Without wondering more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they seemed mirrored into infinity.

The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up, then down, clockwise, then counterclockwise, reminding him ... reminding him ...

... the internal structure of crystals....



25

Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases, tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the vibrating crystals one formed that was aware.

Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only ill-defined, perhaps no more than the awareness of acid chains of molecules that formed into non-crystalline viscid protoplasm on another planet across the universe. No distinct line of cleavage where affinity to other chemicals left off and sentient selectivity began marked the distinction here as in that protoplasm.

As with its cousin across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold—to food. Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy atmosphere those elements necessary to growth, to branching, to cleavage into new individuals.

What is awareness? At what point even in protoplasmic life does it appear? The amoeba avoids pain, seeks food, reproduces itself, and blunders blindly through its environment in search for condition more favorable to its continuance.

In the monotony of a purposeless existence, most humans do no more than that.

Must awareness, too, be defined in terms of the consciousness of me-and-mine? Defined only by what me-and-mine can feel, know? A protoplasmic growth feeling awareness, excluding all possibility of awareness in other kinds of growth because they are not a part of me-and-mine, therefore too inferior to know awareness?

Each crystal structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on that planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self. Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, and self-awareness took on that added growth of awareness of surroundings.

Through eons of time, and the mutations brought by time, awareness of self and surroundings grew into awareness of wider peripheries, to sensing their world, its structure, its nature.

Another mutant leap and there was comprehension of other worlds, of other stars. Theirs was a vibratory awareness, directly akin to the vibrating fields of force which compose the material universe, and the vibrations of fields of force can be altered. To change their surroundings to a more suitable environment through vibration rates of things led surely to negation of distance. To change from crystal form to fields of energy and back again combined with negation of distance—they too spread out and out among the stars.

At first it was enough. But awareness is never still. Questions form.

In all the universe were they the only sentient thing? Did any cry but theirs rise to the stars, seeking to know? Because of the nature of their being their search was unconcerned with the outer shape of things which could be changed by them at will, but rather with the inner vibratory rate which would signal sentience, awareness.

They found no more than unconscious interaction of forces. Water runs down hill without knowing that it does, without the internal structure to provide the vibratory rate which would permit knowing.

For long eras they too were imprisoned within the confines of a me-and-mine envisioning, and it took a major leap for them to conceive that other structures than the crystalline might have a form of awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must be acknowledged.

For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline substance, protoplasm.

On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated and specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex of its organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the most complex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside of self.

Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!

Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience in communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind, they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous pyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new life form that they too were aware—to communicate that the loneliness of one might now be softened by the presence of the other.

And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the dust.

His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay in adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.

But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought something which they could share with this new life form. The rock could be a tree! See!

And lo, the rock was a tree.

And the people were sore afraid.

For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so. This mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into a new and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valley beckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not venture forth.

The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystalline forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awareness composed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes, security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awareness composed of the inner vibration, the relationships of those vibrations, with outer shapes changed at will, and therefore meaningless.

Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes of things. The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed that became root and stem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man that decomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause! Surely they must see that even the permanent rock changed slowly into dust, that the eternal sea was restless, never still; that stars moved in the vault of heavens, warmth changed to cold and night to day. How did they account for changes in these outer forms if not by inner cause?

They changed the shapes of things themselves, these men; the seed ground into meal, the moving animal shot down with stick or stone and stilled and changed to food, the moving of the smaller rocks, erection of a dwelling made of poles and thatch to change environment for the man inside. Change, then, man knew; why fear the greater change, the easier one? Why tug and lift and strain to move the boulder from the path, when all was needed was to shift proportion in one tiny way, rebalance the equation of relationship with one slight thought, and lo, the stone no longer barred the way?

Too long ago, lost in the distant past, the crystals had forgot their own once-orientation of all other things to me-and-mine, forgot to credit it to man. To lift the boulder with one's strength to serve a purpose was within the ken of man, a thing that he could do. To see it lifted, moved, without his strength, bespoke a greater strength than his, and purpose that he could not understand. And man fell to his knees in fear and awe.

For man knew only one relation to all things—to conquer if he could, and force acknowledgment of superior strength and purpose. To kill if that acknowledgment was not given. To survive by giving that acknowledgment to a stronger one than he.

