as a statue for long moments. Then, on hands and knees, they saw him
back away from the crest. Now they saw he did not wear even so much as a
breechclout. When the height of the ridge concealed him from the other
side, he sprang to his feet and began to run, zigzagging in the manner
of an obstacle racer to avoid the bushes.
"Looks like they've decided to make a nudist colony of it," Lynwood
commented.
"And faked the pictures so nasty-minded old Earth people wouldn't come
out to break it up," Louie persisted.
"Then why should he be so scared?" Frank asked.
"Notice that patch of bare dirt he's crossing?" Cal asked. "See the
little spurts of dust when he puts his feet down? Now look behind him."
The three crewmen leaned closer to look over his shoulder at the
scanning screen. Cal adjusted it minutely, to get a sharp focus on the
ground.
"No footprints!" Lynwood exclaimed. "He doesn't leave any footprints!"
The three of them looked at Cal, wide-eyed. Cal didn't like what he saw
in Louie's eyes. The habitual irritation and annoyance with life's
little petty tricks was gone.
The look had been replaced with fear, and something more.
11
The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope,
disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the other
side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled,
recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth of
trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valley
with its own stream.
They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tan
skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. It
was their last sight of him. They watched for a while longer, but he did
not reappear under the green canopy of forest.
"Just a guess," Cal said. He spoke matter-of-factly in the hope the
casualness would wash the fear and awe from Louie's eyes. "That's
probably one of the dissident men who broke away from the main colony
and set up housekeeping in this adjacent valley. Apparently the same
things have happened to him as happened to the main colony, whatever it
was.
"I'd guess it came as pretty much of a shock and he's just now worked up
courage to scout the main valley. From that I'd say whatever happened
wasn't very long ago, not more than a week. Just a guess."
None of the crew answered him. It was obviously not the case of a voyeur
spying on others--not with the kind of excitement the running man had
shown. Running away--that is.
"Let's drop down into the atmosphere," Cal suggested. "I'd assume it is
breathable from the fact we've seen earth animals and a human being.
Still we'd better make tests."
"Yeah," Louie said unexpectedly. "If the man isn't making any footprints
maybe he isn't breathing, either." He tried to make it a joke, to fight
his fear with self-derision. He didn't succeed. Nobody laughed. He
swallowed hard and studied the charts again for no apparent reason.
Cal glanced quickly from Tom to Frank. A look at Norton's face showed
him Frank wasn't very far behind Louie in the progress of shock.
Perhaps, as with himself, it was Lynwood's sense of responsibility for
his crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. But
there was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of
his jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep
them from chattering?
However experienced a man became, however dependable the reactions, one
never knew how to predict reaction in the face of the completely
unknown. Yet Cal knew that even if he asked any of the men if they
feared to take him down it would be an insult never forgotten. It was
their job to take an E where he wanted to go. It wouldn't be the first
time they had gambled their lives on the judgment of an E.
"Oh-oh," Tom exclaimed. "We have company." He pointed to an indicator on
the panel.
They swept the space around them with the scanner, and hovering off to
one side they picked up another ship. They watched it for a while, as it
hovered there. It made no move to come closer, no move to communicate
with them.
"From its markings," Tom said at last, "I think that's a special
investigation ship from the attorney general's office. Wonder what
they're doing here?"
"To make first-hand observation of my failure," Cal said shortly. "Let's
get on with our work."
Perhaps it helped the crew to realize they were not alone, that
whatever might happen to them would not only be heard on the E.H.Q.
channel back to Earth, but would also be seen by these special
observers. Perhaps it bucked them up a little to know that they were
being watched, that faltering uncertainty would be noted and scorned.
Perhaps it was the mechanical routine of air sampling and testing as
they lowered the ship by degrees.
Norton grew more relaxed, more sure of himself. Lynwood handled the ship
on manual control with ease, almost with flourish. But Louie's hands,
gripping the edges of the chart table, still showed bloodless white at
the knuckles. Perhaps because there was nothing for him to do at the
moment, he alone wasn't snapping out of it.
