"
+
+The three of them looked at Cal, wide-eyed. Cal didn't like what he saw
+in Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with life's
+little petty tricks was gone.
+
+The look had been replaced with fear, and something more.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope,
+disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the other
+side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled,
+recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth of
+trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valley
+with its own stream.
+
+They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tan
+skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. It
+was their last sight of him. They watched for a while longer, but he did
+not reappear under the green canopy of forest.
+
+"Just a guess," Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope the
+casualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes. "That's
+probably one of the dissident men who broke away from the main colony
+and set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley. Apparently the same
+things have happened to him as happened to the main colony, whatever it
+was.
+
+"I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now worked up
+courage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say whatever happened
+wasn't very long ago, not more than a week. Just a guess."
+
+None of the crew answered him. It was obviously not the case of a voyeur
+spying on others--not with the kind of excitement the running man had
+shown. Running away--that is.
+
+"Let's drop down into the atmosphere," Cal suggested. "I'd assume it is
+breathable from the fact we've seen earth animals and a human being.
+Still we'd better make tests."
+
+"Yeah," Louie said unexpectedly. "If the man isn't making any footprints
+maybe he isn't breathing, either." He tried to make it a joke, to fight
+his fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody laughed. He
+swallowed hard and studied the charts again for no apparent reason.
+
+Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's face showed
+him Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the progress of shock.
+Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's sense of responsibility for
+his crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. But
+there was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of
+his jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep
+them from chattering?
+
+However experienced a man became, however dependable the reactions, one
+never knew how to predict reaction in the face of the completely
+unknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked any of the men if they
+feared to take him down it would be an insult never forgotten. It was
+their job to take an E where he wanted to go. It wouldn't be the first
+time they had gambled their lives on the judgment of an E.
+
+"Oh-oh," Tom exclaimed. "We have company." He pointed to an indicator on
+the panel.
+
+They swept the space around them with the scanner, and hovering off to
+one side they picked up another ship. They watched it for a while, as it
+hovered there. It made no move to come closer, no move to communicate
+with them.
+
+"From its markings," Tom said at last, "I think that's a special
+investigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder what
+they're doing here?"
+
+"To make first-hand observation of my failure," Cal said shortly. "Let's
+get on with our work."
+
+Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, that
+whatever might happen to them would not only be heard on the E.H.Q.
+channel back to Earth, but would also be seen by these special
+observers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that they were
+being watched, that faltering uncertainty would be noted and scorned.
+Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air sampling and testing as
+they lowered the ship by degrees.
+
+Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood handled the ship
+on manual control with ease, almost with flourish. But Louie's hands,
+gripping the edges of the chart table, still showed bloodless white at
+the knuckles. Perhaps because there was nothing for him to do at the
+moment, he alone wasn't snapping out of it.
+
+The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readings
+for this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To complete
+the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicator
+would carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not only
+McGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group of
+scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges of
+tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?
+
+To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness
+than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's
+speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.
+
+Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at
+Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made
+no comment.
+
+Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air
+sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree
+should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed
+mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of
+vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the
+ground.
+
+"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.
+
+Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.
+
+"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the
+responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so
+much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without
+question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them.
+And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less
+themselves.
+
+But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below
+them. He was frozen and unheeding.
+
+The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out
+of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.
+
+"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."
+
+Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp
+unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank,
+looked through the opening into the woods beyond.
+
+And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening protection
+of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them were
+completely naked.
+
+"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out," Cal
+instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from the
+planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to help
+me."
+
+"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own knowledge,
+heroics might do more harm than good.
+
+Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.
+
+The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward him, also
+slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces were
+breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.
+
+Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it happened.
+
+He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him. He whirled
+around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There was
+no ship. The three crewmen were completely naked.
+
+Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his own
+body. He also was nude.
+
+He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in front of him.
+Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of despair.
+
+Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet. A quick
+glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and
+uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show
+where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the
+ground and buried his face in his hands.
+
+Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield some
+wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.
+
+A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication with
+Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see the
+observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seen
+them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what it
+had seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that it
+was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical that the attorney
+general would tell E.H.Q. what had happened.
+
+Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to land.
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was
+personally involved?
+
+For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function
+rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze,
+shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind,
+there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed
+from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer.
+
+The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in
+front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still
+picture from a modernist ballet.
+
+Or a charade. Guess what this is!
+
+He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning
+of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.
+
+With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning,
+darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and
+momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with
+trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion
+picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded
+on the cutting-room floor.
+
+Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising a
+mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotent
+parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creation
+of a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, so
+that he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could now
+place responsibility outside himself.
+
+Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of
+enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, the
+first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.
+
+"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science
+if you do."
+
+In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used the
+statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E.
+The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man because
+he is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in the
+universe that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limited
+interpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to the
+ascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the sole
+basis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality.
+
+He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting these
+phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were not
+the whole of reality, what then?
+
+Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of E
+science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only one
+natural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because of
+our ignorance, because we cannot apperceive the whole, then this, too,
+is no more than another facet.
+
+Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the movement
+of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward step
+by step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read the
+knowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, had
+previously happened to them.
+
+Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought the
+shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. There
+they paused.
+
+It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportions
+of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering
+beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch,
+uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as
+small and inconspicuous as possible.
+
+In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at the
+turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the
+pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing
+men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly,
+apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his body
+against his will.
+
+The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just the
+kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into his eyes
+for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace of
+terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage swamped in funk.
+
+"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he had spoken
+in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of the
+classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him under
+the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown.
+
+As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank
+half-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legs
+behave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement of
+uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther back
+into sheltering protection of the deep forest.
+
+But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came together
+under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection? From what?
+
+Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree, as if,
+on a high place, he feared falling.
+
+"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help it."
+
+One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced,
+spare-framed one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable
+impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be made
+responsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to survive
+against all odds.
+
+"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like that
+for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin' all right.
+Better than some."
+
+Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders, fought off
+the urge to like dejection.
+
+"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and
+mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at
+himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen
+naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."
+
+To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell
+somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself.
+Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of
+responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding
+himself that he was a man.
+
+"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckon
+you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don't
+rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here is Ahmed Hussein,
+and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van Tassel. Manner of speakin',"
+he amended. "He ain't no more miserable than the rest of us."
+
+"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This is Tom
+Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just under
+the weather right now."
+
+"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I
+reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He
+spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him.
+"Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the
+job, and that's all we got left."
+
+Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar
+formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.
+
+"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a
+shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."
+
+"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him.
+Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if
+to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the
+pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."
+
+"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One
+place is good as another right now."
+
+The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the
+ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his
+legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.
+
+"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then
+cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even
+provide a cup of coffee."
+
+"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"
+
+He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began
+rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two
+sticks flew apart and out of his hands.
+
+"Try it," he invited Cal.
+
+Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started
+to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of
+his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not
+provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the
+sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together.
+Suddenly, he simply lost interest.
+
+"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His
+astonishment at himself was a shock.
+
+There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of
+gets you, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.
+
+"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant
+to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been going
+on?"
+
+"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, and
+all ..."
+
+"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning when
+everything was normal...."
+
+"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He looked at
+Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he added. "Can't
+keep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm a
+little surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation this
+long. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more that
+we'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left you
+to your own devices without interest in you. Strange."
+
+"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right now
+I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ... Well, while I'm
+in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keep
+interested.
+
+"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a week
+ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was around
+noon...."
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+It was one day around noon.
+
+Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his
+dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready
+afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch,
+all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden.
+Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and
+didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that
+had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earn
+his bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for
+it on Eden.
+
+He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees in
+the front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from the
+rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not so
+far he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still far
+enough to give a man some space.
+
+The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen window
+where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy,
+peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing the
+flowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in the
+trees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life like
+that, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be.
+
+He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because the
+committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up all
+groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn't
+afford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap out
+something that was splitting the colony right down the middle.
+
+He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetables
+were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here--plenty of rain,
+plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the crops, not even enough
+insect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures where
+the colony's community stock grazed.
+
+The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinking
+pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of some
+trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying down
+in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The green
+grass around them was so tall he could barely see their heads and backs.
+
+His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it. Martha,
+like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all you could see, as
+the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She never
+could stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked out
+this spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and some
+dim shapes of islands in the distance. Right nice.
+
+Yes, it was all very peaceful--and tame.
+
+That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got
+restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets.
+You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or
+couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while,
+maybe always.
+
+On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make
+a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right
+for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow
+death--almost as bad as living on Earth.
+
+Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe
+more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and
+see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q.
+that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy
+living.
+
+A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow
+tall.
+
+Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and
+were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the
+experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation
+so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an
+experimental colony.
+
+And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal
+to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could
+afford to lose any.
+
+Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a Lotus
+Land, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, got
+plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailing
+it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get a
+little black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick it
+out. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to follow
+it. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth
+for a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idle
+right now because there weren't enough experimentals to go around.
+
+They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another job too.
+Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them than living here.
+
+Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half wanted to
+leave right now. That was what the committee was going to decide today.
+He'd done some checking around, and it looked like they were going to
+vote to go. He'd also checked with them who wanted to stay permanently,
+and it looked like, in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to
+be men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sure
+of it.
+
+Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was the
+trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind the
+community together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and get
+along when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves.
+
+It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his sympathies
+were with the ones who wanted to go, Jed felt there was something wrong,
+real bad, about deserting the planet. Still and all, if they voted to go
+he couldn't stop them.
+
+Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on out without
+the total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E.H.Q. would decide that
+Eden was too hard to colonize because it was too easy. Maybe they'd
+abandon the planet entirely. There'd be no more humans here, and no more
+coming.
+
+That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump!
+
+He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, and
+he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else for
+his own fault. There wasn't any hammock.
+
+At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly in
+the direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standing
+there on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not a
+stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.
+
+And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!
+
+His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to stand
+right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter with her anyhow?
+He peered quickly down toward the village to see if anybody was looking
+up in this direction.
+
+The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't any
+hammock. There wasn't any house.
+
+There wasn't any village.
+
+He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where the
+village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around as
+if they'd fallen down.
+
+And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.
+
+And so was he! He'd just realized it.
+
+It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the tree was
+still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stood
+out above all the rest. Still singing.
+
+Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind a
+tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody saw
+him standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird.
+
+The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond
+the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its
+hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong,
+real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't there.
+Nothing.
+
+For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong direction.
+He'd got turned around or something in the confusion, because there was
+a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grove
+they'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the trees
+because it had a peculiar shape.
+
+And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power saw
+for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to save
+the wood for furniture because it was real pretty. That was the tree,
+there on the edge of the grove.
+
+He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out
+where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that whole
+area of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only they
+hadn't, because that was virgin forest, too.
+
+Maybe he'd gone insane? He felt a flood of relief. Sure, that was it.
+He'd just gone insane, that was all. Everything else was all right.
+
+"The calves have got loose to the cows and they're going to take all the
+milk, Jed."
+
+He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so was she. Her
+eyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time like this to be worrying
+about them fool calves getting out. It took all the comfort away from
+him. Her face was white, her eyes were dazed.
+
+"You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha," he heard himself saying. "And
+for Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The committee's coming
+over, and you running around like that!"
+
+He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the hammock
+after all, while he was waiting for the committee, and he was dreaming.
+Of course, he ought to have known all along. This was just the way
+things happened in a dream--even him and Martha running around naked. He
+even chuckled to himself. He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow after
+all, because even in a dream it was his own wife that was next to him
+there, naked--not some other man's.
+
+The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most of it. He
+took her into his arms, and she clung to him.
+
+Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him, and he
+was dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any sheet in the
+hammock when he went to sleep.
+
+And he wasn't dreaming.
+
+"What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was shaking with
+fear, and her arms were wound around his neck so tight now he could
+hardly breathe.
