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 wasoverdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His fingerhesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth andpressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunchedover 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 itcame out sullen. The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punchedirritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-secondstar map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expectthere to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel. The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include suchblunders. But he had to check. There weren't. He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on hisshift, never anybody else's. "Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time, " herationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose andhoped 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 experimentalcolonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, someunprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothingelse apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as theExtrapolators. But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget. "Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications byinserting a jump band of his own. " The supervisor hopefully tried outanother idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last morethan an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using theE frequency, anyway. He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the otheroperators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw himaway from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problemwould have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewedon 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 supervisorasked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?" The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answerwith more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt forsupervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught thesurreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind thesupervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention. In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustlynagged employee over his features. "Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor mutteredsavagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--theirpants 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 slowthree-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for tenmiles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring. The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the gnawing at hisknuckles to his fingernails. He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry colonist tocome through and scream at them to turn off that unprintable-phrasessiren. He braced himself and worked up some choice phrases of his own toscream back at the colonist for neglecting his duty--gettingExtrapolation Headquarters here on Earth all worked up over nothing. Hewondered if he dared threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to checkthem over. He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay no attentionto 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, " theinsolent 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 theywake up. " He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near operators werenow frankly listening. "Get on with your work, " he said loudly. "Pay attention to what you'rerecording. " It was enough to cause several more heads to raise. "Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is nothing toconcern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's all. Haven't youever heard of a delayed report before?" He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It was likeasking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razoredge of a precipice suddenly go slack. "But there's nothing any of you can do, " he said. He tried to cover theplaintive 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 ifthey'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a fractionyears, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit scanner didn't pickup a single symbol to show that Eden had been even two seconds offschedule. The first year daily, the second year weekly, and now monthly. There wasn't a single hiccough from the machine to kick out anExtrapolator's signal to watch for anything unusual. Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an _outré_ problem as anIowa cornfield. "You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again as hecame back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They haven't answeredyet. " The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists hadn'tanswered. And what should he do about it? Go out there personally andshake his finger at them--naughty, naughty? "Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface, to see?" thesupervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myselfthat you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a spacehurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybesome 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 givethe order. " He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can'tjust go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood. " "Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please, " the supervisorcautioned. Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strungout through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, setup the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneouscommunication, but that was only relative. It took time. The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sectorchief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hatedthe thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsettingthe routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated theforethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators whenan E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond toquestions, the thrill of merely being in the same room. He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration toan E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentarysecret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he wasa kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gonefarther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed. "Clinging to established scientific beliefs, " the tester had told himwith the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind toa lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice infull confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself beforeyou hit bottom. " It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himselfthe pleasure of wishing the tester would try it. "To accept what Eminent Authority says as true, " the tester hadcontinued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist. Although, " he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellentcareer in engineering. " It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what sciencesaid was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was itsaid? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, livewith. No certainties on which to stand. He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated on theflashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's screen. Therewas nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing wrong with thecommunication channels between Eden and Earth. "Blasted colonists, " the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam ontheir planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet they'velet all the sets at their end get out of order. " He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face hadn'ttold him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman--and there were fiftyof them on Eden--could build a communicator. That was regulation. "You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?" he askedthe operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering up some neglectin 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 himover, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed feet. Then he coollyturned 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 supposedto have enough brains to think of something so obvious as that. Thatmuch brains at least. 2 The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayedreport" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn'thappen to him. To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor, his first actwas to rush down to communications and go through all the routines forrousing the colonists the supervisor had tried. His worry was mountingso rapidly that he hardly noticed the resigned expression of theoperator who knew he would have to go through all these useless motionsagain and again before it was all over, and somebody did something. "Well, " the chief said to the supervisor. "It's my problem now. " Hesighed, 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 oryour department, " Hayes said diplomatically. "It's a heavyresponsibility to alert E. H. Q. , pull the scientists off who knows whatdelicate, critical work--maybe even hope to get the attention of anE--all that. I had to make sure, you know. " "Of course, Chief Hayes, " the supervisor said, and relaxed some of hisresentment. "Serious matter, " he chattered. "Disgrace if an E, withouthalf trying, put his finger on our oversight. We all understand that. "He tried to include the nearby operators, his boys, in his eageragreement, but they were all busy showing how intensely they had toconcentrate on their work. "That's probably all it is--an oversight, " Hayes said with unconvincingreassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's face, added, "Beyond our control here, of course. Something it would take at least ascientist 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 itconfidential. " "Of course, Chief Hayes, " the supervisor said in a near whisper. Helooked meaningfully around at the room of operators, but did manage notto put his finger to his lips. Those who were observing out of thecorners of their eyes were grateful for at least that. On his way back to his own office Chief William Hayes reflected that thebit about keeping it confidential was on the corny side. Within fifteenminutes he'd start spreading it all over E. H. Q. , himself. Everyscientist, every lab assistant would know it. Every clerk, every janitorwould know it. E. H. Q. Would have to work full blast all night long, andsome of the lesser personnel had homes down in Yellow Sands at the footof the mountain. These would be calling their husbands and wives, telling them not to fixdinner, not to worry if they didn't come home all night. No matter howguarded, the news would leak out, the word spread, and the newscastreporters would pick it up for the delectation of the public. Edencolony cut off from communication. Nobody knows . .. Wonder . .. Fear . .. Delicious . .. Exciting. .. . Or was this the kind of thinking that had kept him from qualifying as anE? What was it the examiner had asked? "Mr. Hayes, why do you feel it isall right for you to view, to read, to know--but that others should beprotected from seeing, reading, knowing? What are these sterlingqualities you have that make it all right for you to censor what wouldnot be right for others?" He abruptly brought his mind back to the present. Perhaps he'd firstbetter prepare a news statement before he did anything else, somethingnoncommittal, reassuring. No point in getting the populace stirred up. As he sat down behind his desk, a big man in a brown suit, naturaliron-gray hair, a calm and administrative face, he began to realize thatfor 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 anexecutive capacity beyond the needs of his present job. More than a mererequisition signer, interoffice memo initialer. For one thing the scientists would give him trouble. If he had beendeeply hurt that they thought he couldn't open up his mind enough tobecome an E, what about scientists whose limits were reached stillfarther along? He must remember to keep his temper, use persuasion, maybe kid them a little. The blasted experts were almost as bad asE's--worse, in a way, because the E didn't have to remind anybody of hisdignity, 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 wasinterested, or he didn't notice, or wasn't interested. But nobody ever told an E that he must apply himself to a problem. Oncea man became a full-fledged Extrapolator he was outside all law, allframeworks, all duty, all social mores. That was the essence of Escience, that any requirement outside of his own making didn't exist. Ithad to be that way. That kind of mind could not tolerate barriers, butspent itself constantly in destroying them. Erect barriers oftriviality, and it would waste its substance upon trivial matters. Theonly answer was to remove all possible barriers for the E, lestimmersion in something trivial prevent that mind from seeking out abarrier to knowledge, a problem of significance. But the scientists! Hayes sighed. If only the scientists wouldn't keepthinking they were cut from the same cloth as the E. They had to haverestrictions, organization imposed upon them. Yes indeed! They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble a reviewof all the known facts about Eden--a dead issue as far as their own workwas 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 beenanalyzed and settled long ago. He saw himself compared with the producer of a show, and theatricalperformers didn't come any more temperamental than scientists. He'd behearing about how much of their time he'd wasted for months to come. Every time any administrator asked why they hadn't produced whatever itwas they were working on, it would be because Chief Hayes hadinterrupted them at the most crucial moment and they'd had to begin allover 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; thatthey were employed here only because someday, in some co-ordinatesystem, somebody might be able to supply a key fact that some E mightwant to know. They'd ask him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would belistening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex, knowing hecould give no such guarantee. They'd drag their heels because, deep down, they carried a basicresentment against the E--because, experts though they were, each ofthem, somewhere along the line, had learned the bitter limits in hismind that prevented him from going on to become an E. They'd drag their heels because the E's, each blasted one of them, wouldregard the absolutely true facts proved beyond question by science withan attitude of skepticism, temporarily accepting the uncontestablyimmutable as only provisionary, and probably quite wrong. Oh, they'd grumble, and they'd drag their heels at first; but they wouldget into it. They'd get into it, not because the sector chief had babiedthem along, kidded them, coaxed them, but because, as surely as hisname was Bill Hayes, some unprintable E would ask a question for whichthey had no answer. Or even worse, some question that made no sense, butleft the scientist feeling that perhaps it should have! That was the E brand of thinking which gave everybody trouble--andwithout which man could never have gone on creeping outward and outwardamong the stars. Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blastedasteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws. Sometimes anentirely new co-ordinate system had to be resolved. Oh, science waseasy, a veritable snap, while man crawled around on the muddy bottom ofhis ocean of air and concluded that throughout all the universe thingsmust conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as adamned halibut must be of the works and thoughts of man. And often the E was unable to resolve the co-ordinate system--which wassimply a euphemistic way of saying that he didn't come back. And withouthim, man could go no farther. An E, therefore, was the rarest and mostvaluable 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 scientiststheir full due. They'd work with a will once they grew aware of the needof it, because they were just as concerned as anybody else with whatmight 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 Edensurvey, " she said. "So many?" Hayes asked ruefully. "Maybe I'd better send an all-pointsbulletin. " "You're the boss, " she said easily. "But if I know scientists, theydon't read bulletins. " "Yeah, sure, " he agreed. "You made sure this is everybody? Nobody isslighted? They'll scream like stuck pigs when I ask them, but they'll beeven worse if I slight anybody by not asking. " "Double checked with Personnel's own midgit-idgit, " she replied. "Themachine says if anybody is left out, it's not its fault, that it wouldonly be because we stupid humans forgot to inform it in the firstplace. " "Sometimes I think that machine complains more than people do, " heanswered. "Certainly it is a lot more insolent. " "Gets more work done, though, " she said comfortably. "You want anythingmore?" "Not right now. " "Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that newexploration ship, and it wants service, too, " she reminded him. "It'sworse 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 dataand watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary. " She winked athim, 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 diplomacywouldn't be worth the breath used in it if he called the wrong manfirst. At a glance he saw that the idgit had already sorted themcorrectly according to status. "If you're so smart, " he muttered to the absent machine, "why didn't youcall them too?" He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. Itwould be like opening the lid of Pandora's box. .. . At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayesdropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key toopen. He did not recognize the voice that came through. "How soon, " the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this Edenmatter?" "I'm setting it up now, " he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning, surely. That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor thatwouldn'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. Hesat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet withsweat, that his shirt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that hewas grinning joyfully. Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question ofwhether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybethree. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, thestudents. He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind itbeing Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize hecould never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. Heunderstood. "Hello, Dr. Mille, " he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. "Thisis 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 andthe endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood movedmethodically through his preflight inspection. Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an Ewherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. ToLynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath hisbroad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. Heliked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described thesubstance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, howthey behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics couldalso communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to waituntil 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. Hedidn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told him in Personnel thatwas why he was a favorite pilot of the E's, but he discounted that. Theydidn't try to tell him how to run his ship--well, most of themdidn'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 himto pilot them around--he was lucky. Somehow he always managed to comeback, and bring the E with him. Well, sure. He didn't want to get stucksomewhere, wind up in a gulio's gullet, gassed by an atmosphere thatturned from oxygen-nitrogen into pure methane without warning or reason, and against all known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of adead star suddenly gone nova. But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would fiddlearound in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of thetime they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but partof 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 betshigher and higher. But until then . .. He was square-jawed, a freckled man with red hair. Contrary tosuperstition, he didn't have a fiery temper. He was forty and hadalready built up a seniority of twenty years in deep space. He wascaptain of his ship and wanted nothing more. Sure, it was only athree-man crew--himself, a flight engineer, an astronavigator. But itwas an E ship, which meant that he outranked even the captains of thegreat luxury liners. There was a time when the realization caused him to strut a little, buthe'd got over it. He was single, had no ties, wanted none. He had a goodjob which he took seriously, was doing significant work which he alsotook seriously, was paid premium wages even for a space captain, whichdidn't matter except in terms of recognition. He didn't mind goinganywhere in the known universe, or how long he would be away. He hopedhe would get back someday, but he wasn't fanatic about it. In a routine so well-practiced that it had become ritual, he checkedover the cruiser point by point. Of course the maintenance men hadchecked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled, cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part afteranother. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with agimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, sothey could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The InspectionDepartment, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from thereand inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunchof army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or warand, unconsciously at least, aided in expending them. Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers, that theship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered such papersas so much garbage, and went over the entire ship himself. This mighthave 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. Asteak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands, a couple of drinks atSmitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few dances at the Stars andMoons. Big night out for his crew before they left for deep space. Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubbyworked up on the hill at E. H. Q. , and wifey raised super-bright kids whoalready considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in thattown was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, asthe case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louiewas dedicated to hell-raising. When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he saw his flightengineer, 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'dhave swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging around, askingquestions, disputing your answers, arguing with each other, and, if youdidn't watch them carefully, taking things apart and putting them backtogether in different hookups to see what would happen. The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everythingeverybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody had everhad the sense to think about the problem before; to doubt most of allthe opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the experts were right thenthere 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 smartaleck down, told him to go get dry behind the ears before he shot offhis 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 verymachinery under his hands, to assume that although it had always workedit 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 sawthese tortured kids saying, "Well, maybe, but what if . .. " he was gladto be nothing more than a ship captain who knew his machinery wasexactly what it was supposed to be and nothing else. But, in a way, it was nice for the lads too. After thousands of years ofman's almost rabid determination to destroy the brightest and best ofhis young, the world had finally found a place for the bright boy. This morning, probably because of the early dawn hour, there were onlytwo of them in the generator room. As expected, they were arguing overthe space-jump band. Frank was standing over to one side, observing butnot participating. His cap was pushed back on his blond head, his bigface expressionless. It was common gossip throughout flight crewseverywhere that Frank, blindfolded, could take a cruiser apart and putit back together without missing a motion. "The jump band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip, " onestudent E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field inthe shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Itswidth 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 thewhole point. The Moebius strip has only one edge, so it can't havewidth. We enter that edge, go through a line that doesn't exist, andcome out a light-year away, without taking any longer than the time topass 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 itmight be a good idea to get rid of the students. Any other time it wouldbe all right, a part of their stand-by job, but they'd got word lastnight to have the ship in readiness from six o'clock on. They might haveto wait all day, but then again, some E might get an idea and want to goshooting out to Eden right off. Frank caught the signal, grinned, and began to herd the two studentstoward the door. They were in such heated argument now, accusing oneanother of parrot repetition instead of thinking for himself, that theydidn't realize that they were being nudged out of the ship, down itsramp, and out on the field. "Don't think it hasn't been educational, and all, " Frank murmured tothem 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 schooldormitories, still arguing. "Sometimes I think a quiet milk run out to Saturn would have itsbrighter 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 thatthey had got over all the attraction-repulsion conflicts which operatefar beneath the surface mind to cause likes and dislikes. Now theyaccepted one another in the way a man accepts his own hands--proud ofthem when they do something with extra skill, making allowances whenthey fumble; but never considering doing without them. "Wonder who the E will be this time?" Frank asked, without too muchconcern. It didn't really matter. An E was an E, for better or forworse. "Haven't heard, " Tom answered. "Probably not decided yet. If the SeniorE's think it isn't much of a problem, they might send a Junior. Or ifthey don't want to be bothered, they might send a Junior who's up forhis solo problem. " "Whoever, or whatever, I'm sure it will be interesting, " Frank commentedwith a grin. Tom returned the grin. There wasn't any malice in it, norany of the basic enmity and destructiveness of the stupid toward thebright, just a recognition that an E was an E. They had a vast respectfor 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?" Tomcountered wryly. They continued to check over each item in the generator room, theirflying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation. They gave the room extra care this time because there had been somequick-fingered students around who just might have got it into theirheads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been nosubtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back intoposition. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, singlefile, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau wassitting in the astronavigator's seat, checking over his star charts andinstruments. 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 heavytraffic, " he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid brown eyes wereperpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over at Traffic that they'regoing to provide a freeway out of the solar system so we can take it inone hop, but they don't do it. Wonder when we'll ever go modern, startdoing 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 leapsevery time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff in the way tolouse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded. There'll be notrouble getting _to_ Eden, no trouble _getting_ there. Make it in aboutfourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven lousy little light-years. Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch. Wait'll the union agenthears you're working me fourteen hours without a relief. And are youletting me get my rest now, so I can work fourteen hours? Or are youstopping 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 anenormous indignation that life should always treat him so dirty. "Don't you?" he asked. 4 Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirrorand played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That shouldtake care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leanedforward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the cornersof his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirtymark. 