Man groveled in the dust, the only pattern of survival that he knew when strength beyond his own was shown. But even while he knelt, to scheme a way that he-and-his might find ascendancy in future days. The one invariable pattern persisting from the cave man dressed in furs to diplomat in striped pants, the only pattern possible while me-and-mine ascendant is the aim and goal.

To show another pattern then, the crystals aim. Ascendancy of me-and-mine was meaningless, belonged to orders of awareness lower than intelligence that they could meet in partnership. Instruct them, then. No joy or purpose in conquering them. No companionship in these disgusting grovelings. Show them the inner forces that controlled the outer shapes of things.

Once crystals, now divorced from hardened form, the outer shape of things was no longer a consideration in their life; but for this form of life, still dependent for that life upon the maintenance of material form, no doubt the shapes and forms of things were paramount to them. Well then, show them the true relationship, sketch out upon the sands the diagram of how the forces that control the shapes of things are interwoven, interact.

Before the kneeling men, the cabalistic diagrams took shape, and lo, a spring of water flowed from dry and barren stone.

But man saw only shape of diagram, its cabalistic lines and form. A sacred thing, a magic thing, a sign that he might draw with finger in the air or in the sand, protection from the evil forces that surrounded him.

The sentient fields of force withdrew. Too soon, too soon. Man was not ready for communication. Too soon, too soon.

But man did not forget, the memory lived on. And fathers spoke to sons, and made the outer forms of gestures, drew the cabalistic signs, and told of magic things and powers that these signs could do. To some, one diagram was shown, a way to build a house of stone that better weathered the storms of Earth. The house of stone became a holy place, a thing existing in its own right, and not, as was intended, an example of one use to which this arrangement of forces might be put.

And to some other man another diagram was shown, this time to slay an animal for food. And men fought wars over these differing symbols, each side determined to make its symbol ascendant over the other.

Deep within the Asian land where contact had been made, the memories lived on, and some of the meaning of the diagrams beyond their outer shape had gained sway. The racial memory persisted, and in the latter Pleistocene epoch the knowledge of altering shapes through force of mind became a racial memory, coalesced into cults of belief, degenerated into forms and phrases; but from generation to generation the memory was kept alive that once, when the world was new, the form of things was indeed changed by thought. This holy man, far away and long ago, had pointed his finger at a tree, and lo! a beautiful nymph had stepped forth clad in jewels and coins to make him rich. This hero climbed a mountain and a voice spoke unto him, and proof of this were letters cut in stone. Well-witnessed, this divine one changed some water into wine, and fed a multitude from five small loaves and fishes.

A kind of radiation of its own, always the cults who sought the inner meanings formed within that Asian land and spread outward through the world.

But out on the periphery, and not exposed to thought of inner meanings, another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shape and size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size and shape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture, which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the inner vibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged in the Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape and weight of things to make them change.

It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essential difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as that between a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culture where everything has limit and every inch must be mapped.

But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed into bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown into tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man could master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxford definition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties of things.

Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, led inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specific vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid to the senses, as a range of light vibrations translate into color through the eyes.

E = MC^2!

It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!

Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his strength. For here he was among the stars.

Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "Hello!"

But careful, perhaps he would.

There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that the god Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and this phenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted as the proof the legend was correct—and do incalculable damage to scientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enough to take no chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works, perhaps discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further fuel to the raging fires of superstition that consumed men's minds and seared out possibility of rational thought.

So walk with care. For superstition still is paramount, despite the fact that some men know how to reach the stars.

To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but nevertheless present centers of man's mind—some certain man who might be ready to receive that thought.

Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until man found it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change of course that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it for Earth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystal tool upon the mountaintop.

The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds were full of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhaps by now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act upon another thing that they could not countenance the thought that thought could act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, and recorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches and its spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of force, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his status and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared admit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments. Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought their science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And to scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more than truth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth is paramount?

Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked and lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today there are such men.

So walk with care, and wait.

The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled with measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filled with cabins, fields, food.

Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured on the one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not bound within the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely man must know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thing through a description of its outer surface.

But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical things to act upon other physical things, even in considering the universal energy as a thing, he would look no farther.