+
+"Now, now, Martha," he cautioned. "Don't you go getting hysterical."
+
+"What has happened?" she asked again.
+
+"I don't know," he said. They were both talking in low tones.
+
+"It's some kind of a miracle," she whispered.
+
+"Now there's a woman's thinking for you," he chided her fondly, joshing
+her a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ... Well any
+scientist would tell you that ..." And then he stopped. He was pretty
+sure the frameworks of science, as he knew them, wouldn't be able to
+tell you.
+
+He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another, they
+both went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he guessed. You'd
+have the feeling of sinking down and down, and there'd be nothing but
+blinding, swirling chaos all around you. Then you'd kind of come to for
+a minute, and there'd be the trees, the sky, the farm animals, the sea
+in the distance.
+
+You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note, almost
+absently, that people were getting to their feet now, some of them
+clinging together the way you and Martha were--and then back down into
+mental chaos you'd go again.
+
+That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun to snap out
+of it a little.
+
+"But the funniest thing of all," Jed said, and looked at Cal quickly,
+penetratingly. "I had the feeling all the time that we were being
+watched!"
+
+Cal said nothing.
+
+"You know," Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a trap? Then
+watching it, to see what it will do?"
+
+Cal nodded, without speaking.
+
+"It was just another crazy thought, I guess," Jed said deprecatingly.
+"Plumb crazy."
+
+But, clearly, he didn't believe it was.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The operator sat
+back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance at
+the adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everything
+said--had been for hours.
+
+Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the E
+cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, all
+the way back.
+
+He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how far
+did that word experimental take you? Some experiment! He realized his
+interest was running deeper than that of a detached technician's concern
+for well-operated equipment--mechanical, that is. Well, let it. Live a
+little once in a while. At least dream.
+
+The department supervisor hovered near the back of the operator's chair,
+breathing down his neck. He gnawed at the knuckles of his hand, and
+hoped nothing would go wrong this time. That astronavigator, Louie
+LeBeau, was probably right. Those colonists had turned nudist, and were
+afraid to report what they'd done back to Earth!
+
+Well!
+
+He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud. He
+decided he hadn't.
+
+If _he_ were out there, instead of that E, _he'd_ make them put their
+clothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset, causing
+all this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E.H.Q. aroused,
+taking up the time of an E--just because they wanted to frolic around
+without any clothes on!
+
+If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should be
+spanked like irresponsible children.
+
+He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists who ought to
+be spanked.
+
+"... E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp," the pilot out there
+was reporting. "He is walking toward the three colonists. Now they have
+started walking toward him. They do not seem hostile. They seem glad to
+see us. My crew and I are still at our stations, ready for ..."
+
+Silence.
+
+The set simply didn't register anything more except that faint sigh of
+uncompleted force fields in space.
+
+"What now? What now?" the supervisor pushed the operator to one side,
+and barely restrained the impulse to cuff him on the side of the head.
+"Now what did you do? Why did you meddle with it when it was coming in
+so clear and strong? What's happened?"
+
+"I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know what's
+happened," the operator flared back. "The signal just stopped. That's
+all."
+
+There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line that
+had been rigged to give direct connection of the running report to
+Hayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped open the key, as if
+he were touching a rattlesnake.
+
+"What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly, without
+diplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!"
+
+"I don't know what happened. I don't know," the supervisor quarreled
+back. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing anything to the
+equipment."
+
+He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which made
+the far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe. "There's no
+reason for an occlusion," he said to Hayes. "And the set here is alive.
+It must be at the other end."
+
+He turned to the operator, and said loudly, "Bounce a beam on Eden's
+surface. Just see if any booster has gone out between here and there."
+Most of it was making a show of efficiency for Hayes.
+
+"Here we go again," the operator mumbled to himself, and pressed down a
+key. The returning pips showed the signal was getting through to Eden.
+
+"Pilot Lynwood! Pilot Lynwood!" the supervisor nagged into the mike.
+"Speak up! Do you hear me?"
+
+The operator sighed deeply. His panel partner grimaced something halfway
+between a grin and a sneer of disgust.
+
+"They don't answer," the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's the
+same as before."
+
+"Here we go again," Hayes groaned, but not only to himself. "All right,"
+he said wearily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the channel open.
+Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if signal resumes."
+
+But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It was too
+much of the same pattern as before. What could have happened?
+
+There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and more
+detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in
+the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to
+speculate in that first one? But in the interests of time!
+
+The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now each
+one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that
+had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew
+what a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it.
+
+It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go out
+in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be available
+in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leave
+E.H.Q. without a single E in residence.
+
+Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? It
+shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! There
+was something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only one
+in a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than one
+in a million could qualify as an E.
+
+A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believed
+what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the people
+who said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punished
+him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if they
+could. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled him
+dangerous to society.
+
+It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between
+rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were still
+of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a base. Ah,
+there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the inquisitiveness,
+the skepticism; and at the same time teach him the basics he must have
+for constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission by
+the punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by his
+teachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs.
+
+Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if a
+guy could just think. But what could have happened?
+
+He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out by the
+attorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably was--to the
+attorney general's office. Fine lot of good E.H.Q. would get out of
+that. He was no fool. He knew the attorney general would gladly
+sacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it would give him a weapon to
+fight E.H.Q.
+
+Why hadn't E.H.Q. sent along an observer ship also? These cocky E's!
+Probably hadn't thought it necessary. Always ready to assume they could
+handle the situation by themselves!
+
+He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review, get it
+on record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of playing it safe.
+Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too concerned with his own
+skin, too willing to play it safe. But an employee of E.H.Q. to make a
+public criticism of an E! No, better play it safe.
+
+He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E McGinnis
+would talk to him.
+
+He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the planet and
+wait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to have happened while E
+Gray's cruiser was out in space. It must be something connected with
+landing, being on the surface of the planet.
+
+But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists! Why hadn't
+they signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out of their bushes and
+signaled the danger? Surely they must know what it was. They were alive
+and healthy, three of them at least. Why hadn't they used their stupid
+heads?
+
+But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space, or even in
+their stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't they? Or did they?
+Sure they did. No matter what happened to the buildings, they must have
+all sorts of equipment hidden under the trees, or in caves.
+
+Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing in there
+like a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions. That's
+what came from sending out a boy to do a man's job. Maybe the attorney
+general's office had been right in its attempt to prevent a Junior from
+going. What was the use of all that E training, if the boy didn't have
+enough sense ...
+
+At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off, not go rushing
+in blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there was a _real_ product of
+E science, the veritable dean of the E's.
+
+E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be followed by a
+rescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And between an E out in
+space and another on the ground, they shouldn't have any trouble in
+working it out. He wondered if he should suggest that to E McGinnis as
+soon as the operator located him. Even if the grand, lovable old man
+thought of it for himself, he'd compliment Hayes for thinking it,
+reasoning it all out!
+
+The intercom operator came on his line.
+
+"Sir," she said, and cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp. Her
+voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted E
+McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what he
+said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could."
+
+"Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed to give
+her courage.
+
+"Sir," she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you. He
+says the foggy, rambling way that review was conducted was a disgrace.
+He says why don't you get on with what you have to do instead of
+bothering people. He says not to waste any more of his time unless you
+can come up with something he doesn't already know. He says he doubts
+you'd know what that was even if it hit you in the face. He said to tell
+you the exact words, so I took it down in shorthand, so I could.
+Because--he said to."
+
+She was all but wailing, as she finished.
+
+"All right," Hayes sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder things
+were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me your
+notes so I can follow them carefully," he told the operator.
+
+"So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the joint," she
+mumbled, but she had already thrown the key so he couldn't hear her.
+
+Resignedly, because he knew he was going to catch it from the scientists
+just as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself that he must
+always be in the middle of things, he began to arouse the scientists.
+
+He felt so sorry for himself that he dropped his tentative plan to have
+the midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the individual
+colonists out there--to see if some of them might be young, pretty,
+female--34-24-34.
+
+As if the idea were now red hot, he dropped the plan of telling General
+Administration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps he should go
+out there, personally.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was,
+indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office--to
+Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to be
+secret. All right for them to know, because they were very special
+persons, but the people should not be told.
+
+"Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He is
+starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Making
+a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the crew isn't covering
+him. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The three unclothed men are
+moving toward him, spread out a little, crouching, obviously going to
+attack. The stupid fool doesn't seem to realize it. He's ...
+
+"Wait a minute. I don't believe it...."
+
+"Well, what?" Gunderson exploded from his end.
+
+"Sir," the assistant gulped, "the ship disappeared, just like that."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"No, sir. It did. The three crewmen are sprawled on the ground. Now two
+of them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the ramp, or
+anything."
+
+"Can't be. Has to be around somewhere."
+
+"No, sir. Isn't. Sorry to contradict you, sir. It isn't anywhere."
+
+"They probably set controls to send the ship back into space, and
+jumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it. Ships don't
+just disappear."
+
+"I'll search, of course. But this ship just disappeared."
+
+"All right, what's going on? What else?"
+
+"They're naked. Naked as the day they were born. All four of them. Same
+as the colonists."
+
+"Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get the
+evidence."
+
+"Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they were
+fully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could have undressed
+inside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed--and then he wasn't. Just
+like that."
+
+"Hm-m."
+
+"Shall I land, sir? Place them under arrest?"
+
+"Wait a minute. Let's think of a good charge. Something to stand up in
+court. Have to make this airtight right from the beginning in case some
+stupid judge decides to make a show of independence."
+
+"Indecent exposure, sir? Lewd public behavior?"
+
+"Pretty weak, in view of what's involved."
+
+"A suggestion, sir. Maybe a morals charge is the most effective weapon
+we could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of bad scientific
+judgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel compelled to rise up in
+their defense--except, of course, those employed by the government. But
+on a morals charge there wouldn't be one voice raised--fear of being
+tarred with the same brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are already
+discredited. Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused against
+us, but a morals charge--think of the backing we'd get from the women's
+clubs, P.T.A., all the pressure groups determined to dictate to the rest
+of the world how it should behave. It's worked for hundreds of years,
+sir. Never fails."
+
+"Hm-m," Gunderson mused. "You may be right."
+
+"Shall I land, sir, make the arrest?"
+
+"You've got plenty of photographic evidence?"
+
+"All we'd need, sir, at least for the lewd, public indecent exposure
+charge."
+
+"Wait a minute. How about the colonists? Got pictures of them?"
+
+"The three men, sir. No others."
+
+"Let's don't rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a ship
+they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybe
+we can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, or
+at least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than just
+that. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, in case
+they've gone nudist."
+
+"You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?"
+
+"Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd been gunning
+for the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites. Hm-m, even if we
+decided not to prosecute, we'd have the pictures in their dossiers, so
+that anytime in the future, for the rest of their lives, if any of them
+gave us any trouble, we could quietly let them know what we've got, and
+they'll just fold up and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years,
+too."
+
+"Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir." The assistant knew that already
+Gunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job he'd
+better let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the idea should
+backfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly enough where it had
+originated.
+
+"Hm-m, you know," Gunderson was saying. "This could work out all right.
+If their ship's gone they're not communicating with E.H.Q. And if
+they're not communicating, E.H.Q. will send out another ship to see why.
+Maybe there'll be an E on it. I hear the only one available is
+McGinnis--that guy who's planning to fight us on that injunction.
+
+"Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could make
+pictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress sometime, take
+a bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody with a public reputation
+ever fights a charge like that, guilty or innocent. They pay up or
+knuckle under to keep it quiet. Have, for hundreds of years; always
+will, as long as a bunch of fat, old, ugly biddies, male and female, who
+nobody wants that way are viciously resentful that they can't have what
+somebody else is enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped with
+frustrations they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're even
+worse. Yeah, a morals charge is the way to get at him."
+
+"But I understood there was a law, that we couldn't charge an E for any
+offense."