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 doorwatching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed. "You used the no-beard just last month, Cal, " she said. There was aquestioning note in her voice. "Want to keep handsome, " he said lightly. "Never know when I might haveto run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one of my other wives tocatch me with stubble on my face. " It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce thetopic foremost in his mind. "This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo toqualify 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 ofexasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals theorderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can have you all tomyself. " "It's better if you get used to him, " Cal cautioned. "Turn off thesignal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi, you'd havetwenty rushing in to see what was wrong. " "Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take his morningshower without an observer standing by to see that he doesn't drownhimself 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 hernude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm. "Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away, " she said, and glittered hereyes 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 holdhim, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown. He knew it, andthe bitterness in her eyes, back of her teasing, showed she knew he knewit. He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked herhair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it in hischest. He felt her sobbing. He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom, laid hergently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who stoodexpressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed and held herhead in his arms. "Don't fight it, " he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has hadto 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 thewife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just you, and the thoughtof losing you, never seeing you again. " "I haven't gone yet, " he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll get thejob. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of them might wantit. Even if I do get the problem, who says I won't be back? You take oldMcGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day. He's been an E for nigh on to fiftyyears. 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 slopeof his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine graceand beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beautyshe might never see again, feel enfolded around her, enfold withherself. "I'm a little fool, " she said through clenched teeth. "Of course you'llbe 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 onthe bed, pulled the sheet over her. "Why don't you go back to sleep, " he suggested. "Rest. I'll havebreakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the Edenbriefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning. " Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently hekissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try to holdhim. He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept her eyesclosed. 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 standin the doorway and watch him through the shower glass. He was rigidlyobeying the cardinal rule of E. H. Q. Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an E. Thewhole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend on it. How much of the future of the universe depended upon his notinterrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him to say. Hesighed. He thought of his own wife--shrewish, fat, coarse, alwayscomplaining. He wondered what she would do if he picked her up, carriedher to bed, closed her eyes with his fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'dbe speechless. He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about fiftypounds. * * * * * When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already there--McGinnisand Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade more cordial, a shademore interested than usual. They seemed, this time, to be looking at himas if he were a person, not merely a Junior E. When he turned away fromthem to greet the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked theclub-room privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faceswere frankly envious. Eden was to be his problem! He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through hisshower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment, he'd beennagged with the fear he might not be considered; that the grief of Lindaand her rise above it would lead only to anticlimax. By the time he'dgot to the club-room door, followed by his orderly, he had alreadyconditioned himself to disappointment. Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he wanted forbreakfast. "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 hisconstant 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, achasm they would make no move to bridge until they had earned theright. They seated themselves at another table, apart. "Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem, " McGinniscommented while orderlies placed food and drink in front of them. "Weought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?" "First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly. "Orperhaps 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, " McGinnissaid. "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 agenuine solo at all, just something any errand boy could do. In thatcase it wouldn't qualify you. You know that. " "Sure, " Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give realchallenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become an E. You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference, somethingthat required original thinking, the E kind of thinking. You brought itoff successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed what you'd done. Ifthey 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 somebodythought 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 mostintensive training the E's themselves could devise. He knew thatsometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve years chasing down jobswhich anybody on the spot could have solved if they'd used their heads alittle 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 thepress room of E. H. Q. These held their jobs by the difficult compromisebetween the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and their publishers'equal insistence upon sensationalism. Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like televisionwriters, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass bywriting down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; sincethe facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit the open space or timeslot; even these reporters had a difficult time of maintaining the usualodds--that there is only a twenty-to-one chance that anything said inthe newspapers or on the air may be accurate. But on this morning the press room was crowded. In spite of all effortsof journalism to stir up old animosities to make news, or to forcefactional leaders into rashness which could not be settled withoutviolence; the various states of world government insisted uponnegotiating ethnical differences amicably, and factional leaderspersisted in keeping their heads. There had been no world-shakingdiscoveries made in the last week or so; the public no longer believedthat changing a screw thread was exactly a scientific "break-through";no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as towork the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another'saberrations. In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to questioncirculation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a stronghate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as asummer shower, that might be magnified into a flood. EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally toCOLONY WIPED OUT. That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one injournalism. If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of thenews; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in thepress of today's new hate and panic. The public, with an established addiction to ever increasing daily dosesof sensationalism, and deprived of its shots through this dry spell, snapped out of its apathy to greet this new thrill with vociferous callsto editors, wires to congressmen, telegrams to the Administration. What are we doing about this colony that has been wiped out? Where isour space battle fleet? Who is going to be punished? It was an overnight sensation, and on this morning following the newsleak there could even be seen some secretaries to the writers for topcommentators and columnists in the crowded press room. Naturally these stood in little groups apart and associated only witheach other to maintain the literary tradition of proper insulation fromthe realities of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviouslyno first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not onlybecause of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his ownspadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit hiscapacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by thebias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult tomaintain author integrity when the facts did not support thesensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself insuch a position. Now two of these secretaries could be seen over in a corner of the pressroom exchanging their views, probing one another for information. Noone thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information fromsource for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies inwhat 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 hecan't arrest them for not doing what he wants, or for doing what hedoesn'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 twopowers, Russia and America. The people of the world got fed up, gave apox to both their houses, boiled over, formed a world government. Somehow the scientists got in their licks in the turmoil, pointed outthat scientists who have to confine their discoveries to what suits theideology 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, hadto 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 youdon't have to fight against restrictions, they aren't important anymore. At least not to an E. " "Guess that's why one of 'em pointed out that police are the major causeof crime. " "Whether he was right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson into a tailspin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped on thatsubject. 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 toughfor any politician to buck that. " "The public! You know as well as I do--they think what we tell 'em tothink, 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 thistime 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 agonizingreappraisal. " "Well, sure. A guy's got to eat. " 6 The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance ofsolidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, wherethe 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 theoffice and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness. "I am Bill Hayes, " he said. "Sector administration chief of the Edenarea. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules ofprocedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the scientists involvedin this problem have been up all night reviewing every known fact aboutEden. We ask the indulgence of the E's not only for the kind ofknowledge that may prove too little, but for any strain caused by tryingto 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 wedidn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failedto come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle untilhe has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to getsome idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. Itwould serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out torescue, and might prove the highest folly. " All over E. H. Q. , in the various buildings where anybody was directlyconcerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared here in theclub room. The tri-di screen wall would seem to join the room of theperson speaking. A pressed button signaled the desire to speak, and likethe chairman of a meeting, Bill Hayes decided whom to recognize. It wasa way to conduct a meeting of two or three thousand people as intimatelyas a small conference. "The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing, " Hayescontinued formally. He faded out his own office, and was immediatelyreplaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review of Eden was underway. With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references todocumentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial position ofCeti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II--popularly called, he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he preferred a little lesspopularizing 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 toleave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, theyclung to their exactitudes--like frightened little children in a chaoticworld too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, somethingsafe, sure, dependable. The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish theposition of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction. In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms ofthird-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found where theman said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly, that the essencemight be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closestattention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest hefind his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, afterall, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he laypeacefully 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. Didacticpedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, notvaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them. A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space tothe surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just soall the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed tobe humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance tochuckle with him. If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apologyfor this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worthbreaking up the review to oblige him. After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present hiscapsule of knowledge with excellent brevity. There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands ofislands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. Theislands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explainedthat Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universeexploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientistscould follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been leftfor future colonists to complete. He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzledby glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jetjockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solidsciences to keep up with the work to be done. A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with theinjection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence, and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have thegrant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to changethe human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead towardhumans with super-intelligence. Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that theEden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get that one outof the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions, indicated thatthey did not appreciate being frustrated, hampered, driven--but they didcomply. Back to Eden they went. The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area. Partly thiswas due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly, partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted thatthere was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over theglobe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Somedifferential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no realviolence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoeshere on Earth. "Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they could sendnews, then, " Wong suggested in an aside to Cal. "Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because it wasn'tsupposed to happen, " Cal said. Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew Wong had laid alittle trap to see how easily he might be lulled into a prematureconclusion. The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but only tothe extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked with a springierstep, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause nausea, even to theinexperienced. The oxygen content of the air, in fact the whole make-upof the air, was so close to Earth quality there were no breathingadaptations necessary. So much for generalities. He went on to document them with exactitudes. He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the distribution ofrainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air masses. Cal's doubtwas not appeased. Weather prediction was about on a par with race-horsehandicapping, and easy to explain after it happened. Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed their duetto the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists. A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the majortheme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion of the plantforms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems, roots, flowers. Achoir of zoologists joined their voices here to point out the largenumber of small meat animals, fish, and crustaceans--with the wholething sounding like a pean of thanksgiving. After two hours, the condensed information added up to a mostinteresting fact. In essence, due to quite _natural_ conditions--odd howmuch the scientists seemed to need stressing the word "natural"--Edenwas more favorable to easy human life than Earth! Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student or apprenticemight distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing question or so. Saythe range of easily possible conditions on any given planet was a scaleten miles in length. Then that area on the scale where man could existwithout artificial aids would still be less than a hair's breadth. Andnow to find a planet more nearly perfect for man than the one on whichhe evolved. .. . Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention? He decidedto nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the too obviousbrought out things not obvious at all. "How frequently, " he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do we find amass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve at right anglesto its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?" "It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of landand water masses, such as we have on Ceti II, " the first astrophysicistanswered. "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 flowingso beneficially?" Cal asked. "None yet discovered, " an oceanographer cut in. Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't beenand couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself andspoiled the effect of open-mindedness. "There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligencefor that, " the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a feat wouldrequire enormous engineering works. Such works under the ocean would bematched by comparable works on land, and would therefore show up in ouraerial surveys, however ancient and overgrown. " Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization, yes, thatwould have left traces. But what of some other kind? Perhaps a deep-seakind that had never come out upon the land? Never mind the argumentsthat such a civilization could not have developed--that was looking atit from the human point of view again. Had man grown so accustomed tonot finding comparable intelligence anywhere in the universe he hadbegun to discount, or forget, there could be? The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the prevalentanimals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in land animals higherthan a large rodent, no sea mammals at all, no fish larger than thetarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of primates. A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of minute lifeforms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again expound the oldtheory of space-floating life spores to seed all favorable matter, andthus develop similar forms through evolution, wherever found. Quicklyand tactfully Bill Hayes nudged him back on the track before theexpected storm of controversy could break out. Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one. Quite asidefrom the emergency of what might be happening to the colonists, therewas growing clamor from the people and pressure from variousgovernmental bodies to get off the dime and get going--rescue thosepeople, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the floodof telegrams. E. H. Q. Resisted the pressures in favor of doing aworkmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of ahaphazard show, but was mindful of them nevertheless. 7 Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial cannothelp but realize that "government by law instead of man" is a merepolitical phrase without meaning in reality. The ascendancy ofme-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in the human psyche thatabstract idealisms must always take second place where such ascendancyis threatened. Thus we see that the belly-crawler, meek and subservientto the judge, comes off with a token sentence while the man who attemptsto maintain his pride, his rights, his self-respect gets the book thrownat him. No practical attorney is unaware that the judgment of his case dependslargely upon who presides, the whims, the prejudices, the moods, theviewpoint of the judge; and that the law merely provides justificationfor 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 problemgave Gunderson's man the opening he had hoped to find. A hurried call tothe capitol and a brief conversation with Gunderson himself confirmedhis conclusions. Perhaps the E was above all law, and it might not beexpedient to challenge that right now, but immunity did not necessarilyextend to the Junior E. In view of the known ambitions of certain judges, it should not bedifficult to make a test case of this--whether the E's had a right tojeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an unqualified man tothe problem. A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, theapprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle of the Eextend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out did theAdministration of E. H. Q. Extend to substitute for government? How muchof 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 publicsentiment was crystallizing, or could be crystallized into placing humanwelfare over science procedures, now was the time. It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor therequest of the attorney general. 8 After lunch at E. H. Q. , the colonizing administrator took over thereview. The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviouslyfavorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeedthey had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactlynothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than onEarth. Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonistshad been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They weretemperamentally suited to the work. As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly aspossible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitiveecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of thisfirst colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do onlywhat any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible. In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had beenmore than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden oftheir complaint was that they found living too easy. They wereprofessionals, accustomed to challenge. They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred andthe planet given over to the second-phase colonists. They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was makingfarmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft, ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostileconditions. There had even been threats that one of these days theywould all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stoppedthem by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never gotanother assignment. He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Someorganisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, tomake their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until thesecond or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phasecolonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet couldbe opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning alittle chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredommight be just the very inimical condition they were having to test. Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfiedcolonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction fromtheir administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawingattention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps, but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treatedunfairly. This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let hisdisappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrativehassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior. Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the wholeof the problem. The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. Inthe center was a small mountain. It had been given the name of CrystalPalace Mountain because it was crested with an outcropping ofamethystine quartz-crystal structures in _natural_ pillars, domes, arches, spires. Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell awayfrom this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleyswatered by perpetual streams. It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain andthe sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named thefirst settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, andeverybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit ofknowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to theplanet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone wasreferring to it that way. "For exactitude, " the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course westill designate it as Ceti II. " As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progresspictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they hadstarted to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here theywere converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the firsthouses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship. Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earthseed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them fromEarth. A collection of community buildings came next in the series ofphotographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, witha collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it allas 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 normallyalso. The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. Hisdepartment would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms_not_ developed. _That_ would have been an abnormality calling forinvestigation. Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the commontemperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmitiesdeveloped and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, eachgroup considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all whodisagreed wrong. The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember theclassical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He standsupon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realizationthat he can see about the same distance in all directions. "Why, " he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center ofcreation!" His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was stillat the center of things. There could be only one conclusion. "Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the mostimportant event in all creation!" Still later comes another realization. "Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, arealso at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are notwith 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 ofdryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy, religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even hisscientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; thesupreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the centerof things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on theoutside, and therefore inferior. There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist leftthe generalities behind and came back to the issue. The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, forthere was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mineorganism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided intonations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in someother nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been ableto find to keep the nation from disintegrating. Another nudge. Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, asexpected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longertolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with therest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the nearridge to settle in an adjacent valley. Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out inclassical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyoneknew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man beenable to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed nocivilization at all. Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potentof all forces in driving him out to the stars. Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided hecould no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cuthim off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simplestatement. The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance ornot. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal courseof E. H. Q. 