All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men, perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships, their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.

And they would know when that mind came.

The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough. The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be undisturbed in his thought.

Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move. Could he respond?

He drew a circle in the sand!

Joy! Ecstasy!

This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ... to find ...

Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he desires.

Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself, for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his own interpreting.

Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are, bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that communication might be direct.

He holds the key.

He knows the lock.

He finds the door.

Show him the one small step remaining—the diagram, the design, the movement of the forces of his mind.

To turn the key.

Unlock the lock.

Throw wide the door.



26

As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his eyes.

Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train, the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.

And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally, to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law. No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.

How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or dead?

But why wonder?

A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.

He was standing outside the entrance arch.

With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.

"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep. But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One. Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."

"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.

As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood, seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the untangling, straightening of thought.

Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.

"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on back to the rest."

"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.

A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush to approach Jed and Tom.

"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon. Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."

"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that everything happened a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him curiously.

Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with puzzlement on his face.

"There's something important about it being around this time of day, Cal?" he asked.

"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had passed, nothing had happened."

Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.

"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"

"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things back as they were?"

In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the approach of the drill.

It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.

The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences with the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond. They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest dream.

Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together, and feel the shock, and wonder.

Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.

"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."

"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon. They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing you know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find out why we didn't communicate."

"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet. You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"

"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.

"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.

"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front of everybody right along."

"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been dreamin'," she said.

"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha," he cautioned.

"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.



27

The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the aisle toward him.

"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite his face.

"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones—after a suitable period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity that got the better of his desire to discipline.

"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him. He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up the mountain."

"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started back down the aisle toward his own office.

"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."

Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.

"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."

But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance, and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know what he was not meant to know.

The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments, to listen frankly.

"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."

"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to be complaints about this."

"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."

"All right, all right."

"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."

The supervisor's eyes grew round.

"Can't be," he exclaimed.

"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report it."

"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have to be."

"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.

"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's doing."

"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.

There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.

"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning all over, trying to find him."

The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.

"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.

An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?

His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.

"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up the aisle.

"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once," the operator called out. "Something very important."

"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."

But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed, tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.

"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line opened.

"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal. "What now?"

"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the Captain said without any preliminaries.

"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."

"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out first."

"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"

"That's—ah—that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said. "A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man. Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray. Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E Gray on the surface of Eden."

"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain," Hayes said accusingly.

"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."

"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then in ten days she'd ..."

"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."

"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could lead us to the guy who's hiding her."

"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board my ship," the captain said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.

Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide direct intervention.

"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis will talk to him."

"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.

"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.

The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was quite explicit.

"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin, in conference."

"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil did they get into your ship?"

"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I ever do get back."

"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were hard to find.

"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the communication.



28

Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered his ship by any normal means.

Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda. He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive, darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him to adjust to them.

He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have been made that rapidly.

He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to produce a miracle such as this—but it was science. He must hold to that, otherwise ...

He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and take custody.

But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.

He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in control of Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs! Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals issue—when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.

It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the ship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in the vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you for taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."

The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the favor returned tomorrow.

Without concrete evidence ...

He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship, confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and swallow him—perhaps wishing one would.

"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly, ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.

"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that destroyed both the United States and Russia.

"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in trying to destroy you.

"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.

"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an organized society without some special body to enforce that organization. It's a problem which the E's haven't solved, probably because we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behavior of man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, because science doesn't know enough yet to take hold of it.

"I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and your organization to solving this problem of how to build an organized society instead of destroying it."

The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.

E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and immobile. But E science had inured him to shock. He waited because it was E Gray's show, and he was letting Cal handle it.

"Where is he now?" McGinnis asked when he saw the empty chair.

"Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth," Cal said with a grin. "Our boy has a few things to think about."

"You've explained the theory back of all this"—McGinnis changed the subject—"but I still find it incredible. It's still just theory."

"Well," Cal said, "theory comes first. Even to add two and two, you first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it is done, but that still won't get you four. You've got to learn how to apply the theory.

"When I first found I knew how, I was pretty concerned. The whole basis of science is that anybody can do it, anybody who follows the step-by-step method. It doesn't take any special gifts that can't be trained. I had visions of a world, a universe of people, in possession of this theory and method before they were wise enough to use it, and chaos.