+
+"We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the televiewers. That's
+the whole point. We can't charge an E now, but wait until we get things
+stirred up on a morals basis. That law'll be changed in a hurry, because
+any legislator that tried to hold out against changing it would be drawn
+and quartered by his constituents--and has enough sense to know it.
+
+"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go about it.
+Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you guys would read
+your history of how police enforcement officers got things back under
+control each time some idealist started squawking about human rights,
+you'd think of these things, too.
+
+"Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on every
+move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back under
+police control, the way scientists were before, I've got to have
+information.
+
+"And keep taking pictures!"
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship,
+everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself
+crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any
+clothes on--what then?"
+
+"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward
+his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three
+crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the
+edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said
+in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun."
+
+Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious
+emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and
+thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were
+faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and
+yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some
+special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a
+dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed
+it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now
+he could be more comfortable.
+
+One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was
+gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort.
+Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and
+perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth,
+claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were
+clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became
+less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could
+see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than
+enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea
+that clothes encouraged immorality.
+
+"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a
+natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin'
+like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at
+least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd
+hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of,
+but, believe me ..."
+
+He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of
+perplexity.
+
+"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kids
+screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--only
+scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real truthful," he said,
+"most of the yellin' came from the men. The women, by and large, was
+real swell.
+
+"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect ever
+seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she's
+tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him
+for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of
+womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make
+a jackass outta himself at the wrong time."
+
+Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh from
+Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and made
+no apology about present company being excepted.
+
+"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said, "where you
+begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up any
+pieces."
+
+They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than the
+disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of those
+that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and tools
+to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them that's hurt,
+taking care of them as much as possible, first thing they think of is
+making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.
+
+That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation
+following a cyclone or other freak of nature.
+
+Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of
+hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who
+insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down
+to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to
+help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take
+care of the needy.
+
+And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then,
+pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't
+likely to start up a passel of gossip.
+
+He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from
+behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down
+that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was
+that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.
+
+Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing
+happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was
+naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden,
+and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.
+
+By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of
+people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to
+think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She
+was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over
+their hysterics.
+
+"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as
+they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we
+need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."
+
+Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a
+pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her
+asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried
+gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd,
+scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into
+it until it boiled, Indian style.
+
+It might seem funny to city women, always protected against everything,
+that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First place, she had her
+man already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, she
+was a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, trained all her
+life to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals something
+unexpected was always happening.
+
+Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, now
+that he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began to
+settle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire or
+flood. It was all over. Now it was time to start picking up the pieces,
+rebuilding.
+
+Only it wasn't all over.
+
+That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire.
+
+Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a stick in a
+hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of
+flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a
+wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together
+will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make
+the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those
+quartz crystals from the top of the mountain to focus sun rays....
+
+But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two
+sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself
+what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a
+little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must
+have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were
+more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or
+months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came to
+building a fire.
+
+One of the men tore it then.
+
+He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over his
+shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire.
+
+Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was
+staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation of
+that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on with
+the telling.
+
+Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having the
+same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked right
+there if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the way
+a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.
+
+He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women. That it
+was in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the mistake of
+listening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged Adam into eating that
+apple because a woman was never satisfied to leave well enough alone.
+And now, he said, in this new Eden, man was being given another chance.
+If he was smart, if he's learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't
+listen to no woman.
+
+Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased the
+tension a little.
+
+A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to start
+a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves because
+in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or no
+watchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. That
+caused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was
+already half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At least
+the world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three
+hours had passed in what seemed like minutes.
+
+Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go a
+little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busy
+and knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--the
+way it often did.
+
+Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up a
+small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even without
+no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in the
+ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright in
+the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with
+vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift
+that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it
+with grass, and there you were.
+
+But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.
+
+Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled right up
+again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the
+only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried
+lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were
+like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of
+their hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up again
+straight.
+
+Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, all
+right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves would
+scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind.
+
+Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They tried
+it themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was a
+little more forgiving.
+
+A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun got
+low. People began to realize they were getting hungry, and they began to
+realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.
+
+Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd been hurt.
+Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.
+
+The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do was go
+down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it to
+their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their faces
+into the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know they
+could.
+
+The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts to
+eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to depend
+on seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it.
+
+The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage their
+supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sort
+of hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then.
+
+By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people in
+the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. The
+darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, the
+stranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people were
+starting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the dusk
+you could see the same thought in all the gleaming eyes.
+
+They couldn't have fire!
+
+Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain what had
+happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with an
+explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, looking
+back, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's a
+comfort.
+
+But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing it
+can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained. And yet,
+isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation for what's
+happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?
+
+Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some sleep.
+Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any children. That was
+one of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn't
+have children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'd
+have to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't have
+been surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than the
+grown folks.
+
+The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animals
+take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort from the presence
+and protection of the others. They bedded around on the ground, making
+themselves comfortable as possible. One thing you could say,
+experimental colonists might not be long on brains, the way scientists
+are, but they weren't picked for that. They were picked for endurance,
+and the brainy will often crack up under a strain that the enduring kind
+hardly notices. Far as endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad.
+
+Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars were as
+bright as ever--brighter because there wasn't no fire to dim their glow.
+They couldn't see Earth, of course, but everybody knew right where to
+look for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light in its
+constellation. It was still there.
+
+Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days until the
+regular monthly communication with Earth was due. That as soon as E.H.Q.
+didn't hear from them, there'd be a rescue party out here in nothing
+flat. So, at worst, it meant living this way only five or six more days.
+
+That made everybody feel better. It was a comforting thing to look up
+through the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they weren't
+forgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be buzzing around
+like a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers cocked and ready as soon
+as the message didn't get through.
+
+Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western movies
+where the U.S. cavalry always got there in time. At least they weren't
+being attacked by no Indians, somebody said.
+
+Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but nobody said
+it.
+
+Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfort
+just showed them how soft they were getting with easy living.
+Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a few
+days everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinking
+that even if there was some equivalent to the old-time Indians attacking
+them, rescue would soon be here and they would be safe.
+
+Because man always wins.
+
+Most people were wide awake by dawn. Some had slept in little bits,
+waking often enough to keep a sense of continuity. Others, those who
+slept better, awoke with a start; looked around themselves wildly,
+realized they were lying out in the open plumb naked in front of other
+people; maybe wondered for an instant what kind of party they'd been to
+the night before; and nearly bolted in panic before they remembered.
+
+Most everyone felt sort of surprised that things weren't back to normal,
+with yesterday being something soonest forgot soonest mended. It takes
+time for folks to realize--things.
+
+Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship, a
+reminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained. Seemed like
+everybody had woke with a determination to make the best of things and
+help one another do the same. Everybody was pitching in together to make
+the best of things. Once they bit into the cool fruit on the trees
+around them, even not having a hot drink to start the day didn't seem to
+matter.
+
+Some of the women got together and decided it would help things get back
+to normal if the people covered their nakedness, or least parts of it.
+It might be all right just among themselves, they said, because
+everybody was in the same fix and knew what happened--but how would they
+feel when the rescue ship landed and they had to walk out in front of
+strange men with nothing on?
+
+They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But when they
+strove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns just slipped out and
+fell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the leaves together with
+bindweed. Same thing. The bindweed slithered out and fell to the ground.
+
+One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick mud from the
+river and paste them with more mud on her body. It wouldn't stick,
+peeled right off like she was oiled. One man said he could do it without
+leaves, just cover himself with mud. He lay down in a muddy pool and got
+himself covered with wet clay.
+
+He was a sight. All at once he looked vulgar, obscene. And nobody had,
+before. That did it. Somebody said they were humans, not pigs, and if
+the men on the rescue ship had never seen a naked body before it was
+time they did. What was so wrong about the human body, anyhow?
+
+They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and gave up
+trying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to cover themselves
+was a nasty kind of thinking, something to be ashamed of.
+
+Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists who'd broken
+off from the main colony and moved across the ridge were all right.
+
+Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What fools they'd
+all been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep a man from thinking
+straight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping like animals when, all
+the while, just across the ridge there'd be houses and beds, fires and
+clothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans
+always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences
+forgotten.
+
+In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where the
+dissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of the
+ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same as
+this side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure.
+
+Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we still
+weren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and join
+forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down and
+congregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was the
+beginning of something that would come later, something Cal would see
+for himself. That they were already not thinking the way humans do.
+Thinking and behaving more the way dumb animals do.
+
+Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the next. In some
+ways it was still like a dream. The way people were just accepting
+things, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered one
+time an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man and
+the average man than there was between that average man and the ape.
+He'd resented it at the time, of course, but now he thought of it again
+and began to realize what the E had meant.
+
+Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back to nature,
+wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How stupid it was for man
+to knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing such
+hardships, when all a man could ever want was right here.
+
+Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He reminded
+them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a prime
+bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worse
+than this, and had ought to keep their wits about them.
+
+Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did it
+because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because once
+upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered, it had been his duty.
+
+It was the next day that things got real rough.
+
+Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be sure when
+the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn't
+see any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just go
+away. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe that
+you'd go away just because you didn't find our village.
+
+Anyhow, hadn't we ought to work out some kind of a message? Maybe scrape
+some kind of a message on the ground? They decided the smooth sand above
+the tide line down on the sea shore was the best place for it.
+
+Nobody had anything else to do, so the whole colony, all forty of them,
+walked the couple of miles down to the seashore. They picked out a nice
+stretch of white sand, and with a broken piece of driftwood they started
+to scratch a message, just a big SOS. The driftwood wriggled out of
+their hands like a snake. Nobody could hold it. Several men tried
+together, made no difference.
+
+Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The furrow
+closed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody tried piling up
+sand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no difference. Sand
+smoothed right out again.
+
+Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't need to use
+a stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They had their bare
+feet, didn't they? They could tromp out the letters that way.
+Footprints, close together, would be as good as a furrow.
+
+That's when it happened.
+
+Jed tried it himself. And his footprints disappeared. They just weren't
+there. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been walking. Nobody
+was leaving any footprints.
+
+That's when they bolted in panic.
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had
+spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief.
+
+"Maybe that seems funny to you," he commented. "After taking so much
+we'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not making
+footprints."
+
+"Pretty fundamental thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware of
+spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into
+fundamental being, a thing like that."
+
+Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances, as if
+confirming their belief that an E would understand their problems. Cal
+appreciated the confidence expressed in that glance, but did not feel it
+was justified. It was now pretty obvious that this was some alien
+co-ordinate system, never before encountered by man. But how to get hold
+of it? How to reconcile with it? Coexist with it?
+
+Never before encountered by man? What if the myths of early man be true?
+And too authentic the legends of his being a pawn to the will of the
+gods? Could there have been some factual basis for the gods? And not, as
+was supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for the
+control of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control?
+
+"It's been bad since then," Jed continued. "Seems like once they got
+the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in a
+stampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They didn't even stay
+together. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes from
+each other.
+
+"You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You could
+pass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they wouldn't
+say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, not
+even breathin' lest you discover them.
+
+"After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves
+together--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us now
+have got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is to
+hide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's why you didn't see us from
+the air. We was hidin' from you.
+
+"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of
+the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't come
+themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get
+some clothes for them from the ship.
+
+"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the
+colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since the
+footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if they
+also saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don't know."
+
+"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of fifteen
+or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll know
+we didn't cut out through choice."
+
+"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in the
+middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."
+
+"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not an E.H.Q.
+ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We'll not count on
+anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with
+an E on board--McGinnis."
+
+"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently. "That ship
+might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next."
+
+"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing
+happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to the
+ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on whatever this is."
+
+"You figger to solve this one?" Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.
+
+"I'm going to try," Cal said with more confidence than he felt. "It's
+what I'm here for. Maybe I can't solve it, but I can try."
+
+"I don't know how you're going to start," Dirk spoke up. "We're just
+like animals here. We can't use tools."