's daily work as they were received. They had been collated andextended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trendsaway from norm. There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as wellhave originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about asunusual 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, followingthe review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless humanexistence than Earth. " He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness fortake-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 anideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow. " "Not that so much, " Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept of evolutionis haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that far off. Probablythe colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep thinking that whenwe want to catch rats we set a trap with a better food than they can getnormally. " There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye. "You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch humanbeings?" 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 interruptthe thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors, who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stoodfacing the door. The orderlies looked to the E's for instruction. At anod 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, underinstruction from General Administration. We have been served with acourt injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior to the Eden matter. " Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment to have hischance snatched away from him. He should have gone immediately thereview was over, without waiting for any advice McGinnis and Wong mightcare to give. Now . .. McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door that openedon 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 jurisdictiontakes over, " Hayes explained nervously. "While the colonists areemployed by E. H. Q. , and under their direction, it is held they are alsoEarth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil authority feels it mustanswer for their welfare. " "I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of World Congresssome seventy years ago, " Wong said mildly. "The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the SeniorE; 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 beforethe court ran this way: That where there is no restriction upon the E inarriving at a solution, there is also no compulsion upon civilauthority to adopt that solution. They cited instances . .. Well, anynumber of instances. It seems . .. " Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes'sperspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, heslipped out the door. The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's requestquickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet. "Take me out to the Eden ship, " Cal said quietly. "You know where itis?" "Yes, " the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls and Calslipped into the seat beside him. They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear exit of the Ebuilding, down the maze of ramps and out across the landing field to theentrance of the ship. Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction, butnone were in evidence. As they drew up to the open door, he saw Lynwoodand Norton, pilot and engineer, standing just inside waiting for him. There was no strain in their faces to show they had received orders notto take off with him. He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly drove itback to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew would be the E'sorderlies. 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 addedwith a grin. "Of course, " the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed andreturned it. Apparently this E was human. It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where Louiesat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for the ship tolift clear. And still no command came over the radio to halt them. Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really felt that asimple injunction would stop everything, that the E's would notchallenge this encroachment? Was he playing some deeper game, allowingthe Junior to slip through his fingers in the hope he would louse up theEden rescue, add strength to the campaign to bring the E's back undercivil control--his control? Or had someone genuinely slipped? The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not come untiltheir second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit. Then it came fromspace 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 federalgovernment, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on ifhe ignored the order. To say nothing of any other punishment they mightchoose to hand him. "Keep going, " Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump as quicklyas you can. " "I am under orders to keep going, " Tom answered the police. If herefused 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 theintricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were workingas 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. "Notsuch a risk. " "Far as I'm concerned, " Tom answered laconically, "he's an E. I have tofollow his orders. " He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was an instantsilence. They were at the approach to the asteroid belt. "They can get us here, " Louie spoke up. "We have to give over controlsso they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the microsecond onthese 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 anexpressway out of the solar system, but . .. " "What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked. "Get over itinstead 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 tofigure it. " "Well, get going on it. " "There's stuff all over, " Louie explained. "Not just a band, like mostpeople think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too. Not sothick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a bunch oflittle jumps. " "We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie, " Frankreminded 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 youback. " "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. "Itake my orders from Space Control. " Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look out of acorner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to bother him. Hisother hand was speeding through the movements of manipulating theastrocalculator. Then he nodded his head, still not looking up, and theco-ordinates flashed in front of Frank. Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frankset up the pattern of the jump band. "I take my orders from the E's, " Tom answered in a voice that matchedthe 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 topick my way through this muck. " "We've got time now, " Tom answered easily. "Not likely they can find usout here, away from the regular lanes. " "Not unless we run across a prowl ship, " Louie said. "You know there'ssome smuggling, and now and then a shipping company thinks it can beatthe rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same thing we're doing. Theprowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're not the first ones to tryit. " "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 timesthe space police had made a fix on their position only too late to catchthem hovering there. There must have been some fix made and a prettycareful calculation of where they could go next, for as they neared theouter moons of Jupiter the radio crackled into life again. "This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take over. Wewill 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 disputebetween the attorney general's office and E. H. Q. We will not allow youto board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders todisintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhileyou can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those orders areconfirmed. " Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed. In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders from theattorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say, Lynwood, whatis this all about?" "Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who, " Lynwoodanswered. "I just work here, " he added tiredly. "Well, " said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in thecourts 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. Wouldthe attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior Eon board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one theydidn't expect to have called. Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's hands bydefying him, and getting that defiance on record was what the man hadwanted. Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than merely findingout what had happened to some colonists. Whatever it was, he'd betterfind a successful solution, because the attorney general was counting onhim to fail. And if he did fail, certainly the position of the Junior Ewould be altered, and possibly a deep thrust into the very heart of theSenior E position, as well. 10 Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was notrouble getting _to_ Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating theglobe while still in space. Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, theyhad no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain atits center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescopeviewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like adiamond set in jade. The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when theyamplified their magnification to get a close look at the Appletreevillage before dropping down to land. Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and hestuck 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 butvirgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old. There were splashes ofrolling meadows spotted here and there by other trees, untilled meadowssloping downward from the ridges to the river. And not a blemish norscar to show that man had ever landed there. "Fine thing, " Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get us clearacross the universe in great shape, and then you can't even find thelanding field. " But Louie was in no mood for banter. He wished Tom would go back andhold the manual controls of the ship instead of letting it hover onautomatic. He wished Cal would go back to his stateroom and think. Hewished Frank Norton would shut up. He wished they wouldn't all standover him, reading his charts over his shoulder. In irritated silence he reduced the viewscope dimensions to scale, andsnapped a picture of the whole island. He took the fresh picture, stillmoist from its self-developing camera, and laid it beside the chart. Wordlessly, for the benefit of them all, he traced his pencil over theoutlines of the chart and their duplicates in the picture. As incomparing fingerprints, he flicked his pencil at the points of identity. There were far too many to ignore. He poked the point of his pencil atAppletree where it was located on the chart. Then he picked out the samelocation 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 saidover Cal's shoulder. "You got us in the right place, Louie, but probablyin the wrong time slot. You've warped us right out of our own time, andEden hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe won't be for another millionyears. Maybe, back on Earth, man is just discovering fire. " "Yeah, " Norton agreed. "Or maybe in the wrong dimension. You and yourfancy navigation. Now you take a midgit-idgit navigating machine. Itwouldn'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 travelwere still purely theoretical. Louie ignored the ribbing with elaboratepatience. "You know what I think, " he asked seriously. "I think the whole thing'sa hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there. I'll betchathe colonists have pulled a whingding all the way through. " "There's a whole raft of pictures to show they were there, " Frankreminded him. "Pictures!" Louie answered scornfully. "You think they couldn't fakepictures?" He thought for a moment. "And where's their ship, theirescape ship?" he asked as a clincher. "They didn't like it here and havegone off somewhere else, and then covered up by sending reports andpictures on how things would have developed if they'd stayed. " There was a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal let thetalk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a modern oceanliner pulled into the harbor of New York--to find an untouched ManhattanIsland 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 couldhappen at any time. With a mind more open to acceptance of this, he hadfelt the run of shock sooner. For them, the shock impact was delayedsince their minds rejected the illogical as unreal. For him the humanshock came at once, and then, as E thinking took over, passed off. "Sure, Cal, " Lynwood agreed. It was a measure of their acceptance thatthey had quite normally fallen into using his first name. On the emergency signal it took less than three minutes to clear througheleven light-years to E. H. Q. --and then sixteen minutes for the operatorat 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'savailable?" "Hm-m, " Hayes answered. "Wong has picked up on a problem in the Pleiadessector, and left this morning. Malinkoff has given out word not todisturb him if the whole universe falls apart. That leaves McGinnis, who, I believe, is spending his time working on the defense against theinjunction by Gunderson. An example of the way petty restrictions canbring a fine mind down to trivial problems. But he said call him if youneed him. " "Please, " Cal said. "And you might stay on while I talk to him, ifyou're not busy. " "Sure, E Gray, sure, " Hayes answered. "I'm flashing the operator tolocate McGinnis. Seen anything of the police ship, yet? I understand oneis 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 islike at this end. " He sketched in the details, and heard a sharp gasp atthe 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 wholething is out of focus. I'm not a full E, and maybe their lives are moreimportant 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 ifwe've sent out a boy to do a man's job. " "Dismiss the Gunderson side of it, " McGinnis said drily. "It'sinconsequential to the main issue. As for that, I don't know any morethan you do. There's never been anything like this. Colonists have beenwiped out on other planets, sure; but what happened left traces. Thisone is an oddball, and I'd say you're as well equipped to handle it asanybody else. " "I don't--I don't understand this at all, " Hayes said in a worriedvoice. "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 comethrough. Then, if anything should happen to us, you'll have the recordup 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, " McGinnissaid. But the tone of his voice said he hoped Cal would shoulder thefull 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 onthe offer. I hope not. " "But do you _know_ anything is wrong?" Hayes asked incredulously. He washaving the same trouble facing the reality as the ship's crew. "If you were flying to Los Angeles and found only desert where the cityis supposed to be, you might assume something was wrong, " Cal answereddrily. "But I don't know what it is. Do you have a recorder set up, so Ican begin trying to find out?" "Yes, yes, E Gray, " Hayes said hurriedly. He was suddenly conscious thathe 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 onhim. Overhearing his conversation with Earth had sobered them, madereality come closer. "You think it might be a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air currentreflecting from another island and superimposing over this one?" Then heanswered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. There aren't enoughdiscrepancies. " "Let's pan down to the ground with the scanner, " Cal said. "Take it slowover the area where the village is supposed to be. " Glad to be doing something with his hands, Lynwood twisted the controlsto take them instantly, in magnification, to a distance slightly abovethe tops of the trees. The automatic pilot caused the ship to drift withthe rotation of the planet, keeping them in fixed relative position. They scanned the ground rod by rod. There were expanses of heavy treeand bush growth that they could not penetrate. Some of these trees grewwhere the pictures showed cleared fields, buildings, truck gardens, cattle pastures. "Those big trees didn't grow up in a month, since the last colonistreport, " Louie said positively. He still clung to his belief that it wasall a hoax. Cal made no comment. He was intent on the scanner screen. There wereheavy 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 manor his works. There was not so much as a board, the glint of a nail, nota furrow, not even the scar of a campfire. And no indication that therehad 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 thescanner fixed while they studied the animals. In two small herds, theanimals grazed contentedly near a patch of woods. "We're in the right time slot, then, " Tom said, with an attempt to pickup the spirit of treating it lightly. "They've been here. Else the cowsand horses wouldn't be. " "Funny thing about those horses, " Frank commented in a puzzled voice. "Igrew up on a farm. Those are work horses, but field horses always haveharness marks on them where the hair gets rubbed off or the skin getscalloused. If they used these horses for work, there ought to be collarand hames rubs on their necks. There ought to be worn streaks left bythe traces on their sides. There isn't. Far as the evidence shows, theymight 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 thegentle, beaching waves, then following the water line back down to digtheir 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 theridges bordering it. High on the crest of the ridge, the undergrowth wasless 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 themat the valley below. From the shape of his shoulders and back, the setof his head, they knew it to be a man. As far as they could tell, he hadno clothes on. Apparently they had caught him at the moment of hisarrival 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 eyesagainst the light from Ceti as he attempted to see into the dark patchesof foliage where the village ought to be. What he saw, or did not see, seemed to stun him. He squatted, as frozenas a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees, they saw himback away from the crest. Now they saw he did not wear even so much as abreechclout. When the height of the ridge concealed him from the otherside, he sprang to his feet and began to run, zigzagging in the mannerof an obstacle racer to avoid the bushes. "Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it, " Lynwoodcommented. "And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people wouldn't comeout 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 thelittle spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look behind him. " The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at thescanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus on theground. "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 sawin Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with life'slittle 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 otherside of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled, recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth oftrees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valleywith its own stream. They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tanskin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. Itwas their last sight of him. They watched for a while longer, but he didnot reappear under the green canopy of forest. "Just a guess, " Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope thecasualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes. "That'sprobably one of the dissident men who broke away from the main colonyand set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley. Apparently the samethings have happened to him as happened to the main colony, whatever itwas. "I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now worked upcourage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say whatever happenedwasn'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 voyeurspying on others--not with the kind of excitement the running man hadshown. Running away--that is. "Let's drop down into the atmosphere, " Cal suggested. "I'd assume it isbreathable 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 footprintsmaybe he isn't breathing, either. " He tried to make it a joke, to fighthis fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody laughed. Heswallowed hard and studied the charts again for no apparent reason. Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's face showedhim Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the progress of shock. Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's sense of responsibility forhis crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. Butthere was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line ofhis jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keepthem from chattering? However experienced a man became, however dependable the reactions, onenever knew how to predict reaction in the face of the completelyunknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked any of the men if theyfeared to take him down it would be an insult never forgotten. It wastheir job to take an E where he wanted to go. It wouldn't be the firsttime they had gambled their lives on the judgment of an E. "Oh-oh, " Tom exclaimed. "We have company. " He pointed to an indicator onthe panel. They swept the space around them with the scanner, and hovering off toone side they picked up another ship. They watched it for a while, as ithovered there. It made no move to come closer, no move to communicatewith them. "From its markings, " Tom said at last, "I think that's a specialinvestigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder whatthey're doing here?" "To make first-hand observation of my failure, " Cal said shortly. "Let'sget on with our work. " Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, thatwhatever 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 specialobservers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that they werebeing watched, that faltering uncertainty would be noted and scorned. Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air sampling and testing asthey lowered the ship by degrees. Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood handled the shipon manual control with ease, almost with flourish. But Louie's hands, gripping the edges of the chart table, still showed bloodless white atthe knuckles. Perhaps because there was nothing for him to do at themoment, he alone wasn't snapping out of it. The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readingsfor this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To completethe record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicatorwould carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not onlyMcGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group ofscientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges oftables, showed bloodless at the knuckles? To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tensenessthan being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship'sspeaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship. Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were atEden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He madeno comment. Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an airsample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletreeshould be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposedmirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick ofvision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from theground. "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 theresponsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor somuch to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders withoutquestion, 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 lessthemselves. But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground belowthem. He was frozen and unheeding. The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced outof 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 rampunfolded 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 protectionof some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them werecompletely naked. "You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out, " Calinstructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from theplanet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to helpme. " "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, alsoslowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces werebreaking 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 whirledaround. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There wasno ship. The three crewmen were completely naked. Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his ownbody. 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 quickglance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed anduncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to showwhere the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on theground and buried his face in his hands. Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield somewounded portion of his own body, instinctively. A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication withEarth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see theobserver ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seenthem, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what ithad seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that itwas including E. H. Q. In its report. Problematical that the attorneygeneral 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 waspersonally involved? For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to functionrationally, 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 removedfrom all this, still in the role of disinterested observer. The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists infront of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a stillpicture from a modernist ballet. Or a charade. Guess what this is! He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginningof 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, andmomentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done withtrick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motionpicture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discardedon the cutting-room floor. Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising amind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotentparent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creationof a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, sothat he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could nowplace responsibility outside himself. Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell ofenchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, thefirst lesson of E sharpened into focus once more. "Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and scienceif you do. " In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used thestatement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E. The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man becausehe is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in theuniverse that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limitedinterpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to theascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the solebasis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality. He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting thesephenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were notthe whole of reality, what then? Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of Escience, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only onenatural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because ofour 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 movementof the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward stepby step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read theknowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, hadpreviously happened to them. Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought theshelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. Therethey paused. It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportionsof the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, coweringbeneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch, uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves assmall and inconspicuous as possible. In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at theturning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began thepantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standingmen alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly, apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his bodyagainst his will. The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just thekind of dirty trick life always plays on me, " came back into his eyesfor an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace ofterror. 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 spokenin such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of theclassical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him underthe tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown. As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frankhalf-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legsbehave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement ofuncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther backinto sheltering protection of the deep forest. But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came togetherunder 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 imperishableimpression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be maderesponsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to surviveagainst all odds. "It figgers, " the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like thatfor 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 offthe urge to like dejection. "Then everybody's still alive?" he asked. "Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, andmostly from each other. It's a turrible thing. " He looked down athimself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame, " he added. "We've seennaked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess. " To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tellsomebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself. Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge ofresponsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently remindinghimself that he was a man. "I'm Jed Dawkins, " he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckonyou might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don'trightly 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 TomLynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just underthe weather right now. " "You should'a seen us when it first happened, " Jed said with feeling. "Ireckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" Hespread 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 thejob, and that's all we got left. " Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiarformality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation. "Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here, " Jed added with ashrug. "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 ifto reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at thepantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened. " "Might as well hunker down right here on the ground, " Jed said. "Oneplace is good as another right now. " The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted theground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from hislegs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will. "It is a poor greeting to visitors from home, " Ahmed spoke up, thencleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot evenprovide 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 beganrubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The twosticks flew apart and out of his hands. "Try it, " he invited Cal. Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He startedto rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out ofhis hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had notprovided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held thesticks 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. Hisastonishment at himself was a shock. There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind ofgets 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 unimportantto start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been goingon?" "Cain't explain it, " Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, andall . .. " "Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning wheneverything was normal. .. . " "Something else you should tell him, Jed, " Ahmed spoke up. He looked atCal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily, " he added. "Can'tkeep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm alittle surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation thislong. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more thatwe'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left youto your own devices without interest in you. Strange. " "Yeah, " Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right nowI feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like . .. Well, while I'min the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keepinterested. "Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a weekago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was aroundnoon. .. . " 13 It was one day around noon. Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get hisdinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be readyafterwards 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 anddidn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing thathad been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earnhis bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat forit on Eden. He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees inthe front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from therest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not sofar he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still farenough to give a man some space. The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen windowwhere his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy, peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing theflowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in thetrees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life likethat, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be. He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because thecommittee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up allgroggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn'tafford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap outsomething that was splitting the colony right down the middle. He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetableswere 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 enoughinsect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures wherethe colony's community stock grazed. The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinkingpond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of sometrees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying downin a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The greengrass 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, asthe city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She nevercould stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked outthis spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and somedim 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 gotrestless. 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, orcouldn'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 makea man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all rightfor ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slowdeath--almost as bad as living on Earth. Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybemore. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, andsee 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 easyliving. A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to growtall. Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching andwere even talking about maybe just staying on here after theexperimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operationso they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in anexperimental colony. And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normalto most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth couldafford to lose any. Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a LotusLand, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, gotplumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailingit back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get alittle black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick itout. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to followit. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earthfor a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idleright 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 toleave 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 tovote 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 tobe men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sureof it. Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was thetrouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind thecommunity together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and getalong when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves. It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his sympathieswere 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 gohe couldn't stop them. Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on out withoutthe total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E. H. Q. Would decide thatEden was too hard to colonize because it was too easy. Maybe they'dabandon the planet entirely. There'd be no more humans here, and no morecoming. That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump! He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, andhe looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else forhis own fault. There wasn't any hammock. At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly inthe direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standingthere on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not astove, 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 standright 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 lookingup in this direction. The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't anyhammock. There wasn't any house. There wasn't any village. He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where thevillage ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around asif 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 wasstill singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stoodout above all the rest. Still singing. Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind atree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody sawhim standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird. The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyondthe sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in itshangar, 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 wasa grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grovethey'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the treesbecause it had a peculiar shape. And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power sawfor lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to savethe 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 outwhere the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that wholearea of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only theyhadn'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 themilk, Jed. " He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so was she. Hereyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time like this to be worryingabout them fool calves getting out. It took all the comfort away fromhim. Her face was white, her eyes were dazed. "You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha, " he heard himself saying. "Andfor Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The committee's comingover, and you running around like that!" He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the hammockafter 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 waythings happened in a dream--even him and Martha running around naked. Heeven chuckled to himself. He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow afterall, because even in a dream it was his own wife that was next to himthere, naked--not some other man's. The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most of it. Hetook her into his arms, and she clung to him. Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him, and hewas dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any sheet in thehammock when he went to sleep. And he wasn't dreaming. "What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was shaking withfear, and her arms were wound around his neck so tight now he couldhardly 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, joshingher a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain . .. Well anyscientist would tell you that . .. " And then he stopped. He was prettysure the frameworks of science, as he knew them, wouldn't be able totell you. He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another, theyboth went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he guessed. You'dhave the feeling of sinking down and down, and there'd be nothing butblinding, swirling chaos all around you. Then you'd kind of come to fora minute, and there'd be the trees, the sky, the farm animals, the seain the distance. You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note, almostabsently, that people were getting to their feet now, some of themclinging together the way you and Martha were--and then back down intomental chaos you'd go again. That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun to snap outof 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 beingwatched!" Cal said nothing. "You know, " Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a trap? Thenwatching 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 satback and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance atthe adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everythingsaid--had been for hours. Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the Ecruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, allthe way back. He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how fardid that word experimental take you? Some experiment! He realized hisinterest was running deeper than that of a detached technician's concernfor well-operated equipment--mechanical, that is. Well, let it. Live alittle 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, andhoped nothing would go wrong this time. That astronavigator, LouieLeBeau, was probably right. Those colonists had turned nudist, and wereafraid to report what they'd done back to Earth! Well! He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud. Hedecided he hadn't. If _he_ were out there, instead of that E, _he'd_ make them put theirclothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset, causingall this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E. H. Q. Aroused, taking up the time of an E--just because they wanted to frolic aroundwithout any clothes on! If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should bespanked like irresponsible children. He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists who ought tobe spanked. ". .. E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp, " the pilot out therewas reporting. "He is walking toward the three colonists. Now they havestarted walking toward him. They do not seem hostile. They seem glad tosee 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 ofuncompleted 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 inso clear and strong? What's happened?" "I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know what'shappened, " the operator flared back. "The signal just stopped. That'sall. " There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line thathad been rigged to give direct connection of the running report toHayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped open the key, as ifhe were touching a rattlesnake. "What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly, withoutdiplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!" "I don't know what happened. I don't know, " the supervisor quarreledback. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing anything to theequipment. " He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which madethe far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe. "There's noreason 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'ssurface. 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 akey. 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 halfwaybetween a grin and a sneer of disgust. "They don't answer, " the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's thesame 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 toomuch of the same pattern as before. What could have happened? There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and moredetailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked inthe first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted tospeculate in that first one? But in the interests of time! The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now eachone of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge thathad failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knewwhat a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it. It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go outin a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be availablein an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leaveE. H. Q. Without a single E in residence. Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? Itshouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! Therewas something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only onein a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than onein a million could qualify as an E. A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believedwhat people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the peoplewho said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punishedhim, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if theycould. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled himdangerous to society. It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line betweenrebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were stillof 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 havefor constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission bythe punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by histeachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs. Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if aguy could just think. But what could have happened? He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out by theattorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably was--to theattorney general's office. Fine lot of good E. H. Q. Would get out ofthat. He was no fool. He knew the attorney general would gladlysacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it would give him a weapon tofight 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 couldhandle the situation by themselves! He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review, get iton record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of playing it safe. Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too concerned with his ownskin, too willing to play it safe. But an employee of E. H. Q. To make apublic criticism of an E! No, better play it safe. He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E McGinniswould talk to him. He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the planet andwait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to have happened while EGray's cruiser was out in space. It must be something connected withlanding, being on the surface of the planet. But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists! Why hadn'tthey signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out of their bushes andsignaled the danger? Surely they must know what it was. They were aliveand healthy, three of them at least. Why hadn't they used their stupidheads? But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space, or even intheir stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't they? Or did they?Sure they did. No matter what happened to the buildings, they must haveall sorts of equipment hidden under the trees, or in caves. Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing in therelike a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions. That'swhat came from sending out a boy to do a man's job. Maybe the attorneygeneral's office had been right in its attempt to prevent a Junior fromgoing. What was the use of all that E training, if the boy didn't haveenough sense . .. At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off, not go rushingin blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there was a _real_ product ofE science, the veritable dean of the E's. E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be followed by arescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And between an E out inspace and another on the ground, they shouldn't have any trouble inworking it out. He wondered if he should suggest that to E McGinnis assoon as the operator located him. Even if the grand, lovable old manthought 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. Hervoice was very small, thin. "Sir, " she began again. "I contacted EMcGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what hesaid, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could. " "Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed to giveher courage. "Sir, " she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you. Hesays 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 ofbothering people. He says not to waste any more of his time unless youcan come up with something he doesn't already know. He says he doubtsyou'd know what that was even if it hit you in the face. He said to tellyou 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 thingswere going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me yournotes so I can follow them carefully, " he told the operator. "So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the joint, " shemumbled, 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 scientistsjust as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself that he mustalways 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 havethe midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the individualcolonists 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 GeneralAdministration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps he should goout there, personally. 15 The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was, indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office--toGunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to besecret. All right for them to know, because they were very specialpersons, but the people should not be told. "Gray is coming out of the ship, " the assistant was saying. "He isstarting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Makinga grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the crew isn't coveringhim. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The three unclothed men aremoving toward him, spread out a little, crouching, obviously going toattack. 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 twoof them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the ramp, oranything. " "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, andjumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it. Ships don'tjust 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. Sameas the colonists. " "Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get theevidence. " "Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they werefully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could have undressedinside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed--and then he wasn't. Justlike 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 incourt. Have to make this airtight right from the beginning in case somestupid 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 weaponwe could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of bad scientificjudgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel compelled to rise up intheir defense--except, of course, those employed by the government. Buton a morals charge there wouldn't be one voice raised--fear of beingtarred with the same brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are alreadydiscredited. Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused againstus, but a morals charge--think of the backing we'd get from the women'sclubs, P. T. A. , all the pressure groups determined to dictate to the restof 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 exposurecharge. " "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 shipthey're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybewe can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, orat least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than justthat. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, in casethey've gone nudist. " "You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?" "Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd been gunningfor the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites. Hm-m, even if wedecided not to prosecute, we'd have the pictures in their dossiers, sothat anytime in the future, for the rest of their lives, if any of themgave us any trouble, we could quietly let them know what we've got, andthey'll just fold up and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years, too. " "Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir. " The assistant knew that alreadyGunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job he'dbetter let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the idea shouldbackfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly enough where it hadoriginated. "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 ifthey'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 isMcGinnis--that guy who's planning to fight us on that injunction. "Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could makepictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress sometime, takea bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody with a public reputationever fights a charge like that, guilty or innocent. They pay up orknuckle under to keep it quiet. Have, for hundreds of years; alwayswill, as long as a bunch of fat, old, ugly biddies, male and female, whonobody wants that way are viciously resentful that they can't have whatsomebody else is enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped withfrustrations they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're evenworse. 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 anyoffense. " "We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the televiewers. That'sthe whole point. We can't charge an E now, but wait until we get thingsstirred up on a morals basis. That law'll be changed in a hurry, becauseany legislator that tried to hold out against changing it would be drawnand 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 readyour history of how police enforcement officers got things back undercontrol 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 everymove. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back underpolice control, the way scientists were before, I've got to haveinformation. "And keep taking pictures!" 16 "After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship, everything, " Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourselfcrouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without anyclothes on--what then?" "That was the beginning of it, " Jed Dawkins answered. He looked towardhis two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the threecrewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at theedge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything, " he saidin retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun. " Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitiousemotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--andthereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they werefaring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, andyet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring somespecial horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled adry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossedit aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that nowhe could be more comfortable. One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree wasgentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort. Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; andperhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth, claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one wereclothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, becameless of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one couldsee instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged thanenticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the ideathat clothes encouraged immorality. "It was a hard thing to believe, " Jed was saying. "It wasn't like anatural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin'like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', atleast he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'dhear 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 ofperplexity. "Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kidsscreamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--onlyscared. " 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, wasreal swell. "Fact is, " he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect everseein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she'stryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on himfor not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind ofwomenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to makea jackass outta himself at the wrong time. " Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh fromLouie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and madeno apology about present company being excepted. "It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either, " Jed said, "where youbegin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up anypieces. " They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than thedisappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of thosethat are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and toolsto 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 ismaking hot coffee, maybe hot soup. That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolationfollowing a cyclone or other freak of nature. Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort ofhiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, whoinsisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get downto the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men tohelp him get things back in shape; she could help the other women takecare 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'tlikely to start up a passel of gossip. He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out frombehind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking downthat slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped wasthat nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them. Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thinghappened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else wasnaked 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 ofpeople, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things tothink about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. Shewas the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them overtheir hysterics. "Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon asthey got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what weneed most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt. " Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have apot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard herasking other women if any of them knew where there might be some driedgourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd, scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones intoit 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 herman already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, shewas a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, trained all herlife to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals somethingunexpected was always happening. Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, nowthat he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began tosettle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire orflood. 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 ahole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece offlint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set awad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks togetherwill do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to makethe powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of thosequartz 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 twosticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himselfwhat happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for alittle bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he musthave lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men weremore worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks ormonths, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came tobuilding a fire. One of the men tore it then. He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over hisshoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire. Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie wasstaring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation ofthat same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on withthe telling. Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having thesame feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked rightthere if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the waya man does, and makes himself ridiculous. He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women. That itwas in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the mistake oflistening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged Adam into eating thatapple 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'tlisten to no woman. Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased thetension a little. A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to starta little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves becausein a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or nowatchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. Thatcaused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, wasalready half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At leastthe world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About threehours had passed in what seemed like minutes. Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go alittle farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busyand knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--theway it often did. Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up asmall shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even withoutno tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in theground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright inthe ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together withvines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, liftthat onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch itwith 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 upagain. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, theonly tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even triedlashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings werelike things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out oftheir hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up againstraight. Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, allright, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves wouldscatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind. Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They triedit themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was alittle more forgiving. A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun gotlow. People began to realize they were getting hungry, and they began torealize 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 godown to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it totheir lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their facesinto the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know theycould. The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts toeat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to dependon seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it. The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage theirsupper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sortof hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then. By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people inthe wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. Thedarker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, thestranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people werestarting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the duskyou 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 hadhappened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with anexplanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, lookingback, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's acomfort. But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing itcan'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'shappening 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 wasone of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn'thave children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'dhave to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't havebeen surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than thegrown folks. The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animalstake shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort from the presenceand protection of the others. They bedded around on the ground, makingthemselves comfortable as possible. One thing you could say, experimental colonists might not be long on brains, the way scientistsare, 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 kindhardly notices. Far as endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad. Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars were asbright 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 tolook for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light in itsconstellation. It was still there. Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days until theregular 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 nothingflat. 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 upthrough the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they weren'tforgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be buzzing aroundlike a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers cocked and ready as soonas the message didn't get through. Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western movieswhere the U. S. Cavalry always got there in time. At least they weren'tbeing attacked by no Indians, somebody said. Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but nobody saidit. Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfortjust showed them how soft they were getting with easy living. Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a fewdays everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinkingthat even if there was some equivalent to the old-time Indians attackingthem, 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 whoslept better, awoke with a start; looked around themselves wildly, realized they were lying out in the open plumb naked in front of otherpeople; maybe wondered for an instant what kind of party they'd been tothe 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 takestime for folks to realize--things. Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship, areminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained. Seemed likeeverybody had woke with a determination to make the best of things andhelp one another do the same. Everybody was pitching in together to makethe best of things. Once they bit into the cool fruit on the treesaround them, even not having a hot drink to start the day didn't seem tomatter. Some of the women got together and decided it would help things get backto normal if the people covered their nakedness, or least parts of it. It might be all right just among themselves, they said, becauseeverybody was in the same fix and knew what happened--but how would theyfeel when the rescue ship landed and they had to walk out in front ofstrange men with nothing on? They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But when theystrove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns just slipped out andfell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the leaves together withbindweed. Same thing. The bindweed slithered out and fell to the ground. One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick mud from theriver 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 withoutleaves, just cover himself with mud. He lay down in a muddy pool and gothimself 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 ifthe men on the rescue ship had never seen a naked body before it wastime they did. What was so wrong about the human body, anyhow? They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and gave uptrying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to cover themselveswas a nasty kind of thinking, something to be ashamed of. Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists who'd brokenoff from the main colony and moved across the ridge were all right. Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What fools they'dall been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep a man from thinkingstraight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping like animals when, allthe while, just across the ridge there'd be houses and beds, fires andclothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humansalways stood ready to help one another in distress, differencesforgotten. In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where thedissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of theridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same asthis side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure. Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we stillweren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and joinforces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down andcongregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was thebeginning of something that would come later, something Cal would seefor 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 someways it was still like a dream. The way people were just acceptingthings, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered onetime an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man andthe 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 againand 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 manto knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing suchhardships, when all a man could ever want was right here. Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He remindedthem it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a primebunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worsethan this, and had ought to keep their wits about them. Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did itbecause it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because onceupon 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 whenthe rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn'tsee any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just goaway. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe thatyou'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 scrapesome kind of a message on the ground? They decided the smooth sand abovethe 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 nicestretch of white sand, and with a broken piece of driftwood they startedto scratch a message, just a big SOS. The driftwood wriggled out oftheir hands like a snake. Nobody could hold it. Several men triedtogether, made no difference. Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The furrowclosed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody tried piling upsand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no difference. Sandsmoothed right out again. Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't need to usea stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They had their barefeet, 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'tthere. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been walking. Nobodywas leaving any footprints. That's when they bolted in panic. 17 Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists hadspooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief. "Maybe that seems funny to you, " he commented. "After taking so muchwe'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not makingfootprints. " "Pretty fundamental thing, " Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware ofspoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down intofundamental being, a thing like that. " Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exchanged glances, as ifconfirming their belief that an E would understand their problems. Calappreciated the confidence expressed in that glance, but did not feel itwas justified. It was now pretty obvious that this was some alienco-ordinate system, never before encountered by man. But how to get holdof 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 thegods? Could there have been some factual basis for the gods? And not, aswas supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for thecontrol of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control? "It's been bad since then, " Jed continued. "Seems like once they gotthe wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in astampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They didn't even staytogether. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes fromeach other. "You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You couldpass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they wouldn'tsay a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, noteven breathin' lest you discover them. "After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselvestogether--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us nowhave got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is tohide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's why you didn't see us fromthe air. We was hidin' from you. "Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out ofthe woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't comethemselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to getsome clothes for them from the ship. "We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of thecolonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since thefootprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if theyalso saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don't know. " "There'll be another ship from Earth, " Cal said. "In a matter of fifteenor twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll knowwe didn't cut out through choice. " "Yes, " Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in themiddle 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 onanything from them, but an E. H. Q. Ship will be here soon, probably withan E on board--McGinnis. " "Don't know what good it would do, " Jed said despondently. "That shipmight 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 nothinghappened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to theship, 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'swhat 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 justlike 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 apesthrow sticks and stones. Even insects use materials. Basic differencebetween 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 anunderstanding of the nature of the problem, which is the first steptoward solution. But like the specter seen in twilight from the cornerof the eye, as soon as he tried to focus on the problem, the conceptdisappeared. Something about protoplasmic life using materials. Non-protoplasmic life? Could there be, and still meet the definitions ofwhat constitute life? As compared with our evolution, from its earliestbeginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of thephysical 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 awayfor future contemplation. He saw Dawkins and the other colonists looking at him defiantly, as ifinterpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about the tabooon tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them, to find out forhimself. "Other than the feeling of being watched, " he said carefully, "have youhad any sign, any other evidence or indication of somebody, orsomething? I know about the feeling, because I feel it too. And verystrongly, right now. But any specific evidence?" Jed Dawkins looked relieved at the confession. "Everything's the evidence. Everything that's happened. What moreevidence would you want?" he said. "One of the strongest arguments in favor of something, or some kind ofintelligence, " Cal said slowly, "is that nobody's been hurt. All naturallaw hasn't been canceled. We still have light radiation, heat radiation, gravity, water still flows, the planet still turns. Trees still grow andfruit still ripens. We can talk and be understood, using our tongues andminds as tools. We can still eat and drink. We can still know. "This is no chaotic co-ordinate system that defies all natural law. Thisis a deliberate manipulation of some natural laws to get a result. Manmanipulates natural laws by the use of tools and materials, but hedoesn't suspend them. Here, apparently without tools, at least tools wecan perceive, natural law is manipulated, but not suspended. "When the village disappeared, no one was hurt. A lot of people werecaught in awkward positions and fell, some of them several feet. Thereshould have been at least a few broken bones, pulled ligaments. Thereweren't. Our ship landed safely. We were a long time in the atmosphereof Eden, and for a few minutes there on the ground we were still usingtools of a high order. It was only when danger of real harm to us waspast 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 repeateddoubtfully. "Maybe it ain't something as nice and familiar as a cyclone, or a den of rattlesnakes, something you could understand, but you gotto admit we ain't been hurt yet. " It was as if he were arguing the pointwith his companions. "Something I've been noting, Jed, " Ahmed spoke up. "A discrepancy of asort that has me puzzled. Sun reckoning, we've been able to keep ourminds on this subject for over two hours now. As if, whatever this ismanipulating 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' somethingelse. 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 usto understand we are being watched over, cared for. That colonist youall laughed at was right. This is the first Garden of Eden, where manlived in complete innocence. Now man has been returned to it, to liveagain in complete innocence. You do not think straight because there isno reason. You will be cared for. Woe unto him who seeks to despoil itagain by seeking vain knowledge!" His eyes were wild, his face contorted with a mixture of exaltation andcondemnation. "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 Tomworked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them livingtogether again. By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of coloniststhat had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louiefrankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his time with thecolonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days, occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep thecows separated from their calves so the colonists would have milk todrink, but without ropes or corrals it was hopeless. He finally gave uphis attempt to husband the stock, and he too seemed content then tomingle with the colonists. The marked change in Louie could not be ignored, for he was not idlingaway his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelongpose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirtyend of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little bandof colonists. Or wandering through the forests and undergrowth calling, praying, comforting. Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man, seeminglydedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries beyond his power tocomprehend, reverted to childlike superstitious awe for an explanation. In the face of mystery or catastrophe, it takes a faith beyond thecapacity of most to continue believing that the universe has a rationalorder to its laws that can be comprehended if man persists. It istemptingly easy for man to revert back to the irresponsibility ofchildhood, assuming that the control of phenomena is in the hands ofthose stronger, wiser than he. It takes a strength, in the face of thistemptation, to go on believing that man _can_ know, that it is notmorally wrong for him to know. No blame then for Louie. Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that away fromE. H. Q. The crew become the E's attendants, and that their first duty isalways to the E. But separation from the other two men of his crew waslike the loss of a part of himself. To these also he had a duty. Hetried to solve his problem by alternating his time, spending part of itwith Cal, the remainder with his crew. Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge, andfound the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They hadseen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, theyhad climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, towatch the ship's landing--and its disappearance. Once they were found, it took little persuasion to convince them theyshould return to the other colonists, that differences of opinion meantnothing now as against the need of human beings to cling together in theface of catastrophe. But they too were having trouble thinking in a straight line, and eventhough they first appeared eager to join the other colonists, it tooksome doing to keep them all together and moving forward to cross theridge, to come down the other side, to assemble again at the site of thevillage with the others. And yet, within minutes, neither band seemed to remember that they hadever been separated. By the time they had returned, it was apparent that Louie was succeedingwhere Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the few hours thathad elapsed, the nucleus had tripled in size. Louie's wandering throughthe brush, calling, pleading with them to follow him, promising therewas no danger if they would allow him to watch over them, intercede forthem with Those who had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them fromtheir hiding places, calmed their fears. And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing them backinto the fold, one and two and three at a time, until, at last, by Jed'scount, all were there, no more missing. And yet, in spite of his success, there was a kind of hurt anddisappointment in Louie's eyes. For once back, they not only forgottheir fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced into aplacid herd, without memory of their panic. Without memory of theshepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned them to the fold. They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eatingleaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the riverto lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water todrink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as theylay on white sand or grassy slopes to dry, they slept contentedly. The phenomenon was not as startling to Cal as it might have seemed toothers. On Earth, gradually learned through trial and error, experimentalcolonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible, incisive, or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary. The basic test of a successfulcolonist was endurance--the endurance of hardship, privation, the stoicindifference to conditions of discomfort, monotony, pain, uncleanliness, immodesty--conditions which would send a more imaginative or sensitivetemperament into a downward-spiraling syndrome of failure. They were thekind of men and women who, on Earth in an earlier time, had been able toendure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease, desertheat; to make those first steps in taming a hostile environment, so thatmen with less endurance, but with more delicately poised and sensitiveminds, following them might then endure. It was characteristic of such men and women, even under Earthconditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for these things. They simply went, and endured, and tamed. Even on Earth, when the taminghad been done, they moved on. This was the stuff of the experimentalcolonist. Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in panic, butnow they had returned to their original purpose--to endure. It wasenough. Louie was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious aboutscientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal failure to becurious about philosophical implications. They listened idly to hisexhortations, but their eyes did not light with fire nor cloud withdoubt. 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 thebank of the river where the sky was clear and the stars beginning toshine. 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 ofanimals. So far there had been no attempt of the old males to drive theyoung 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 anddestroying lusty young male competition. They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed ableto continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject, while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to livefrom moment to moment, without concern for past or future. Except Louie. He too seemed able to hold his thinking in a straightline, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours, to haveturned wholly mystical, to a stronger belief that they were beingwatched and cared for by some higher power, and that this was for apurpose. 