"But when I thought it over, I stopped worrying. The methods of science are also open to all. But few bother to learn them. Most prefer their frustrations and their miseries to making the effort which will solve them. For centuries the libraries containing all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of mankind have been free and open to anybody who wants to read, but few have bothered to absorb that knowledge and that wisdom.

"This new key we have that unlocks the door to another vista of knowledge, another point of view whereby we can change material things to suit our desire, is merely another advance of science. For science, after all, is no more than organized knowledge of reality. You can't multiply six times six until you've learned how to add two and two. Most people won't bother.

"It will be a long, long time before any significant number will graduate through all the normal seven steps of E science to become ready for the eighth. Some of the E's will master it, but you know how few E's there are. And the E's have enough restraint, wisdom, and selflessness to use this new knowledge for the benefit of man instead of his detriment.

"I suspect that one has to be graduated beyond the desire to make me-and-mine ascendant over others before he can absorb this knowledge."

"Maybe that's my trouble," McGinnis said slowly. "I've been thinking, all along, of how much power this gives the E's. Wondering if even the E's should have that much power over others."

Linda spoke up.

"E McGinnis," she said, "Cal has solved the problem of what happened to the colonists, why they didn't communicate. Do you think this will qualify him for his big E?"

Both men burst into laughter.

"No question of it, Linda," E McGinnis said with a chuckle. "But I doubt it really matters to E Gray, now. He can do things none of the rest of us can do, and the real question now is whether we have the right to call ourselves Seniors until we can match his ability."

"I think," Cal said slowly, "we'd better recommend to E.H.Q. that the colonists be withdrawn from Eden, assigned somewhere else. I've left the shield around the planet so none can enter or leave without the eighth key. I can unlock the door and close it again. Perhaps Eden should become the next step for the E, the next hurdle he must cross.

"When I've sent my ship and crew back to Earth, and we've removed all the colonists, it might be a good idea to restore Eden to what it was when I arrived—a place where no tools will work, no physical tools. To qualify for E, a man will be put on the island, where he can live as we lived, to work out the step-by-step method. When he's ready, he can go into the thought-amplifier on top of the mountain, and if his mind is open enough to the potentials he'll receive the final step of instruction—as I did.

"One by one, as the E's shake free of their present projects, they can take this next step."

"I'm not working on any project right now," E McGinnis said hopefully.

"I'll be right back," Cal said with a grin, "and we'll get started on it."

The chair where he had been sitting was empty.



29

Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watched the interplay of lights until he felt communion come.

Rapture! Joy!

Question?

"Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more.

"You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with a crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible in protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way.

"But we have come up.

"You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives every inch of the way, endure the setbacks lasting for centuries, millennia. It is no wonder that the me-and-mine-ascendant concept has dominated all our thought, and does still. Without it, we'd not have survived at all.

"It takes time to outgrow it, to learn we can survive without it. Five hundred years after Copernicus, a survey of the high school students in the United States revealed that a third of them still rejected his knowledge, still believed the Earth to be at the center of the universe and man was the reason why the universe had been created at all. But two thirds had adjusted.

"More important, there was a Copernicus.

"Don't sell man short because he's slow to learn, and you are impatient for fuller, deeper exploration of the truths in reality. He has much to offer you, as you to him. Competition for survival has given him ingenuity.

"Once all learned men believed the Earth to be the center of the universe, but there was a Copernicus who asked the question, 'What if it isn't so?'

"Millions of men watched apples fall to the ground, but one did ask if this might not be the key to the structure of the universe, the balance of the stars.

"Billions watched the stars, but finally one did ask, 'What if the light be curved instead of straight?'

"There is capacity in man, this protoplasmic life, that had to learn an ingenuity which might surpass even yours.

"This is not the final door in the corridor of thought. Still other doors, on down the corridor, are yet to be explored. And you may need these special gifts of man to open them, as he has needed this new room of thought.

"Be patient. A million or a billion may come here to seek the method that can change things to fit the equation of desire, before one comes who asks a question even you have not conceived.

"But someday he will come—and ask."

The lights danced faster now in patterns of delight.

THE END