+
+"But animals do use tools," Cal answered after a moment. "Materials,
+anyway. Birds build nests using sticks, grass, clay. Monkeys and apes
+throw sticks and stones. Even insects use materials. Basic difference
+between man and the rest is that man gives special shapes to tools,
+where mainly the rest use whatever falls to hand. But all higher,
+organized protoplasmic life uses tools in one form or another."
+
+"We ain't allowed to," Jed said emphatically. "Not even what's at hand.
+Somebody, or somethin', is bound and determined we ain't goin' to."
+
+At that moment Cal felt close to a solution, or at least an
+understanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first step
+toward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the corner
+of the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the concept
+disappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using materials.
+Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet the definitions of
+what constitute life? As compared with our evolution, from its earliest
+beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the
+physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it,
+the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect,
+awkward way of going about it, as compared with ...
+
+Compared with what?
+
+The concept would not yet allow him full focus upon it. He filed it away
+for future contemplation.
+
+He saw Dawkins and the other colonists looking at him defiantly, as if
+interpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about the taboo
+on tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them, to find out for
+himself.
+
+"Other than the feeling of being watched," he said carefully, "have you
+had any sign, any other evidence or indication of somebody, or
+something? I know about the feeling, because I feel it too. And very
+strongly, right now. But any specific evidence?"
+
+Jed Dawkins looked relieved at the confession.
+
+"Everything's the evidence. Everything that's happened. What more
+evidence would you want?" he said.
+
+"One of the strongest arguments in favor of something, or some kind of
+intelligence," Cal said slowly, "is that nobody's been hurt. All natural
+law hasn't been canceled. We still have light radiation, heat radiation,
+gravity, water still flows, the planet still turns. Trees still grow and
+fruit still ripens. We can talk and be understood, using our tongues and
+minds as tools. We can still eat and drink. We can still know.
+
+"This is no chaotic co-ordinate system that defies all natural law. This
+is a deliberate manipulation of some natural laws to get a result. Man
+manipulates natural laws by the use of tools and materials, but he
+doesn't suspend them. Here, apparently without tools, at least tools we
+can perceive, natural law is manipulated, but not suspended.
+
+"When the village disappeared, no one was hurt. A lot of people were
+caught in awkward positions and fell, some of them several feet. There
+should have been at least a few broken bones, pulled ligaments. There
+weren't. Our ship landed safely. We were a long time in the atmosphere
+of Eden, and for a few minutes there on the ground we were still using
+tools of a high order. It was only when danger of real harm to us was
+past that the ship disappeared."
+
+"I reckon it's comfortin' to know we ain't meant to be hurt," Jed said,
+and looked at his two companions. "I guess it is," he repeated
+doubtfully. "Maybe it ain't something as nice and familiar as a cyclone,
+or a den of rattlesnakes, something you could understand, but you got
+to admit we ain't been hurt yet." It was as if he were arguing the point
+with his companions.
+
+"Something I've been noting, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. "A discrepancy of a
+sort that has me puzzled. Sun reckoning, we've been able to keep our
+minds on this subject for over two hours now. As if, whatever this is
+manipulating natural laws can also manipulate the way our minds work."
+
+"Yeah," Jed admitted slowly, his face thoughtful. He turned to Cal.
+"Like I said at the start. Our minds have sort of wandered of late.
+Start to do something, and first thing y'know, we're doin' something
+else. Can't keep our minds on one thing very long--like animals."
+
+"That might be no more than the aftermath of deep shock," Cal said.
+
+"It's for a purpose!"
+
+Startled at the outburst, they all turned and looked at Louie.
+
+"It's for a purpose," Louie repeated in a kind of rapture. "They want us
+to understand we are being watched over, cared for. That colonist you
+all laughed at was right. This is the first Garden of Eden, where man
+lived in complete innocence. Now man has been returned to it, to live
+again in complete innocence. You do not think straight because there is
+no reason. You will be cared for. Woe unto him who seeks to despoil it
+again by seeking vain knowledge!"
+
+His eyes were wild, his face contorted with a mixture of exaltation and
+condemnation.
+
+"Shut up, Louie," Tom said in a low, firm voice.
+
+"We understand," Jed said tolerantly. "Some of the colonists are talkin'
+the same way. He's got plenty of company."
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+All the rest of that day, and throughout the following, Cal and Tom
+worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them living
+together again.
+
+By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of colonists
+that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louie
+frankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his time with the
+colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days,
+occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep the
+cows separated from their calves so the colonists would have milk to
+drink, but without ropes or corrals it was hopeless. He finally gave up
+his attempt to husband the stock, and he too seemed content then to
+mingle with the colonists.
+
+The marked change in Louie could not be ignored, for he was not idling
+away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelong
+pose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirty
+end of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little band
+of colonists. Or wandering through the forests and undergrowth calling,
+praying, comforting.
+
+Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man, seemingly
+dedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries beyond his power to
+comprehend, reverted to childlike superstitious awe for an explanation.
+In the face of mystery or catastrophe, it takes a faith beyond the
+capacity of most to continue believing that the universe has a rational
+order to its laws that can be comprehended if man persists. It is
+temptingly easy for man to revert back to the irresponsibility of
+childhood, assuming that the control of phenomena is in the hands of
+those stronger, wiser than he. It takes a strength, in the face of this
+temptation, to go on believing that man _can_ know, that it is not
+morally wrong for him to know.
+
+No blame then for Louie.
+
+Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that away from
+E.H.Q. the crew become the E's attendants, and that their first duty is
+always to the E. But separation from the other two men of his crew was
+like the loss of a part of himself. To these also he had a duty. He
+tried to solve his problem by alternating his time, spending part of it
+with Cal, the remainder with his crew.
+
+Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and
+found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They had
+seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, they
+had climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, to
+watch the ship's landing--and its disappearance.
+
+Once they were found, it took little persuasion to convince them they
+should return to the other colonists, that differences of opinion meant
+nothing now as against the need of human beings to cling together in the
+face of catastrophe.
+
+But they too were having trouble thinking in a straight line, and even
+though they first appeared eager to join the other colonists, it took
+some doing to keep them all together and moving forward to cross the
+ridge, to come down the other side, to assemble again at the site of the
+village with the others.
+
+And yet, within minutes, neither band seemed to remember that they had
+ever been separated.
+
+By the time they had returned, it was apparent that Louie was succeeding
+where Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the few hours that
+had elapsed, the nucleus had tripled in size. Louie's wandering through
+the brush, calling, pleading with them to follow him, promising there
+was no danger if they would allow him to watch over them, intercede for
+them with Those who had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them from
+their hiding places, calmed their fears.
+
+And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing them back
+into the fold, one and two and three at a time, until, at last, by Jed's
+count, all were there, no more missing.
+
+And yet, in spite of his success, there was a kind of hurt and
+disappointment in Louie's eyes. For once back, they not only forgot
+their fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced into a
+placid herd, without memory of their panic. Without memory of the
+shepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned them to the fold.
+
+They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eating
+leaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the river
+to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water to
+drink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as they
+lay on white sand or grassy slopes to dry, they slept contentedly.
+
+The phenomenon was not as startling to Cal as it might have seemed to
+others.
+
+On Earth, gradually learned through trial and error, experimental
+colonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible, incisive,
+or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary. The basic test of a successful
+colonist was endurance--the endurance of hardship, privation, the stoic
+indifference to conditions of discomfort, monotony, pain, uncleanliness,
+immodesty--conditions which would send a more imaginative or sensitive
+temperament into a downward-spiraling syndrome of failure. They were the
+kind of men and women who, on Earth in an earlier time, had been able to
+endure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease, desert
+heat; to make those first steps in taming a hostile environment, so that
+men with less endurance, but with more delicately poised and sensitive
+minds, following them might then endure.
+
+It was characteristic of such men and women, even under Earth
+conditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for these things.
+They simply went, and endured, and tamed. Even on Earth, when the taming
+had been done, they moved on. This was the stuff of the experimental
+colonist.
+
+Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in panic, but
+now they had returned to their original purpose--to endure. It was
+enough.
+
+Louie was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious about
+scientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal failure to be
+curious about philosophical implications. They listened idly to his
+exhortations, but their eyes did not light with fire nor cloud with
+doubt. They simply wandered away after a time and ate or slept.
+
+In the evening of that second day, Cal sat with Tom and Jed down by the
+bank of the river where the sky was clear and the stars beginning to
+shine. They were talking quietly of home, of Eden, of the colonists who,
+more and more, seemed to take on the character of a contented herd of
+animals. So far there had been no attempt of the old males to drive the
+young ones out of the herd, destroy them, but that might come in time;
+as surely as the old males on Earth by tacit agreement on both sides,
+were always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out and
+destroying lusty young male competition.
+
+They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed able
+to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject,
+while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to live
+from moment to moment, without concern for past or future.
+
+Except Louie. He too seemed able to hold his thinking in a straight
+line, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours, to have
+turned wholly mystical, to a stronger belief that they were being
+watched and cared for by some higher power, and that this was for a
+purpose. Yet not so tangential, for Cal had come to the same conclusion,
+although his interpretation differed.
+
+"I can't doubt that there is an intelligent direction of this peculiar
+co-ordinate system," he said to Tom and Jed. "But I must doubt it is
+supernatural in the way Louie interprets. Anything appears to be magic
+when we don't understand how it happens, and becomes science when we
+do."
+
+He paused, and looked at his companions' faces in the starshine. They
+were quiet, reposed, listening.
+
+"Ever since man got up off the bottom of his ocean of air," he said,
+"and out into space, we've been prepared to run into some form of
+intelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not prepared to do
+anything about it, you understand," he said with a shrug. "Just
+theoretically prepared that it might happen. It was a possibility. Now
+it does seem to have happened. E McGinnis asked me, before I left Earth,
+if I thought Eden was an alluring trap, especially baited to catch some
+human beings. It begins to appear that it is."
+
+"I've caught many a wild animal in my day," Jed said slowly,
+thoughtfully. "I've pinned 'em up in cages, watched how they behaved. I
+guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to hurt 'em, fact make
+'em as comfortable as they can--just want to know about 'em. Sometimes,
+after I watched them awhile I'd turn 'em aloose and watch 'em scoot back
+to their natural world. That could happen to us. Sometimes they'd die,
+and I wouldn't know why. That could happen. Some animals won't bear
+young in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever's
+holdin' us don't know that, and might turn us aloose when, after a time,
+we don't bear any young."
+
+He paused and looked even more thoughtful.
+
+"Sometimes," he added slowly, "after I studied 'em, found out how they
+would behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, because they was too
+dangerous to let run around among humans. That could happen."
+
+"I haven't done much trapping," Tom said. "But in zoos I've watched
+animals in cages. The thought always came to me that if they could think
+the way we do, they could just open their cages and walk away."
+
+"Now you take turkeys," Jed answered. "Pin 'em up with a high fence,
+they'll back up, take off and fly over it. But pin 'em with a low fence,
+and they won't. Seems like they know they have to fly over a high
+obstruction, but don't figger on it for a low one. Sometimes they
+flutter up against it, or try to push it over, but most of the time they
+just walk around and around in the yard lookin' for an opening."
+
+"Natural survival pattern," Cal commented. "In the woods, in their
+natural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it took more
+effort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it took to walk
+around the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior to walk around
+it."
+
+"That's what they do with a low fence then," Jed said. "They just keep
+tryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it like
+a high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use tryin' to tell 'em it's
+high, because they know it ain't. So they can't solve it. Seems awful
+stupid, somehow, a little low fence, all that blue sky above 'em, and
+they can't figger it out."
+
+"I suspect that's what's happening to us," Cal said. "We've always
+argued that wherever there is matter and energy in the universe, certain
+natural laws will prevail. We've learned ways to take advantage of those
+natural laws, to do certain things that will make them work for us
+instead of against us.