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 peculiarco-ordinate system, " he said to Tom and Jed. "But I must doubt it issupernatural in the way Louie interprets. Anything appears to be magicwhen we don't understand how it happens, and becomes science when wedo. " He paused, and looked at his companions' faces in the starshine. Theywere 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 ofintelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not prepared to doanything about it, you understand, " he said with a shrug. "Justtheoretically prepared that it might happen. It was a possibility. Nowit 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 somehuman 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. Iguess 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 backto 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 bearyoung in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever'sholdin' 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 theywould behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, because they was toodangerous to let run around among humans. That could happen. " "I haven't done much trapping, " Tom said. "But in zoos I've watchedanimals in cages. The thought always came to me that if they could thinkthe 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 highobstruction, but don't figger on it for a low one. Sometimes theyflutter up against it, or try to push it over, but most of the time theyjust walk around and around in the yard lookin' for an opening. " "Natural survival pattern, " Cal commented. "In the woods, in theirnatural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it took moreeffort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it took to walkaround the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior to walk aroundit. " "That's what they do with a low fence then, " Jed said. "They just keeptryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it likea high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use tryin' to tell 'em it'shigh, because they know it ain't. So they can't solve it. Seems awfulstupid, somehow, a little low fence, all that blue sky above 'em, andthey can't figger it out. " "I suspect that's what's happening to us, " Cal said. "We've alwaysargued that wherever there is matter and energy in the universe, certainnatural laws will prevail. We've learned ways to take advantage of thosenatural laws, to do certain things that will make them work for usinstead of against us. "We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise in theuniverse it, too, would have to become aware of these natural laws; thatit, too, would have to do these same certain things to take advantage ofthose laws; that because the laws and what to do about them would alwaysbe 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'tso important as its mental evolution--because that mental evolutionwould 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 toonarrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become so fixed in ourpattern of solving a problem we can't change, can't back off and takeanother 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 toextrapolate any co-ordinate system? I'm not criticizing, " he addedhastily. "Just asking. " "I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too based onthe relationship of things and forces to each other, too set in thenotion that only physical tools can affect physical things. We may belooking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore not able tounderstand why we can't walk around the obstruction in the usualmanner. " He stopped, and added with a shrug. "Stupid, maybe. Or like theturkey, the yard is so big that he never gets a picture of it as a wholeenclosure. By the time he's wandered down this side of the fence he'sforgot what he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thingtogether in his mind. That's my trouble, anyhow. So far, I'm not able toput 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 tounlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is to fly. " There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying naturallaw without any trouble, the three men broke off their discussion whenthey saw a bright flash high in the sky above them. All three knew whatit meant. Another E ship had arrived. No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists inacknowledgment of their space flare. If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still indaylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship, noequipment for direct communication. They may even have reasoned therewas no means of signaling with artificial light. But there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could not build afire. As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men couldanticipate what must be happening there. Right now they would beanxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring up likesignal 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 openspaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk they would have seen the menand women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might havespotted them in the infrared viewers which picked up the heatdifferentials and gave a fair approximation of shapes. The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their watches. Howlong, they would be asking, does it take those colonists, that E downthere, 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 directlyon him, and he waved his arms above his head. But apparently they hadnot spotted him, for there was no answering flare. At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to fifteenminutes, throughout the long night the flares continued to light thesky. "Talk to us, " the flares begged. "Surely you were expecting us. Surelyyou would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light could not rouseyou. " Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms, but itbrought no answer from the ship. In the darkness perhaps the equipmentwasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze bushes and trees alsoswayed with movement. Once there was a rustle in the brush, and in the starlight theyrecognized the figure of Louie approaching them. "This has got to stop, " he said worriedly as he came up to them. "Thatlight is an unnatural thing. It will anger Them. It is not meant for thepeace of Eden to be disturbed by any artificial thing. And if Theyshould turn Their wrath upon us--woe, woe!" His face was stricken in the light of a new flare, and as suddenly as hehad come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees to seek hispeople, be beside them, comforting them when disaster struck down. After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgmentof the flares in darkness. They watched for an hour or so, and thentried to sleep. The periodic flares continued to come throughout thelong night, as if now no longer pleading for acknowledgment, but ratherreassuring 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 continuingflares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn, Cal awoke andaroused his two companions, and by the time there was enough light forthe ship to see clear detail upon the ground, the three men were readyfor a better attempt at answering the ship's signal. They went up to the village site, where the colonists were sleeping inthe way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke Frank and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louie, too, awoke, heardthe plan, and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, tocommunicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath ofThose who wanted only the natural state here--a wrath still withheldbecause of superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far. In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating with him, gottogether enough colonists to carry out his plan. Good-naturedly, the colonists did as they were told, but with theattitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing they'drather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency about communicatingwith home seemed to have been washed from their minds. In a clear space, on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit or liein certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of ancient signalpatterns, 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, andlast three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped someone on theship 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 shipso bright that it could be seen in the morning sky. They had read hissignal, and now they began a series of flashes, of questions. "What'sgoing on down there?" was the essence of their questioning. It was well the ship had caught the first signal, for the colonists lostall interest in the game which had no point. They simply stood up andwandered away in search of their breakfasts from the trees and bushes. Louie, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge of themagain and shepherded them to a grove of trees where the fruit seemedespecially large and succulent. But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone. He laydown on the ground, himself, to move his arms in semaphore positions. But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he, too, could hardlycare less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement at suchchildish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one moremessage. "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 stageof growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment thathad held him back. What the ship did, in response to his warnings, nolonger mattered. If it landed, its personnel too would join thecolonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might circle thereindefinitely. Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence, unableto 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. Theirscience had nothing to do with him, nothing to offer him. Through it hecould not reach a solution. Somehow he knew that already. 19 "This time, " the communications supervisor said with all the firmness hecould muster, "this time there must not be any interference withcommunication. There just absolutely must not be!" "Well, it wasn't my fault, " the operator retorted with an exasperationthat blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E McGinnis said--thatthey could identify E Gray, and the ship's crew, and many of thecolonists, 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 notmy fault. I can't receive something that wasn't sent. " "I know, I know, " the supervisor said, and then, worried that he may begiving the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, "just watchit, that's all!" He chewed violently at his knuckle and glared at theoperator. "Just watch it, " the operator mumbled bitterly. "Just watch it, the mansays. And what will I watch if the message stops coming?" "Now, now, now, now, " the supervisor nagged, "we'll have noinsubordination, if you please. " And upstairs this time more than Bill Hayes, sector chief, weremonitoring the message. The top administrative brass of E. H. Q. Wereassembled in their big plush conference room used for arriving at majorpolicy decisions that sometimes affected the whole course of man'sprogress and direction in occupying the universe. They sat in worried silence as E McGinnis reported the two messages hehad 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-ordinatesystem. They looked at one another under beetled brows. They wondered, at firstprivately and then openly if that Junior E had blown his stack. They hadlooked at many a problem finally solved by the E's, but never before hadsuch a ridiculous situation come up. And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided toplace a curb on E. H. Q. 's freedom of movement, its control over theexperimental phases of planet development. The injunction to halt aJunior E from taking over the Eden problem fooled none of them. Theyknew that Gunderson wasn't concerned for those colonists out there, thathe was merely using the public furor to advance his own personal power. They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always andever to bring every phase of human activity under their control. Theyknew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation toarise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some lawwhich seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actualitybroadened 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 atstake. And E McGinnis had played right into Gunderson's hands. It was he whohad been the E influence in deciding to allow a Junior to handle theproblem in the first place. It was he who was standing off from theplanet, not landing and taking over things as he should. There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people on Edenwere in good health, and from their apparent actions, not evendistressed. This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for example. Didthe Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it? Must mean that. Whatelse could prevent it? But when an E, a real E, took charge in anexperimental colony, the colonists had nothing further to say about thematter. True, when the five-year experimental period was over and thethree-generation colonists took over a planet, then it came more undercivil control, and E. H. Q. Largely withdrew with the provision that itcould step back in at any time the problem seemed not to have beensolved after all. But while under the five-year test . .. The E was the final word, orshould 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 allowedthe 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, butwith the administration at E. H. Q. But maybe there were times when heshouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take a hand. After all, Graywas still a Junior, hardly more than a boy. Was it right that a mere boycould stop investigation by anyone except himself? Tell Earth with allits power and might what to do? Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E policy shouldbe made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing else, they must takea strong hand to prevent Gunderson from moving in with his policepowers. Protect the E science from Gunderson, or at least salvage whatthey might. Their conference over, they asked for a connection with McGinnis. "We assume you will land and take charge, E McGinnis?" the boardchairman asked. "Certainly not, " McGinnis snapped back. "An E has forbidden it. " "Well now, " the chairman argued, and sweat began to come out on hisforehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his judgment isn't matureenough for this problem. " "I have every confidence in Junior E Gray, " McGinnis said acidly. "Andevery E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you havedecided. Either the science of E means something, or it doesn't. Eitherwe have complete freedom to handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remindyou, gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the Eis a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want torepeat past disasters?" "If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"--the chairman was all but pleadingnow--"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take afirmer control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policydemands 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 inon any communication concerning my husband, and E McGinnis made it anorder before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I wantto be with my husband. " "I will not be landing on Eden, Linda, " E McGinnis said firmly. "An Ehas forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. Noother E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health, andapparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us againstlanding. 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 areason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason. E science has beendrilled into him until it is a part of his every mind cell, perhaps evenevery body cell. "I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him, becausecommunicating 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 unknownco-ordinate system, against the orders of two E's, which will become thecombined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. Ifyou wish to be on it, that is your decision. "I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E. H. Q. Cannot connectwith me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted anyfurther. I'm trying to think. " The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in avacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination to do something, anything. They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it wastheir duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help, and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as hismeans 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 menof science had always faced, the same mistake they had alwaysmade--leaving out the human element in a problem? The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man doesn't give atinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only thathe and his shall be ascendant at the center of things, the inevitable, the only possible goal of the non-science mind. Surely the history ofscience 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 herefused the see the clear danger to his whole structure--and their ownascendant position at the center of it--it was their clear duty toprotect him nonetheless. They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, aminiature E. H. Q. , at least to be there on the scene; to help in any waythey 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 showtheir concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully, without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendantat the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained thetradition of all non-science endeavors. "Gentlemen, " he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility notonly to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, inevery rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only aJunior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein liesGunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of thepeople. A Junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affectingthe life or death of fifty people. More than that, perhaps the futureprogress of mankind. "May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should becomenecessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in spite ofthe Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not beoverriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proved hiscapacity to merit an E. "We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gundersonon that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not theAssociate 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 theindividual gives way to immunity from civil control has never beenclearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but ithas arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the Estructure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhapsif we concede his control over the Juniors on down, we can maintain theimmunity of the Senior E. We must work to save at least that much. " The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, leftsix 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 messagesspelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in thesemaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were allthe 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 thenewspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there whomight interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals, separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positionswould do the job. Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have everyorganization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of otherson his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up inopposition. There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that Junior E, placehim under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise tolet the colonists off easy--he could easily show that it was theinfluence of the Junior which had made a disgusting orgy develop thereon Eden. Never mind that they were naked before the Junior arrived. Thepublic could always be razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence, its order and meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and politicaltrick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a goodone; for the public never bothered to know the whole context ofanything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix anattitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all thepublic 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 andinsignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits heformed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set uphis case accordingly. His own course was clear. His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equallyclear: _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 wanderaround, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing to let themget away with making such statements as "The police attitude toward thepeople is the major cause of crime. " It was something else, and time theE's found it out, for them to make any overt move to interfere with thepolice in their performance of duty. Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist. It wouldstrengthen his case. The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. Heproceeded 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 ofthe crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in tomake an arrest for an illegal act--and certainly running around starknaked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public, was an illegal act--would pay any attention to the request of anonlooker which amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"? There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the planet'ssurface, 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 theplanet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the E. H. Q. Floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden'satmosphere. 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 theship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions againstcrashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothinghappened. They lowered not another inch. A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever thisbarrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on theproper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They madetheir thrust with full speed and momentum. There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did notpenetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slickice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetrationwould not do. Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be preparedto put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the ship atfull power against the surface. And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they cameto a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without anyfeeling 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 secretfrom the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once hereleased that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out! "Why sure, " E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's ashield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what'scausing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught thespecimen 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 signalMcGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known, that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That havingcaught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trapto prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference withtheir experiment. From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he hadsignaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached fromordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring thefrantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walkingout of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense ofreality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in hislife, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to theconsideration of a problem. His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing heneeded, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing heneeded. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which ledinto this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some newconcept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel thatroad, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying todetermine his position in reality. He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulderthat 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 intothe shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them withtheir hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, asmany Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor andtexture as food. At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness, awareness of self as something separate from environment. There wasawareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and withthat environment. There was awareness of self always at the center ofthings, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme ofthings. But there was awareness of more. There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, inall his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise toreason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in hisenvironment which he himself could not do, then there must be somethingstronger and more important than he. To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant thatall things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be madesubservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would notassume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed. If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, whocould do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain thathe must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest hehimself be destroyed. So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributesmagnified. Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o. .. . Awareness carries with itits commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious andwillful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the onlyanswer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served theimportant need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could notdo, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higherbeings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would havedriven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not havesurvived 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 stopslooking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accordwith the answer. The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untoldmillions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solvethe problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyondthe 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 accidentoften, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he wasendowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environmentthat heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing hadnot become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, thefoolhardy questions then that demanded new answers. Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked byCopernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reasonfor its creation? He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was toonew, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for thenon-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-sciencedescended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised toachieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--tortureand force to make dissidents kneel in subservience. But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not beerased! 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 notyet been found. Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost todoze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing andthe laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more thanaccompanying music. The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovereduntil 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hungaround the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science alwayspersecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate somesubversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at thattime, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought. As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent hisvision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference, the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point ofview that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationshipto the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of theRoyal Society of London (1667)_. ". .. To make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art whichcan come within their reach . .. They have stud'd to make it, not only anenterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a businessof time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work. " He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on onearm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the mostsignificant sentence ever written by man. "They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, andpassions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtaina 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-sciencemethod of making its judgments prevail over all others. Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite ofall 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 partialanswer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Somethingtoo narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be leftbehind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal? What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a stillnewer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship toreality must man now discover before he could continue his journey downthe long road toward total comprehension? He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for itcontained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almostas if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval. For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of thecolonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men hadcaught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly, the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He layback down again, and stretched his cramped muscles. Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missedsomething, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, andhad forgotten in science. These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only tobe a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of eventhe day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, wastheir memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at onewith their environment--unaware. Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would theybe able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, theclouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in theirown 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 withthem. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himselfoff from the gods . .. Loneliness. Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose thenhis exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found? Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of explodingexploration, the questions of the artists were already findingthemselves woven into music, painting, literature. "Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there noneother than we who are aware?" The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still moreand more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, therecessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all otherssubservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. Thedominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was thatalso to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man, defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the verywillingness to live--and so died? What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--andlonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling thatapathy? Facing that dissolution? When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! Todiscover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at leasthope to discover it. For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation, the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who alwaysinterpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirelydifferent from the intent. Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were noother? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through thatclosed mind be made? All right. Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Theirframeworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all hisefforts? He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass thatsprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist andhis wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The manwas carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of hisrock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smilingfaces. "We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty, " the young mansaid. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty togive you one too. " At least they were being impartial. 22 When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, theflesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rockagain, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating. He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Theirlong patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight inoccupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, toprotect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he toowould be searching for awareness. But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did notmeet those terms. That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Caldid not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws, the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debriswhich prevented communication of awareness as They defined it? There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent uponthe tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception, psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development hadbeen made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physicaltools, man stopped looking for answers other than these? Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without theuse of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crudemanipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulationwithout them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaboratewirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to aprinted diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result? A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram toobtain the same result? But how? To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (forthe material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of thecurrent) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of thatdiagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because onethought of the diagram of a receiver? How? He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence toolow to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he waswalking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endlesscircle. Circle? Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of baresand at the river's edge. In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle wasprominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, ofevery time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to thecurrent methods of science. It played its part in the movement ofplanets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe. Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physicalscience comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form ittook, would know the circle. He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip ofhis 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 theinvisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of acircle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do youknow?" He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted thecenter of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to theperimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximatingthe radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wroteR². He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign. Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothedall its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. Theyunderstood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yetthere was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sandbefore 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 hecould not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It waspedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, withouttools, 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 nowsmoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what theymeant. He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3. 14159265. .. . " Again = changed to : . Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by hisstring of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. Theywere being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numberscould be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He lookeddown 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 aconstant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference betweenphysical science and psi science based in this insignificant differencein exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was anequation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the wholescience 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 thepossible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because wewere too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find thatanswer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent inunbalanced 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. Butwait. Before his eyes he saw the C² smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M"remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the lowfence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That wasthe ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But soall-inclusive as to be too vague for use. For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein'suse of C² in his expression. Some held that it was a product of histime, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physicswhere all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that itsinclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work, had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he insertedit into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of hisday could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of thingswithout orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject himentirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered thatmuch to their superstitions. The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, butemotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the centerof things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixedcave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when thechaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of afixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot thatwould 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 ofenergy to matter is variable. Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and theindependent variable of the function vary together. Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy tomatter. And then: "F(e, m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationshipbetween 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 asmuch 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 deepsigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols inthe sand. "They talked to _you_, " Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serveThem, 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'sshoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked downat the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is aninfinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity offorms to be taken by matter as you control the energy. " The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Calfelt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did notregret 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, absolutesthat would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt inhis youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them atissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then toscience--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations, making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock oflanding on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretationsagain--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief inyouth. Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They hadtalked. "Louie, " Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you hadsearched through the years for companionship, and thought you might havefound 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 theincredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more thanconquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would bepleasing to another intelligence? "We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found anotherintelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement?The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denialof it?" Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward thedepths of the forest. 23 For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement hadlost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their completeretrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which theyhad retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of theiridea-content no longer required its use. Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, theclarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed alwaysavailable when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought. Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts ofthe 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 wasthinking. And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gatheringhis 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 theold reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At nightthey turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown tofour, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright starsabove them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis, and from the E. H. Q. Laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship'sattempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and itsfailure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now andthen 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 inperson. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable tobelieve that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person totake charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable todo anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leaveit alone. Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal thereports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away andunrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the hauntingstrains of a song remembered from long ago. For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given thekey--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportionand you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and thedoor 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 hisjob as pilot. "Look, Tom, " Cal said one morning after they had given him the night'smessages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away someleaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign. " He scratched aformula in the dirt: "2 + 2 = 4" The = changed to : . Then to δ. Then through the series of variablerelationships. 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'tvariable. 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 tosay 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 proportionaterelationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would besolid, dependable. " "Not even the footprints under your feet, " Cal answered softly. "Not ahouse, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice ofproportion--and they aren't there anymore. " 24 Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show himthe lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of howto insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it isuseless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door. This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physicalscience, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of Escience. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "Whatif it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most boggeddown at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity ofsome other answer. Everyone knew the equation E = MC², but few could implement it to buildan atomic power plant. Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balancedequation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to becountenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though hemight be to consider something else. In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems andleaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of thestream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was takingcare of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alienphilosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of theirown weight. Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He wastoo well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physicalscience was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to considerthe unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exactnature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the otherside 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 thephysical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the Xfactor to keep reality unchanged. But how to do it still eluded him. At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to asolution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiringwas necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the wholewithout that aid, that music did not come through because in incompletevisualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And thelong history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalisticsigns and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibilitythat perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to controlphysical properties without the use of tools; that the development of aphysical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther alongthe direct route toward his goal. Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yetkept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he couldonly draw the right design. Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. Itseemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping theproblem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him. One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal PalaceMountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds ofthe mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blownaway? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the archesand spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them, strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead ofoutside it? In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm totry? He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who wouldcare. "There ain't no water up there, far as I know, " Jed said. "And you can'tcarry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mightypurty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover itsshipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not muchin the way of food growing there. So we never went back. " "The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered, " Calsaid. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding. But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I thinkI'll go. " "Well, " Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should loseyour bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, Ireckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. Wewon't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so youneedn'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 andeating 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 valleyfloor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradualdrawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became aravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers andripening 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, cooldrink 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 mostlikely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in termsof those tremendous, tortured skin folds of other planets. Hardly morethan a high hill in terms of those. Nor, as far as he could see, wouldthe 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. Thegods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although theymight not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain wasmore easily climbed, and therefore man would have been the more easilyconvinced after repeated explorations that no gods lived there afterall. Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the site ofheaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly, as man exploredthe earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat untilat last the whole idea was patently ridiculous? Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet--to what may man now turn inrapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all physical science, filledthe deep human need of these expressions? The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he intendedto follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him, atthe valley of the colonists below, and far down where the valley mergedinto 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 aflash 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 hadsuspected 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 inthe climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from allothers. And sympathetic and compassionate though he might be, theconfusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had hisearlier attempts to comfort Louie met success. Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear hismind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's tortured mindintended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Evena boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for thatwould be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodilyattack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable. He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it sweptupward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was notdifficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and provided clearspaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to hisbare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt nophysical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from thebranches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind intotrivialities. Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason outthe new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality. Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, amerging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, andappreciation. Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall thatthey obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they werereplaced 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 ofcrystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by thegeologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been brokenaway. They were complete, singularly unweathered. There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist orcolonist had ever passed this way. The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly andwithout consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemedto have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man'sstar-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he, alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed itas he was encompassed by it. Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valleyfloor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at anyinstant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would standrevealed. Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way throughhigher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeperamethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted notonly in the purples but into greens and reds and blues. As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above hecaught 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, yethis breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, norwere his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop andrest, 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 everyappearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still hewould rest no more than a minute, and always his head was turned to keepsight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to hisfeet; and slowly, step by step, begin his climb again. As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of theself-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guiltof imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moralsense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in theordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could beeither good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man'sinadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil, these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance orthreat to the ascendancy of me-and-mine at the center of things, and hadno meaning beyond that context. He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharpclimb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near tothe towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now hewalked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothicentrance. And stood transfixed in ecstasy. Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone andglass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, thesublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures wherelight from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled theair with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him. Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blendedsounds the ear could barely endure in rapture. As once, in childhood, he had stood in a grove of giant trees that lacedtheir limbs in gothic splendor above him, now again he stood, lost intime and space and being, lost in vision and in music which neither hadnor needed form nor beginning nor end. And knew it was a simple tool; Their concession to the mind of man, tobridge the gap between Their minds and his. Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floorand lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until theyseemed 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 coalescedfrom the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelledby gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crustover a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases, tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among thevibrating crystals one formed that was aware. Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first onlyill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains ofmolecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on anotherplanet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinityto other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked thedistinction here as in that protoplasm. As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, thesecrystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold--to food. Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals aboutthem, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupyatmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavageinto new individuals. What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does itappear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, andblunders blindly through its environment in search for condition morefavorable to its continuance. In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more thanthat. Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness ofme-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel, know? Aprotoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all possibility ofawareness in other kinds of growth because they are not a part ofme-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know awareness? Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on thatplanet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self. Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, andself-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of surroundings. Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time, awareness ofself and surroundings grew into awareness of wider peripheries, tosensing their world, its structure, its nature. Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other worlds, ofother stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly akin to thevibrating fields of force which compose the material universe, and thevibrations of fields of force can be altered. To change theirsurroundings to a more suitable environment through vibration rates ofthings led surely to negation of distance. To change from crystal formto fields of energy and back again combined with negation ofdistance--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 buttheirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the nature oftheir being their search was unconcerned with the outer shape of thingswhich could be changed by them at will, but rather with the innervibratory rate which would signal sentience, awareness. They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces. Water runsdown hill without knowing that it does, without the internal structureto provide the vibratory rate which would permit knowing. For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of ame-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to conceivethat other structures than the crystalline might have a form ofawareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must beacknowledged. For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystallinesubstance, protoplasm. On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated andspecialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex ofits organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the mostcomplex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside ofself. Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy! Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience incommunicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values oftheir kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind, they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturouspyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new lifeform that they too were aware--to communicate that the loneliness of onemight 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 inadapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in thedependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock. But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought somethingwhich they could share with this new life form. The rock could be atree! 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. Thismountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into anew and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valleybeckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not ventureforth. The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystallineforms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awarenesscomposed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes, security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awarenesscomposed 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 andstem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man thatdecomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause!Surely they must see that even the permanent rock changed slowly intodust, that the eternal sea was restless, never still; that stars movedin the vault of heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. Howdid they account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause? They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the seed groundinto meal, the moving animal shot down with stick or stone and stilledand changed to food, the moving of the smaller rocks, erection of adwelling made of poles and thatch to change environment for the maninside. Change, then, man knew; why fear the greater change, the easierone? Why tug and lift and strain to move the boulder from the path, whenall was needed was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance theequation of relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone nolonger barred the way? Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot theirown once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine, forgot tocredit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength to serve apurpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he could do. To see itlifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a greater strength thanhis, and purpose that he could not understand. And man fell to his kneesin 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 ifthat acknowledgment was not given. To survive by giving thatacknowledgment to a stronger one than he. Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew whenstrength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme away that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The oneinvariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs todiplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mineascendant is the aim and goal. To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy ofme-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness lower thanintelligence that they could meet in partnership. Instruct them, then. No joy or purpose in conquering them. No companionship in thesedisgusting grovelings. Show them the inner forces that controlled theouter shapes of things. Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer shape ofthings was no longer a consideration in their life; but for this form oflife, still dependent for that life upon the maintenance of materialform, no doubt the shapes and forms of things were paramount to them. Well then, show them the true relationship, sketch out upon the sandsthe diagram of how the forces that control the shapes of things areinterwoven, interact. Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape, and lo, aspring of water flowed from dry and barren stone. But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and form. Asacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw with finger inthe air or in the sand, protection from the evil forces that surroundedhim. The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man was notready 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, andtold of magic things and powers that these signs could do. To some, onediagram was shown, a way to build a house of stone that better weatheredthe storms of Earth. The house of stone became a holy place, a thingexisting in its own right, and not, as was intended, an example of oneuse to which this arrangement of forces might be put. And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time to slay ananimal for food. And men fought wars over these differing symbols, eachside determined to make its symbol ascendant over the other. Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the memorieslived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams beyond their outershape had gained sway. The racial memory persisted, and in the latterPleistocene epoch the knowledge of altering shapes through force of mindbecame a racial memory, coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated intoforms and phrases; but from generation to generation the memory was keptalive that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeedchanged by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had pointedhis finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped forth cladin jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed a mountain and avoice spoke unto him, and proof of this were letters cut in stone. Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some water into wine, and fed amultitude from five small loaves and fishes. A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the innermeanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward through theworld. But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner meanings, another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shapeand size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size andshape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture, which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the innervibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged inthe Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape andweight of things to make them change. It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essentialdifference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as thatbetween a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culturewhere everything has limit and every inch must be mapped. But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed intobird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown intotradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man couldmaster. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxforddefinition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties ofthings. Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, ledinevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specificvibration 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 sentientfields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnicdisplays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patientlythrough the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew hisweakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved hisstrength. For here he was among the stars. Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would notprostrate 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 telescopehe'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, butrather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on eitherside. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of theplanet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. Henever looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it thatthe god Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and thisphenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted asthe proof the legend was correct--and do incalculable damage toscientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enoughto 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 furtherfuel to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds andseared out possibility of rational thought. So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite the factthat some men know how to reach the stars. To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, ofbarren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden ofman's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, athing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify andclarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but neverthelesspresent centers of man's mind--some certain man who might be ready toreceive that thought. Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until manfound it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change ofcourse that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it forEarth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystaltool upon the mountaintop. The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds werefull of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhapsby now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act uponanother thing that they could not countenance the thought that thoughtcould act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, andrecorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches andits spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields offorce, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve hisstatus and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have daredadmit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments. Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought theirscience was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And toscientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more thantruth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth isparamount? Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked andlost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today thereare such men. So walk with care, and wait. The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled withmeasurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filledwith cabins, fields, food. Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured onthe one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not boundwithin the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely manmust know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thingthrough a description of its outer surface. But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical thingsto act upon other physical things, even in considering the universalenergy as a thing, he would look no farther. All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the conceptof the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, notool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let thathappen, 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 mindtrained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truthoutside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dustat each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit becausehe 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 toearth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough. The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he beundisturbed in his thought. Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that itwas 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 twointelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing tothe 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 himthink, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of thingsin only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realizethat he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed toexpress the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he canchange the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation hedesires. 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 readyto accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in hisown interpreting. Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation heconceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are, bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, thatcommunication 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, themovement 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 hiseyes. Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, ofyearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbrokenthread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always justbarely 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 andforces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally, to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance onehad 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 chancewas he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged ordead? But why wonder? A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a smalltest. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to theamphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forcesin 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 throughthe open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, thenfell to his knees, then groveled in the dust. "Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not knowyou were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I sawyou 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. Someshielding 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 warpedby the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood, seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept ofrelationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, theuntangling, 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, shockand all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get onback to the rest. " "Sure, Louie. See you there, " Cal agreed. A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bushto approach Jed and Tom. "You must not have gone all the way to the top, " Jed said when he lookedup 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, " hecontinued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day thateverything happened a couple of weeks ago. " "Yeah, about the same time of day, " Jed said, and looked at himcuriously. Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing adifference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal withpuzzlement 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 couldrestore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as itwas; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. Itbeing the same time of day would help the illusion that no time hadpassed, 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 quitea few loose ends to catch up right now. " He turned to Jed. "How aboutit, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put thingsback as they were?" In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmedhis jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at theapproach 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 themetallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences withthe calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walkingon the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. Theylooked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond. They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinkedtheir eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziestdream. 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 thehammock 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 orsomething, Jed, " she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I hadthe funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'lldream about being out in front of folks, all naked . .. " "That wasn't any dream, Martha, " he answered with a grin. "All thepeople in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon. They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people acrossthe ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thingyou know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find outwhy we didn't communicate. " "Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she askedcuriously. "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 boysfermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!" "Aw, now Martha, " he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of thehammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly. "Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front ofeverybody. " But she didn't struggle away from him. "Won't matter a bit, " he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in frontof everybody right along. " "Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've beendreamin', " 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 theaisle toward him. "Communication from the E. H. Q. Ship at Eden coming in just fine, " hesaid enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd betterrepair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation withthe supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spitehis face. "See that it does, " the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized theoverture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any moreinsubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitableperiod of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiositythat 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 upthe mountain. " "More of the same, I guess, " the supervisor said. "Nothing's happenedfor ten days. Nothing likely to happen, " he said. He turned and startedback 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 withyour work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business. " But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different waseverybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering aboutthe enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a differentanswer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance, and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved theyweren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure incrying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man'sknowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to knowwhat 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 aminute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bushto talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony. " "Can't have happened like that, " the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelvemiles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled theirreporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided toskip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going tobe complaints about this. " "Well, you were right here, " the operator said. "You were listening. Ididn'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 operatorsaid loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they reportit. " "They're faking the reports, " the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Haveto be. " "Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all thosebuildings in a couple hours, " the operator argued. "None of our business, " the supervisor cautioned. "We just take thereports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E. H. Q. Ship out there'sdoing. " "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 scanningall 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 thisreporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skipsand jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make thecomplaint first, " he said to the room at large. "Now you call me ifthere'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 wrotefuriously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw themin the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write somemore. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes? His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from avirtually 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 upthe 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 lineopened. "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, " theCaptain said without any preliminaries. "What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappearin deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybeshe took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself. " "We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. Youought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything outfirst. " "She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space, " Hayes quarreledback. "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 herstateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the wayanybody 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 EGray 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'thave been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks likewe're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else. " "Looks like it, then, " Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member ofyour crew, or one of the scientists, " he said. "Keep looking. Somebody'shiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems oddto me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and thenin ten days she'd . .. " "Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to theship, " the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all thepossibilities. Somebody she knew there at E. H. Q. " "Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact EMcGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that couldlead us to the guy who's hiding her. " "I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship, " the captainsaid. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection. Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutesto spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decidedirect intervention. "Now they want me to make contact with the other ship, " the operatorsaid to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinniswill 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 thattesting the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot wasquite explicit. "E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to bedisturbed, " 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 devildid they get into your ship?" "Don't ask me, " the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'msitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. Heleans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see EGray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got inthere. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nicequiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E. H. Q. If Iever do get back. " "Now, now, " the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simpleexplanation. " Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe werehard to find. "Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want tohear it, " the pilot said, and without apology cut off thecommunication. 28 Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroomhe would have seen still another visitor, another who had not enteredhis 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 ofshocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for himto adjust to them. He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the archof the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure thatsomehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and seewhat went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappearedfrom where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been ashock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operatorhad scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and thechief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could havebeen made that rapidly. He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, theE ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the peoplewere all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kepthis head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, toproduce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold tothat, otherwise . .. He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one moreeffort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot ordersto land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other twopolice ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land andtake 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 ofEden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs!Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Juniorhad proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupidjudge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But therewere those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He mighthave to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, butMrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the moralsissue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated hernasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release. It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and toldhim that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from theship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining inthe vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you fortaking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray. " The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. Hethought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Anyjudge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, andmaybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear toany lie to back up another police officer because he might need thefavor 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 ina chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, dartingfrantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up andswallow 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 minornuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. Asfar back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediatelypreceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture. "It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy ofany special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will growuntil man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy thatascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, andseverity of the police in controlling every activity of man thatdestroyed both the United States and Russia. "Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in worldgovernment. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself intrying to destroy you. "We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We havealready warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is themajor cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase ofpolice power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles. "Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain anorganized society without some special body to enforce thatorganization. It's a problem which the E's haven't solved, probablybecause we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behaviorof man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, becausescience doesn't know enough yet to take hold of it. "I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and yourorganization to solving this problem of how to build an organizedsociety 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 Escience 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 thesubject--"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory. " "Well, " Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two, youfirst have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it isdone, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn how toapply the theory. "When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The whole basisof science is that anybody can do it, anybody who follows thestep-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts that can't betrained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people, in possessionof this theory and method before they were wise enough to use it, andchaos. "But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods of scienceare also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most prefer theirfrustrations and their miseries to making the effort which will solvethem. For centuries the libraries containing all the accumulatedknowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free and open to anybody whowants to read, but few have bothered to absorb that knowledge and thatwisdom. "This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista ofknowledge, another point of view whereby we can change material thingsto suit our desire, is merely another advance of science. For science, after all, is no more than organized knowledge of reality. You can'tmultiply six times six until you've learned how to add two and two. Mostpeople won't bother. "It will be a long, long time before any significant number willgraduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become readyfor the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know how few E'sthere are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom, and selflessnessto use this new knowledge for the benefit of man instead of hisdetriment. "I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to makeme-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 theE's should have that much power over others. " Linda spoke up. "E McGinnis, " she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what happened tothe colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you think this willqualify him for his big E?" Both men burst into laughter. "No question of it, Linda, " E McGinnis said with a chuckle. "But I doubtit really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things none of the rest ofus can do, and the real question now is whether we have the right tocall ourselves Seniors until we can match his ability. " "I think, " Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E. H. Q. That thecolonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere else. I've left theshield around the planet so none can enter or leave without the eighthkey. I can unlock the door and close it again. Perhaps Eden shouldbecome 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 allthe colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden to what it waswhen I arrived--a place where no tools will work, no physical tools. Toqualify for E, a man will be put on the island, where he can live as welived, to work out the step-by-step method. When he's ready, he can gointo the thought-amplifier on top of the mountain, and if his mind isopen enough to the potentials he'll receive the final step ofinstruction--as I did. "One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they cantake 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 onit. " The chair where he had been sitting was empty. 29 Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watchedthe 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 acrystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible inprotoplasm. 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 everyinch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries, millennia. It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept has dominated allour 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. Fivehundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high school students inthe United States revealed that a third of them still rejected hisknowledge, still believed the Earth to be at the center of the universeand man was the reason why the universe had been created at all. But twothirds had adjusted. "More important, there _was_ a Copernicus. "Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are impatientfor fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality. He has much tooffer you, as you to him. Competition for survival has given himingenuity. "Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of theuniverse, but there _was_ a Copernicus who asked the question, 'What ifit isn't so?' "Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one _did_ ask ifthis might not be the key to the structure of the universe, the balanceof the stars. "Billions watched the stars, but finally one _did_ ask, 'What if thelight be curved instead of straight?' "There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to learn aningenuity which might surpass even yours. "This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still otherdoors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may needthese special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed this new roomof thought. "Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the methodthat can change things to fit the equation of desire, before one comeswho asks a question even you have not conceived. "But someday he _will_ come--and ask. " The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.