+
+"We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise in the
+universe it, too, would have to become aware of these natural laws; that
+it, too, would have to do these same certain things to take advantage of
+those laws; that because the laws and what to do about them would always
+be similar man would have a lot in common with that other intelligence,
+and a means of communicating because of that similarity.
+
+"We'd argue that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this wasn't
+so important as its mental evolution--because that mental evolution
+would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't be truly alien,
+because science would be a common denominator.
+
+"Now it appears we could be wrong. Maybe our concept of science is too
+narrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become so fixed in our
+pattern of solving a problem we can't change, can't back off and take
+another look, see the problem not as it appears but as it really is."
+
+"But isn't that the science of E?" Tom asked curiously. "To be able to
+extrapolate any co-ordinate system? I'm not criticizing," he added
+hastily. "Just asking."
+
+"I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too based on
+the relationship of things and forces to each other, too set in the
+notion that only physical tools can affect physical things. We may be
+looking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore not able to
+understand why we can't walk around the obstruction in the usual
+manner." He stopped, and added with a shrug. "Stupid, maybe. Or like the
+turkey, the yard is so big that he never gets a picture of it as a whole
+enclosure. By the time he's wandered down this side of the fence he's
+forgot what he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thing
+together in his mind. That's my trouble, anyhow. So far, I'm not able to
+put the whole thing together, see it all as one piece.
+
+"When I do, if I do, then maybe like a caged animal I'll see how to
+unlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is to fly."
+
+There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying natural
+law without any trouble, the three men broke off their discussion when
+they saw a bright flash high in the sky above them. All three knew what
+it meant.
+
+Another E ship had arrived.
+
+No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists in
+acknowledgment of their space flare.
+
+If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still in
+daylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship, no
+equipment for direct communication. They may even have reasoned there
+was no means of signaling with artificial light.
+
+But there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could not build a
+fire.
+
+As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men could
+anticipate what must be happening there. Right now they would be
+anxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring up like
+signal fires on a lonely island where a marooned man has, at last,
+sighted a ship on the horizon.
+
+The colonists were no longer hiding, but were freely wandering in open
+spaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk they would have seen the men
+and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might have
+spotted them in the infrared viewers which picked up the heat
+differentials and gave a fair approximation of shapes.
+
+The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their watches. How
+long, they would be asking, does it take those colonists, that E down
+there, to get a signal fire going?
+
+About five minutes passed, and another flare lighted the heavens.
+
+"Get off the dime down there!" it seemed to say. "Acknowledge us!"
+
+Cal took the chance that they might have an infrared viewscope directly
+on him, and he waved his arms above his head. But apparently they had
+not spotted him, for there was no answering flare.
+
+At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to fifteen
+minutes, throughout the long night the flares continued to light the
+sky.
+
+"Talk to us," the flares begged. "Surely you were expecting us. Surely
+you would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light could not rouse
+you."
+
+Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms, but it
+brought no answer from the ship. In the darkness perhaps the equipment
+wasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze bushes and trees also
+swayed with movement.
+
+Once there was a rustle in the brush, and in the starlight they
+recognized the figure of Louie approaching them.
+
+"This has got to stop," he said worriedly as he came up to them. "That
+light is an unnatural thing. It will anger Them. It is not meant for the
+peace of Eden to be disturbed by any artificial thing. And if They
+should turn Their wrath upon us--woe, woe!"
+
+His face was stricken in the light of a new flare, and as suddenly as he
+had come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees to seek his
+people, be beside them, comforting them when disaster struck down.
+
+After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgment
+of the flares in darkness. They watched for an hour or so, and then
+tried to sleep. The periodic flares continued to come throughout the
+long night, as if now no longer pleading for acknowledgment, but rather
+reassuring men in such deep distress that they could not answer.
+Reassuring them that help was at hand and morning would come.
+
+They tried to sleep, and although fitfully disturbed by the continuing
+flares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn, Cal awoke and
+aroused his two companions, and by the time there was enough light for
+the ship to see clear detail upon the ground, the three men were ready
+for a better attempt at answering the ship's signal.
+
+They went up to the village site, where the colonists were sleeping in
+the way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke Frank and Martha,
+Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louie, too, awoke, heard
+the plan, and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, to
+communicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath of
+Those who wanted only the natural state here--a wrath still withheld
+because of superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far.
+
+In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating with him, got
+together enough colonists to carry out his plan.
+
+Good-naturedly, the colonists did as they were told, but with the
+attitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing they'd
+rather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency about communicating
+with home seemed to have been washed from their minds.
+
+In a clear space, on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit or lie
+in certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of ancient signal
+patterns, those certain positions took the shape of space-navy patterns.
+
+Three men lay in a triangle. Next to that, six men sat in a circle, and
+last three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped someone on the
+ship would be able to read the ancient message.
+
+"Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty."
+
+The signal had no more than formed when there was a flash from the ship
+so bright that it could be seen in the morning sky. They had read his
+signal, and now they began a series of flashes, of questions. "What's
+going on down there?" was the essence of their questioning.
+
+It was well the ship had caught the first signal, for the colonists lost
+all interest in the game which had no point. They simply stood up and
+wandered away in search of their breakfasts from the trees and bushes.
+
+Louie, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge of them
+again and shepherded them to a grove of trees where the fruit seemed
+especially large and succulent.
+
+But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone. He lay
+down on the ground, himself, to move his arms in semaphore positions.
+But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he, too, could hardly
+care less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement at such
+childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one more
+message.
+
+"Keep off! No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate system."
+
+He stood up then, and made a farewell gesture toward the ship.
+
+At that instant he felt strangely that he had passed into another stage
+of growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment that
+had held him back. What the ship did, in response to his warnings, no
+longer mattered. If it landed, its personnel too would join the
+colonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might circle there
+indefinitely.
+
+Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence, unable
+to aid them, release them.
+
+He did not particularly care what they did.
+
+They could go on, spluttering out their signals, trying to question him.
+He didn't even try to read their messages. It didn't matter. Their
+science had nothing to do with him, nothing to offer him. Through it he
+could not reach a solution.
+
+Somehow he knew that already.
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness he
+could muster, "this time there must not be any interference with
+communication. There just absolutely must not be!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't my fault," the operator retorted with an exasperation
+that blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E McGinnis said--that
+they could identify E Gray, and the ship's crew, and many of the
+colonists, but that there was no sign of the ship that took them there.
+If there wasn't any ship there couldn't be any communication. It's not
+my fault. I can't receive something that wasn't sent."
+
+"I know, I know," the supervisor said, and then, worried that he may be
+giving the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, "just watch
+it, that's all!" He chewed violently at his knuckle and glared at the
+operator.
+
+"Just watch it," the operator mumbled bitterly. "Just watch it, the man
+says. And what will I watch if the message stops coming?"
+
+"Now, now, now, now," the supervisor nagged, "we'll have no
+insubordination, if you please."
+
+And upstairs this time more than Bill Hayes, sector chief, were
+monitoring the message. The top administrative brass of E.H.Q. were
+assembled in their big plush conference room used for arriving at major
+policy decisions that sometimes affected the whole course of man's
+progress and direction in occupying the universe.
+
+They sat in worried silence as E McGinnis reported the two messages he
+had received from Junior E Gray.
+
+First: Keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty.
+
+Then: Keep off. No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate
+system.
+
+They looked at one another under beetled brows. They wondered, at first
+privately and then openly if that Junior E had blown his stack. They had
+looked at many a problem finally solved by the E's, but never before had
+such a ridiculous situation come up.
+
+And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided to
+place a curb on E.H.Q.'s freedom of movement, its control over the
+experimental phases of planet development. The injunction to halt a
+Junior E from taking over the Eden problem fooled none of them. They
+knew that Gunderson wasn't concerned for those colonists out there, that
+he was merely using the public furor to advance his own personal power.
+They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and
+ever to bring every phase of human activity under their control. They
+knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to
+arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law
+which seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actuality
+broadened police powers over a wide area of man's actions.
+
+Yes, there was far more at stake here than the fate of fifty colonists.
+In a sense E.H.Q. itself was the stake. The whole science of E was at
+stake.
+
+And E McGinnis had played right into Gunderson's hands. It was he who
+had been the E influence in deciding to allow a Junior to handle the
+problem in the first place. It was he who was standing off from the
+planet, not landing and taking over things as he should.
+
+There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people on Eden
+were in good health, and from their apparent actions, not even
+distressed.
+
+This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for example. Did
+the Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it? Must mean that. What
+else could prevent it? But when an E, a real E, took charge in an
+experimental colony, the colonists had nothing further to say about the
+matter. True, when the five-year experimental period was over and the
+three-generation colonists took over a planet, then it came more under
+civil control, and E.H.Q. largely withdrew with the provision that it
+could step back in at any time the problem seemed not to have been
+solved after all.
+
+But while under the five-year test ... The E was the final word, or
+should be. The colonists knew it. The E knew it, or should know it.
+Obviously then it was weakness on the part of the Junior if he allowed
+the colonists to dictate that there could be no mechanical science.
+Proof of his inability to handle the job.
+
+A perfect setup for Gunderson!
+
+They decided they were forced to take a strong hand with McGinnis.
+Ordinarily the E was the final word, not only with the colonists, but
+with the administration at E.H.Q. But maybe there were times when he
+shouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take a hand. After all, Gray
+was still a Junior, hardly more than a boy. Was it right that a mere boy
+could stop investigation by anyone except himself? Tell Earth with all
+its power and might what to do?
+
+Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E policy should
+be made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing else, they must take
+a strong hand to prevent Gunderson from moving in with his police
+powers. Protect the E science from Gunderson, or at least salvage what
+they might.
+
+Their conference over, they asked for a connection with McGinnis.
+
+"We assume you will land and take charge, E McGinnis?" the board
+chairman asked.
+
+"Certainly not," McGinnis snapped back. "An E has forbidden it."
+
+"Well now," the chairman argued, and sweat began to come out on his
+forehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his judgment isn't mature
+enough for this problem."
+
+"I have every confidence in Junior E Gray," McGinnis said acidly. "And
+every E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you have
+decided. Either the science of E means something, or it doesn't. Either
+we have complete freedom to handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remind
+you, gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E
+is a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to
+repeat past disasters?"
+
+"If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"--the chairman was all but pleading
+now--"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take a
+firmer control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policy
+demands it. Perhaps the whole future of E demands it."
+
+A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine voice.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "this is Linda Gray. I requested that I be cut in
+on any communication concerning my husband, and E McGinnis made it an
+order before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I want
+to be with my husband."
+
+"I will not be landing on Eden, Linda," E McGinnis said firmly. "An E
+has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. No
+other E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health, and
+apparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us against
+landing. He must have a reason. We don't know, yet, what it is.
+
+"Now he has stopped communicating, we don't know why. He must have a
+reason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason. E science has been
+drilled into him until it is a part of his every mind cell, perhaps even
+every body cell.
+
+"I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him, because
+communicating with us distracts him from solving the problem. If E.H.Q.
+decides to send out a ship on its own, and risk landing in an unknown
+co-ordinate system, against the orders of two E's, which will become the
+combined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. If
+you wish to be on it, that is your decision.
+
+"I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E.H.Q. cannot connect
+with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted any
+further. I'm trying to think."
+
+The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in a
+vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination to do something,
+anything.
+
+They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it was
+their duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help,
+and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as his
+means of regaining control over the E's and E.H.Q. for civil authority.
+Didn't the stupid E see the danger? Wasn't it the same danger that men
+of science had always faced, the same mistake they had always
+made--leaving out the human element in a problem?
+
+The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man doesn't give a
+tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only that
+he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things, the inevitable,
+the only possible goal of the non-science mind. Surely the history of
+science versus non-science should have made this evident long ago!
+Surely there had been enough incidents in history....
+
+Very well, it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself. If he
+refused the see the clear danger to his whole structure--and their own
+ascendant position at the center of it--it was their clear duty to
+protect him nonetheless.
+
+They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, a
+miniature E.H.Q., at least to be there on the scene; to help in any way
+they could, perhaps to counter the moves Gunderson's police might make,
+at least to stand by.
+
+At least, in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to show
+their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully,
+without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendant
+at the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained the
+tradition of all non-science endeavors.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility not
+only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, in
+every rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only a
+Junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein lies
+Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of the
+people. A Junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affecting
+the life or death of fifty people. More than that, perhaps the future
+progress of mankind.
+
+"May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should become
+necessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in spite of
+the Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not be
+overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proved his
+capacity to merit an E.
+
+"We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson
+on that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not the
+Associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E?
+Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is extra smart?
+
+"The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over the
+individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never been
+clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but it
+has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the E
+structure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhaps
+if we concede his control over the Juniors on down, we can maintain the
+immunity of the Senior E. We must work to save at least that much."
+
+The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, left
+six hours later.
+
+Linda was on it.
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind.
+
+His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the messages
+spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in the
+semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all
+the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring.
+
+It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the
+newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who
+might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals,
+separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positions
+would do the job.
+
+Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every
+organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of others
+on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up in
+opposition.
+
+There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that Junior E, place
+him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise to
+let the colonists off easy--he could easily show that it was the
+influence of the Junior which had made a disgusting orgy develop there
+on Eden. Never mind that they were naked before the Junior arrived. The
+public could always be razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence,
+its order and meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and political
+trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good
+one; for the public never bothered to know the whole context of
+anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an
+attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all the
+public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury,
+observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence,
+only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and
+insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits he
+formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set up
+his case accordingly.
+
+His own course was clear.
+
+His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally
+clear:
+
+    _1. Proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime._
+
+    _2. Ignore any protests from the E ship already out there, or any
+        other ship E.H.Q. might have sent._
+
+    _3. Ignore any signals from the Junior E on the planet._
+
+    _4. Land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main site of
+        the lewd and obscene crime._
+
+    _5. Place Junior E Calvin Gray under arrest._
+
+    _6. Place the crew of the Junior E's ship, Thomas Lynwood, Franklin
+        Norton, Louis LeBeau, under arrest._
+
+    _7. Place any colonist who opposed the police under arrest._
+
+    _8. Place the remainder of the colonists in detention under
+        protective custody._
+
+    _9. Place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any way with
+        the police in carrying out the foregoing orders._
+
+The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final order.
+
+Place a Senior E under arrest?
+
+Certainly, a Senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to wander
+around, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing to let them
+get away with making such statements as "The police attitude toward the
+people is the major cause of crime." It was something else, and time the
+E's found it out, for them to make any overt move to interfere with the
+police in their performance of duty.
+
+Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist. It would
+strengthen his case.
+
+The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. He
+proceeded to the scene of the crime.
+
+He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis,
+received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of
+the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to
+make an arrest for an illegal act--and certainly running around stark
+naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public,
+was an illegal act--would pay any attention to the request of an
+onlooker which amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"?
+
+There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the planet's
+surface, so the third order did not apply.
+
+It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into trouble.
+
+He passed inside the orbits of the three other ships now circling the
+planet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the E.H.Q.
+floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden's
+atmosphere.
+
+The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled.
+
+And nothing happened.
+
+It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not lower the
+ship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions against
+crashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothing
+happened. They lowered not another inch.
+
+A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this
+barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the
+proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made
+their thrust with full speed and momentum.
+
+There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did not
+penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick
+ice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetration
+would not do.
+
+Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared
+to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the ship at
+full power against the surface.
+
+And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came
+to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any
+feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.
+
+What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?
+
+Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis.
+E science apparently had some kind of shield which they'd kept secret
+from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he
+released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!
+
+"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's a
+shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's
+causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the
+specimen They want. There's an E down there.
+
+"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."
+
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal
+McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known,
+that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having
+caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap
+to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with
+their experiment.
+
+From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had
+signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from
+ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the
+frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking
+out of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of
+reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his
+life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the
+consideration of a problem.
+
+His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he
+needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he
+needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led
+into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new
+concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that
+road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to
+determine his position in reality.
+
+He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder
+that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.
+He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into
+the shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with
+their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as
+many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and
+texture as food.
+
+At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness,
+awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was
+awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with
+that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of
+things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of
+things. But there was awareness of more.
+
+There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in
+all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to
+reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his
+environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something
+stronger and more important than he.
+
+To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that
+all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made
+subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not
+assume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.
+
+If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who
+could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that
+he must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he
+himself be destroyed.
+
+So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributes
+magnified.
+
+Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it
+its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and
+willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only
+answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the
+important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not
+do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher
+beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have
+driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have
+survived to remain aware.
+
+But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.
+The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops
+looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord
+with the answer.
+
+The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold
+millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve
+the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond
+the primitive one was self-evident.
+
+To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.
+Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accident
+often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he was
+endowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environment
+that heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing had
+not become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the
+foolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.
+
+Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by
+Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reason
+for its creation?
+
+He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was too
+new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the
+non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,
+to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,
+those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science
+descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to
+achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture
+and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.
+
+But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be
+erased!
+
+Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,
+as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,
+had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not
+yet been found.
+
+Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to
+doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and
+the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than
+accompanying music.
+
+The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered
+until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung
+around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always
+persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some
+subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that
+time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.
+
+As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his
+vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,
+the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of
+view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship
+to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of the
+Royal Society of London (1667)_.
+
+"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which
+can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only an
+enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a business
+of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."
+
+He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one
+arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most
+significant sentence ever written by man.
+
+"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, and
+passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain
+a dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."
+
+That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,
+for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science
+method of making its judgments prevail over all others.
+
+Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of
+all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.
+
+And now?
+
+Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial
+answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?
+Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something
+too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left
+behind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?
+
+What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still
+newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to
+reality must man now discover before he could continue his journey down
+the long road toward total comprehension?
+
+He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for it
+contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost
+as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.
+
+For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of the
+colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men had
+caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly,
+the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He lay
+back down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.
+
+Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed
+something, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, and
+had forgotten in science.
+
+These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only to
+be a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of even
+the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, was
+their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one
+with their environment--unaware.
+
+Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would they
+be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the
+clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in their
+own image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?
+
+Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.
+
+In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship with
+them. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himself
+off from the gods ...
+
+Loneliness.
+
+Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose then
+his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?
+
+Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of exploding
+exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding
+themselves woven into music, painting, literature.
+
+"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none
+other than we who are aware?"
+
+The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more
+and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, the
+recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all others
+subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The
+dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was that
+also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man,
+defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very
+willingness to live--and so died?
+
+What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--and
+lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling that
+apathy? Facing that dissolution?
+
+When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! To
+discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at least
+hope to discover it.
+
+For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation,
+the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always
+interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely
+different from the intent.
+
+Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were no
+other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that
+closed mind be made?
+
+All right.
+
+Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Their
+frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all his
+efforts?
+
+He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that
+sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist and
+his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man
+was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his
+rock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling
+faces.
+
+"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young man
+said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to
+give you one too."
+
+At least they were being impartial.
+
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the
+flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock
+again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating.
+
+He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their
+long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in
+occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to
+protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too
+would be searching for awareness.
+
+But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did not
+meet those terms.
+
+That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal
+did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws,
+the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debris
+which prevented communication of awareness as They defined it?
+
+There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon
+the tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception,
+psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had
+been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical
+tools, man stopped looking for answers other than these?
+
+Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without the
+use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude
+manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation
+without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate
+wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a
+printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result?
+
+A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to
+obtain the same result? But how?
+
+To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (for
+the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the
+current) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of that
+diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one
+thought of the diagram of a receiver? How?
+
+He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence too
+low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was
+walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless
+circle.
+
+Circle?
+
+Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare
+sand at the river's edge.
+
+In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was
+prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of
+every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the
+current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of
+planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.
+
+Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical
+science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it
+took, would know the circle.
+
+He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip of
+his finger he quickly drew a circle.
+
+The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!
+
+He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the
+invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of a
+circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you
+know?"
+
+He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the
+center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the
+perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximating
+the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wrote
+R^2. He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign.
+
+Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed
+all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. They
+understood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet
+there was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sand
+before he saw what it was.
+
+The = had changed to : !
+
+Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate to" for
+"equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure, without tools he
+could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It was
+pedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, without
+tools, to draw a perfect circle?
+
+Or was that running around inside his low fence?
+
+He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was now
+smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what they
+meant.
+
+He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his
+string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. They
+were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers
+could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked
+down again, and the equation was gone.
+
+Wrong track again.
+
+He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.
+
+The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a
+constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference between
+physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference
+in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an
+equation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the whole
+science of atomics was based.
+
+"E = MC^2," he wrote.
+
+Again = changed to : .
+
+What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals sign?
+That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals was one of the
+possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we
+were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that
+answer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in
+unbalanced equations?
+
+He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see them erased.
+But they were still there. So he was starting on the right track. But
+wait.
+
+Before his eyes he saw the C^2 smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M"
+remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the low
+fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was
+the ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But so
+all-inclusive as to be too vague for use.
+
+For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's
+use of C^2 in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his
+time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics
+where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its
+inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work,
+had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted
+it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his
+day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things
+without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him
+entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that
+much to their superstitions.
+
+The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, but
+emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center
+of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixed
+cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the
+chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a
+fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that
+would not shift.
+
+The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?
+
+He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the track.
+
+It had changed again. Now it read "E{d}M": The form of the function of
+energy to matter is variable.
+
+Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and the
+independent variable of the function vary together.
+
+Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy to
+matter.
+
+And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship
+between energy and matter.
+
+He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.
+
+"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as
+much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."
+
+There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep
+sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in
+the sand.
+
+"They talked to _you_," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve
+Them, but it was to _you_ They talked."
+
+And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.
+
+Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's
+shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down
+at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an
+infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of
+forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."
+
+The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal
+felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not
+regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie,
+racked with broken sobbing.
+
+Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes
+that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in
+his youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them a
+tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to
+science--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations,
+making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of
+landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations
+again--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in
+youth.
+
+Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had
+talked.
+
+"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had
+searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have
+found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees,
+grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship?
+
+"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the
+incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more than
+conquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would be
+pleasing to another intelligence?
+
+"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another
+intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement?
+The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denial
+of it?"
+
+Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward the
+depths of the forest.
+
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had
+lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete
+retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they
+had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their
+idea-content no longer required its use.
+
+Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the
+clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always
+available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought.
+Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts of
+the herd, near the colonists but not of them. He had ceased to exhort,
+warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was
+thinking.
+
+And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering
+his own food, catching his own fish.
+
+And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.
+
+Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the
+old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night
+they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to
+four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright stars
+above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis,
+and from the E.H.Q. laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's
+attempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its
+failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and
+then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness,
+her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.
+
+McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson in
+person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable to
+believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person to
+take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to
+do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave
+it alone.
+
+Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal the
+reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away and
+unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting
+strains of a song remembered from long ago.
+
+For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given the
+key--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportion
+and you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and the
+door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it.
+
+Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had to be for his
+job as pilot.
+
+"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's
+messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some
+leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign." He scratched a
+formula in the dirt:
+
+    "2 + 2 = 4"
+
+The = changed to : . Then to {d}. Then through the series of variable
+relationships.
+
+Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.
+
+"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't
+variable. It equals."
+
+Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.
+
+"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what They have to
+say than in trying to convince Them that They're wrong."
+
+"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom argued,
+"then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate
+relationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would be
+solid, dependable."
+
+"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly. "Not a
+house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of
+proportion--and they aren't there anymore."
+
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him
+the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how
+to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is
+useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door.
+
+This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical
+science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E
+science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What
+if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most bogged
+down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of
+some other answer.
+
+Everyone knew the equation E = MC^2, but few could implement it to build
+an atomic power plant.
+
+Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced
+equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be
+countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he
+might be to consider something else.
+
+In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and
+leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the
+stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking
+care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien
+philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their
+own weight.
+
+Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was
+too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical
+science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider
+the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact
+nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other
+side of the equation to restore balance.
+
+To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality.
+To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the
+physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X
+factor to keep reality unchanged.
+
+But how to do it still eluded him.
+
+At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a
+solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring
+was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole
+without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete
+visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the
+long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic
+signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility
+that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control
+physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a
+physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along
+the direct route toward his goal.
+
+Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet
+kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could
+only draw the right design.
+
+Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It
+seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the
+problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.
+
+One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace
+Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of
+the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown
+away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches
+and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them,
+strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of
+outside it?
+
+In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm to
+try?
+
+He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who would
+care.
+
+"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And you can't
+carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty
+purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its
+shipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not much
+in the way of food growing there. So we never went back."
+
+"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered," Cal
+said. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding.
+But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think
+I'll go."
+
+"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose
+your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water.
+Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I
+reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We
+won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you
+needn't worry about us either."
+
+"You want me to come with you, Cal?" Tom asked.
+
+"No," Cal answered, "I think better if I'm alone."
+
+He left them then, went past some colonists who were picking berries and
+eating them, and on up the valley that ran between two ridges.
+
+It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley
+floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual
+drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became a
+ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and
+ripening fruit was sweet.
+
+Before he left the ravine to begin his climb he ate some of the fruit,
+and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with a long, cool
+drink of water from one of the many springs that fed the stream.
+
+He looked up at the mountain above him, and his eye picked out the most
+likely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in terms
+of those tremendous, tortured skin folds of other planets. Hardly more
+than a high hill in terms of those. Nor, as far as he could see, would
+the climb be difficult or hazardous.
+
+The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into his mind,
+although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The
+gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they
+might not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain was
+more easily climbed, and therefore man would have been the more easily
+convinced after repeated explorations that no gods lived there after
+all.
+
+Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the site of
+heaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly, as man explored
+the earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat until
+at last the whole idea was patently ridiculous?
+
+Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet--to what may man now turn in
+rapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all physical science, filled
+the deep human need of these expressions?
+
+The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he intended
+to follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him, at
+the valley of the colonists below, and far down where the valley merged
+into the sea, and far on out at the hazy purple line of another island.
+As he started to turn back again, to resume his climb, his eye caught a
+flash of something moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown,
+bare skin.
+
+He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees. As he had
+suspected it was Louie, still trying to keep him always in sight.
+
+His first impulse was to call out, to wait for Louie, ask him to join in
+the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from all
+others. And sympathetic and compassionate though he might be, the
+confusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had his
+earlier attempts to comfort Louie met success.
+
+Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear his
+mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's tortured mind
+intended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Even
+a boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for that
+would be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodily
+attack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable.
+
+He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it swept
+upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was not
+difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and provided clear
+spaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to his
+bare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt no
+physical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from the
+branches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind into
+trivialities.
+
+Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason out
+the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality.
+
+Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, a
+merging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, and
+appreciation.
+
+Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that
+they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they were
+replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low,
+creeping growths which his feet avoided without mental direction.
+
+A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of
+crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the
+geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been broken
+away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.
+
+There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or
+colonist had ever passed this way.
+
+The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly and
+without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemed
+to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's
+star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he,
+alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it
+as he was encompassed by it.
+
+Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley
+floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any
+instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would stand
+revealed.
+
+Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way through
+higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeper
+amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted not
+only in the purples but into greens and reds and blues.
+
+As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above he
+caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles, buttresses,
+and arches of the mountain's crest.
+
+It was the crystal palace.
+
+The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below, yet
+his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor
+were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and
+rest, to gather his energy for the last steep assault upon the peak.
+
+Far below him he saw Louie toiling up a slope, then dropping with every
+appearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still he
+would rest no more than a minute, and always his head was turned to keep
+sight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to his
+feet; and slowly, step by step, begin his climb again.
+
+As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the
+self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guilt
+of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral
+sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the
+ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be
+either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's
+inadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil,
+these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance or
+threat to the ascendancy of me-and-mine at the center of things, and had
+no meaning beyond that context.
+
+He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharp
+climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near to
+the towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now he
+walked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothic
+entrance.
+
+And stood transfixed in ecstasy.
+
+Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and
+glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the
+sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where
+light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the
+air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him.
+Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended
+sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture.
+
+As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees that laced
+their limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again he stood, lost in
+time and space and being, lost in vision and in music which neither had
+nor needed form nor beginning nor end.
+
+And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of man, to
+bridge the gap between Their minds and his.
+
+Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor
+and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they
+seemed mirrored into infinity.
+
+The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down, clockwise,
+then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding him ...
+
+... the internal structure of crystals....
+
+
+
+
+25
+
+
+Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced
+from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled
+by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust
+over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases,
+tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the
+vibrating crystals one formed that was aware.
+
+Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only
+ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of
+molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on another
+planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinity
+to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked the
+distinction here as in that protoplasm.
+
+As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these
+crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold--to food.
+Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about
+them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy
+atmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavage
+into new individuals.
+
+What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does it
+appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, and
+blunders blindly through its environment in search for condition more
+favorable to its continuance.
+
+In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more than
+that.
+
+Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness of
+me-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel, know? A
+protoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all possibility of
+awareness in other kinds of growth because they are not a part of
+me-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know awareness?
+
+Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on that
+planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self.
+Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, and
+self-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of surroundings.
+
+Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time, awareness of
+self and surroundings grew into awareness of wider peripheries, to
+sensing their world, its structure, its nature.
+
+Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other worlds, of
+other stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly akin to the
+vibrating fields of force which compose the material universe, and the
+vibrations of fields of force can be altered. To change their
+surroundings to a more suitable environment through vibration rates of
+things led surely to negation of distance. To change from crystal form
+to fields of energy and back again combined with negation of
+distance--they too spread out and out among the stars.
+
+At first it was enough. But awareness is never still. Questions form.
+
+In all the universe were they the only sentient thing? Did any cry but
+theirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the nature of
+their being their search was unconcerned with the outer shape of things
+which could be changed by them at will, but rather with the inner
+vibratory rate which would signal sentience, awareness.
+
+They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces. Water runs
+down hill without knowing that it does, without the internal structure
+to provide the vibratory rate which would permit knowing.
+
+For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of a
+me-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to conceive
+that other structures than the crystalline might have a form of
+awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must be
+acknowledged.
+
+For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline
+substance, protoplasm.
+
+On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated and
+specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex of
+its organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the most
+complex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside of
+self.
+
+Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!
+
+Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience in
+communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of
+their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind,
+they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous
+pyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new life
+form that they too were aware--to communicate that the loneliness of one
+might now be softened by the presence of the other.
+
+And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the dust.
+
+His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay in
+adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the
+dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.
+
+But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought something
+which they could share with this new life form. The rock could be a
+tree! See!
+
+And lo, the rock was a tree.
+
+And the people were sore afraid.
+
+For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so. This
+mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into a
+new and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valley
+beckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not venture
+forth.
+
+The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystalline
+forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awareness
+composed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes,
+security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awareness
+composed of the inner vibration, the relationships of those vibrations,
+with outer shapes changed at will, and therefore meaningless.
+
+Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes of things.
+The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed that became root and
+stem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man that
+decomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause!
+Surely they must see that even the permanent rock changed slowly into
+dust, that the eternal sea was restless, never still; that stars moved
+in the vault of heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. How
+did they account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause?
+
+They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the seed ground
+into meal, the moving animal shot down with stick or stone and stilled
+and changed to food, the moving of the smaller rocks, erection of a
+dwelling made of poles and thatch to change environment for the man
+inside. Change, then, man knew; why fear the greater change, the easier
+one? Why tug and lift and strain to move the boulder from the path, when
+all was needed was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance the
+equation of relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone no
+longer barred the way?
+
+Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot their
+own once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine, forgot to
+credit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength to serve a
+purpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he could do. To see it
+lifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a greater strength than
+his, and purpose that he could not understand. And man fell to his knees
+in fear and awe.
+
+For man knew only one relation to all things--to conquer if he could,
+and force acknowledgment of superior strength and purpose. To kill if
+that acknowledgment was not given. To survive by giving that
+acknowledgment to a stronger one than he.
+
+Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew when
+strength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme a
+way that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The one
+invariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs to
+diplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mine
+ascendant is the aim and goal.
+
+To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy of
+me-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness lower than
+intelligence that they could meet in partnership. Instruct them, then.
+No joy or purpose in conquering them. No companionship in these
+disgusting grovelings. Show them the inner forces that controlled the
+outer shapes of things.
+
+Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer shape of
+things was no longer a consideration in their life; but for this form of
+life, still dependent for that life upon the maintenance of material
+form, no doubt the shapes and forms of things were paramount to them.
+Well then, show them the true relationship, sketch out upon the sands
+the diagram of how the forces that control the shapes of things are
+interwoven, interact.
+
+Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape, and lo, a
+spring of water flowed from dry and barren stone.
+
+But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and form. A
+sacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw with finger in
+the air or in the sand, protection from the evil forces that surrounded
+him.
+
+The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man was not
+ready for communication. Too soon, too soon.
+
+But man did not forget, the memory lived on. And fathers spoke to sons,
+and made the outer forms of gestures, drew the cabalistic signs, and
+told of magic things and powers that these signs could do. To some, one
+diagram was shown, a way to build a house of stone that better weathered
+the storms of Earth. The house of stone became a holy place, a thing
+existing in its own right, and not, as was intended, an example of one
+use to which this arrangement of forces might be put.
+
+And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time to slay an
+animal for food. And men fought wars over these differing symbols, each
+side determined to make its symbol ascendant over the other.
+
+Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the memories
+lived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams beyond their outer
+shape had gained sway. The racial memory persisted, and in the latter
+Pleistocene epoch the knowledge of altering shapes through force of mind
+became a racial memory, coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated into
+forms and phrases; but from generation to generation the memory was kept
+alive that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeed
+changed by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had pointed
+his finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped forth clad
+in jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed a mountain and a
+voice spoke unto him, and proof of this were letters cut in stone.
+Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some water into wine, and fed a
+multitude from five small loaves and fishes.
+
+A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the inner
+meanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward through the
+world.
+
+But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner meanings,
+another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shape
+and size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size and
+shape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture,
+which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the inner
+vibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged in
+the Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape and
+weight of things to make them change.
+
+It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essential
+difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as that
+between a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culture
+where everything has limit and every inch must be mapped.
+
+But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed into
+bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown into
+tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man could
+master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxford
+definition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties of
+things.
+
+Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, led
+inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specific
+vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid to the senses,
+as a range of light vibrations translate into color through the eyes.
+
+E = MC^2!
+
+It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!
+
+Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient
+fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic
+displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently
+through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his
+weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his
+strength. For here he was among the stars.
+
+Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not
+prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "Hello!"
+
+But careful, perhaps he would.
+
+There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope
+he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but
+rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either
+side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the
+planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He
+never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that
+the god Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and this
+phenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted as
+the proof the legend was correct--and do incalculable damage to
+scientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enough
+to take no chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works,
+perhaps discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further
+fuel to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds and
+seared out possibility of rational thought.
+
+So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite the fact
+that some men know how to reach the stars.
+
+To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of
+barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of
+man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a
+thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and
+clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but nevertheless
+present centers of man's mind--some certain man who might be ready to
+receive that thought.
+
+Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until man
+found it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change of
+course that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it for
+Earth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystal
+tool upon the mountaintop.
+
+The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds were
+full of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhaps
+by now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act upon
+another thing that they could not countenance the thought that thought
+could act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, and
+recorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches and
+its spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of
+force, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his
+status and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared
+admit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments.
+Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought their
+science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And to
+scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more than
+truth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth is
+paramount?
+
+Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked and
+lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today there
+are such men.
+
+So walk with care, and wait.
+
+The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled with
+measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filled
+with cabins, fields, food.
+
+Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured on
+the one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not bound
+within the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely man
+must know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thing
+through a description of its outer surface.
+
+But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical things
+to act upon other physical things, even in considering the universal
+energy as a thing, he would look no farther.
+
+All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept
+of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no
+tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that
+happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men,
+perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships,
+their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind
+trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth
+outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust
+at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because
+he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.
+
+And they would know when that mind came.
+
+The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to
+earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough.
+The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be
+undisturbed in his thought.
+
+Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it
+was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move.
+Could he respond?
+
+He drew a circle in the sand!
+
+Joy! Ecstasy!
+
+This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two
+intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to
+the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ...
+to find ...
+
+Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him
+think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things
+in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize
+that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to
+express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can
+change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he
+desires.
+
+Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself,
+for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready
+to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his
+own interpreting.
+
+Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
+conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are,
+bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that
+communication might be direct.
+
+He holds the key.
+
+He knows the lock.
+
+He finds the door.
+
+Show him the one small step remaining--the diagram, the design, the
+movement of the forces of his mind.
+
+To turn the key.
+
+Unlock the lock.
+
+Throw wide the door.
+
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his
+eyes.
+
+Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of
+yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken
+thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just
+barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,
+the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.
+
+And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and
+forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,
+to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one
+had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.
+No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.
+
+How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance
+was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or
+dead?
+
+But why wonder?
+
+A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
+test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
+amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces
+in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.
+
+He was standing outside the entrance arch.
+
+With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through
+the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then
+fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.
+
+"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know
+you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw
+you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.
+But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some
+shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.
+Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."
+
+"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.
+
+As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped
+by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,
+seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of
+relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the
+untangling, straightening of thought.
+
+Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.
+
+"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock
+and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on
+back to the rest."
+
+"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.
+
+A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush
+to approach Jed and Tom.
+
+"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked
+up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.
+Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."
+
+"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
+continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that
+everything happened a couple of weeks ago."
+
+"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him
+curiously.
+
+Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a
+difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with
+puzzlement on his face.
+
+"There's something important about it being around this time of day,
+Cal?" he asked.
+
+"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could
+restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it
+was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It
+being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had
+passed, nothing had happened."
+
+Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.
+
+"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"
+
+"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite
+a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about
+it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things
+back as they were?"
+
+In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed
+his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the
+approach of the drill.
+
+It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.
+
+The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the
+metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences with
+the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking
+on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They
+looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.
+They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked
+their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest
+dream.
+
+Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together,
+and feel the shock, and wonder.
+
+Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the
+hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.
+
+"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or
+something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had
+the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll
+dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."
+
+"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the
+people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.
+They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across
+the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing
+you know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find out
+why we didn't communicate."
+
+"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked
+curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.
+You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys
+fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"
+
+"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the
+hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of
+everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.
+
+"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front
+of everybody right along."
+
+"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been
+dreamin'," she said.
+
+"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"
+he cautioned.
+
+"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.
+
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the
+aisle toward him.
+
+"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he
+said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better
+repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with
+the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite
+his face.
+
+"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the
+overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more
+insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable
+period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity
+that got the better of his desire to discipline.
+
+"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him.
+He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up
+the mountain."
+
+"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened
+for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started
+back down the aisle toward his own office.
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."
+
+Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.
+
+"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with
+your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."
+
+But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was
+everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about
+the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different
+answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance,
+and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they
+weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in
+crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's
+knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know
+what he was not meant to know.
+
+The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments,
+to listen frankly.
+
+"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a
+minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush
+to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."
+
+"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve
+miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their
+reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to
+skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to
+be complaints about this."
+
+"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I
+didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."
+
+"All right, all right."
+
+"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."
+
+The supervisor's eyes grew round.
+
+"Can't be," he exclaimed.
+
+"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator
+said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report
+it."
+
+"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have
+to be."
+
+"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those
+buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.
+
+"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the
+reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's
+doing."
+
+"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.
+
+There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.
+
+"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning
+all over, trying to find him."
+
+The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.
+
+"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this
+reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips
+and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the
+complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if
+there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.
+
+An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
+furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them
+in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some
+more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?
+
+His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a
+virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.
+
+"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up
+the aisle.
+
+"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,"
+the operator called out. "Something very important."
+
+"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."
+
+But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
+tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.
+
+"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line
+opened.
+
+"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal.
+"What now?"
+
+"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the
+Captain said without any preliminaries.
+
+"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear
+in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe
+she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."
+
+"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You
+ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out
+first."
+
+"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled
+back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"
+
+"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said.
+"A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her
+stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way
+anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.
+Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.
+Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E
+Gray on the surface of Eden."
+
+"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,"
+Hayes said accusingly.
+
+"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't
+have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like
+we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
+
+"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of
+your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's
+hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd
+to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then
+in ten days she'd ..."
+
+"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the
+ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the
+possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
+
+"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E
+McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could
+lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
+
+"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship," the captain
+said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
+
+Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes
+to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide
+direct intervention.
+
+"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator
+said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis
+will talk to him."
+
+"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
+
+"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.
+
+The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that
+testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was
+quite explicit.
+
+"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be
+disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin,
+in conference."
+
+"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil
+did they get into your ship?"
+
+"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm
+sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He
+leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E
+Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in
+there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice
+quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I
+ever do get back."
+
+"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple
+explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were
+hard to find.
+
+"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to
+hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
+communication.
+
+
+
+
+28
+
+
+Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom
+he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered
+his ship by any normal means.
+
+Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.
+He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive,
+darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of
+shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him
+to adjust to them.
+
+He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch
+of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that
+somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see
+what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared
+from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a
+shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator
+had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the
+chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have
+been made that rapidly.
+
+He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the
+E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people
+were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept
+his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to
+produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to
+that, otherwise ...
+
+He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more
+effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders
+to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two
+police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and
+take custody.
+
+But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.
+
+He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in control of
+Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs!
+Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior
+had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid
+judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there
+were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might
+have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but
+Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals
+issue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her
+nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.
+
+It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told
+him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the
+ship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in
+the vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you for
+taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."
+
+The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He
+thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any
+judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and
+maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to
+any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the
+favor returned tomorrow.
+
+Without concrete evidence ...
+
+He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship,
+confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in
+a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting
+frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and
+swallow him--perhaps wishing one would.
+
+"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly,
+ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor
+nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As
+far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately
+preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.
+
+"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of
+any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow
+until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that
+ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and
+severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that
+destroyed both the United States and Russia.
+
+"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world
+government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in
+trying to destroy you.
+
+"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have
+already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the
+major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of
+police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.
+
+"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an
+organized society without some special body to enforce that
+organization. It's a problem which the E's haven't solved, probably
+because we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behavior
+of man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, because
+science doesn't know enough yet to take hold of it.
+
+"I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and your
+organization to solving this problem of how to build an organized
+society instead of destroying it."
+
+The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.
+
+E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and immobile. But E
+science had inured him to shock. He waited because it was E Gray's show,
+and he was letting Cal handle it.
+
+"Where is he now?" McGinnis asked when he saw the empty chair.
+
+"Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth," Cal said with a grin.
+"Our boy has a few things to think about."
+
+"You've explained the theory back of all this"--McGinnis changed the
+subject--"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory."
+
+"Well," Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two, you
+first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it is
+done, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn how to
+apply the theory.
+
+"When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The whole basis
+of science is that anybody can do it, anybody who follows the
+step-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts that can't be
+trained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people, in possession
+of this theory and method before they were wise enough to use it, and
+chaos.
+
+"But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods of science
+are also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most prefer their
+frustrations and their miseries to making the effort which will solve
+them. For centuries the libraries containing all the accumulated
+knowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free and open to anybody who
+wants to read, but few have bothered to absorb that knowledge and that
+wisdom.
+
+"This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista of
+knowledge, another point of view whereby we can change material things
+to suit our desire, is merely another advance of science. For science,
+after all, is no more than organized knowledge of reality. You can't
+multiply six times six until you've learned how to add two and two. Most
+people won't bother.
+
+"It will be a long, long time before any significant number will
+graduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become ready
+for the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know how few E's
+there are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom, and selflessness
+to use this new knowledge for the benefit of man instead of his
+detriment.
+
+"I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to make
+me-and-mine ascendant over others before he can absorb this knowledge."
+
+"Maybe that's my trouble," McGinnis said slowly. "I've been thinking,
+all along, of how much power this gives the E's. Wondering if even the
+E's should have that much power over others."
+
+Linda spoke up.
+
+"E McGinnis," she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what happened to
+the colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you think this will
+qualify him for his big E?"
+
+Both men burst into laughter.
+
+"No question of it, Linda," E McGinnis said with a chuckle. "But I doubt
+it really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things none of the rest of
+us can do, and the real question now is whether we have the right to
+call ourselves Seniors until we can match his ability."
+
+"I think," Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E.H.Q. that the
+colonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere else. I've left the
+shield around the planet so none can enter or leave without the eighth
+key. I can unlock the door and close it again. Perhaps Eden should
+become the next step for the E, the next hurdle he must cross.
+
+"When I've sent my ship and crew back to Earth, and we've removed all
+the colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden to what it was
+when I arrived--a place where no tools will work, no physical tools. To
+qualify for E, a man will be put on the island, where he can live as we
+lived, to work out the step-by-step method. When he's ready, he can go
+into the thought-amplifier on top of the mountain, and if his mind is
+open enough to the potentials he'll receive the final step of
+instruction--as I did.
+
+"One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they can
+take this next step."
+
+"I'm not working on any project right now," E McGinnis said hopefully.
+
+"I'll be right back," Cal said with a grin, "and we'll get started on
+it."
+
+The chair where he had been sitting was empty.
+
+
+
+
+29
+
+
+Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watched
+the interplay of lights until he felt communion come.
+
+Rapture! Joy!
+
+Question?
+
+"Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more.
+
+"You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with a
+crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible in
+protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way.
+
+"But we have come up.
+
+"You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives every
+inch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries, millennia.
+It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept has dominated all
+our thought, and does still. Without it, we'd not have survived at all.
+
+"It takes time to outgrow it, to learn we can survive without it. Five
+hundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high school students in
+the United States revealed that a third of them still rejected his
+knowledge, still believed the Earth to be at the center of the universe
+and man was the reason why the universe had been created at all. But two
+thirds had adjusted.
+
+"More important, there _was_ a Copernicus.
+
+"Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are impatient
+for fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality. He has much to
+offer you, as you to him. Competition for survival has given him
+ingenuity.
+
+"Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of the
+universe, but there _was_ a Copernicus who asked the question, 'What if
+it isn't so?'
+
+"Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one _did_ ask if
+this might not be the key to the structure of the universe, the balance
+of the stars.
+
+"Billions watched the stars, but finally one _did_ ask, 'What if the
+light be curved instead of straight?'
+
+"There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to learn an
+ingenuity which might surpass even yours.
+
+"This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still other
+doors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may need
+these special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed this new room
+of thought.
+
+"Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the method
+that can change things to fit the equation of desire, before one comes
+who asks a question even you have not conceived.
+
+"But someday he _will_ come--and ask."
+
+The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
+
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