The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readings
for this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To complete
the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicator
would carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not only
McGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group of
scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges of
tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?
To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness
than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's
speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.
Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at
Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made
no comment.
Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air
sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree
should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed
mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of
vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the
ground.
"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.
Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.
"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the
responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so
much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without
question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them.
And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less
themselves.
But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below
them. He was frozen and unheeding.
The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out
of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.
"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."
Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp
unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank,
looked through the opening into the woods beyond.
And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening protection
of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them were
completely naked.
"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out," Cal
instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from the
planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to help
me."
"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own knowledge,
heroics might do more harm than good.
Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.
The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward him, also
slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces were
breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.
Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it happened.
He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him. He whirled
around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There was
no ship. The three crewmen were completely naked.
Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his own
body. He also was nude.
He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in front of him.
Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of despair.
Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet. A quick
glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and
uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show
where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the
ground and buried his face in his hands.
Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield some
wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.
A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication with
Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see the
observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seen
them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what it
had seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that it
was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical that the attorney
general would tell E.H.Q. what had happened.
Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to land.
12
A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was
personally involved?
For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function
rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze,
shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind,
there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed
from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer.
The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in
front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still
picture from a modernist ballet.
Or a charade. Guess what this is!
He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning
of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.
With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning,
darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and
momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with
trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion
picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded
on the cutting-room floor.
Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising a
mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotent
parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creation
of a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, so
that he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could now
place responsibility outside himself.
Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of
enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, the
first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.
"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science
if you do."
In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used the
statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E.
The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man because
he is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in the
universe that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limited
interpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to the
ascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the sole
basis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality.
He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting these
phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were not
the whole of reality, what then?
Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of E
science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only one
natural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because of
our ignorance, because we cannot apperceive the whole, then this, too,
is no more than another facet.
Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the movement
of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward step
by step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read the
knowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, had
previously happened to them.
Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought the
shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. There
they paused.
It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportions
of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering
beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch,
uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as
small and inconspicuous as possible.
In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at the
turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the
pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing
men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly,
apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his body
against his will.
The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just the
kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into his eyes
for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace of
terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage swamped in funk.
"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he had spoken
in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of the
classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him under
the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown.
As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank
half-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legs
behave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement of
uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther back
into sheltering protection of the deep forest.
But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came together
under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection? From what?
Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree, as if,
on a high place, he feared falling.
"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help it."
One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced,
spare-framed one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable
impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be made
responsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to survive
against all odds.
"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like that
for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin' all right.
Better than some."
Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders, fought off
the urge to like dejection.
"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.
"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and
mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at
himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen
naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."
To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell
somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself.
Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of
responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding
himself that he was a man.
"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckon
you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don't
rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here is Ahmed Hussein,
and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van Tassel. Manner of speakin',"
he amended. "He ain't no more miserable than the rest of us."
"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This is Tom
Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just under
the weather right now."
"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I
reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He
spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him.
"Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the
job, and that's all we got left."
Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar
formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.
"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a
shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."
"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him.
Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if
to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the
pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."
"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One
place is good as another right now."
The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the
ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his
legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.
"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then
cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even
provide a cup of coffee."
"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"
He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began
rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two
sticks flew apart and out of his hands.
"Try it," he invited Cal.
Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started
to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of
his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not
provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the
sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together.
Suddenly, he simply lost interest.
"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His
astonishment at himself was a shock.
There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of
gets you, doesn't it?" he said.
Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.
"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant
to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been going
on?"
"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, and
all ..."
"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning when
everything was normal...."
"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He looked at
Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he added. "Can't
keep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm a
little surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation this
long. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more that
we'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left you
to your own devices without interest in you. Strange."
"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right now
I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ... Well, while I'm
in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keep
interested.
"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a week
ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was around
noon...."
13
It was one day around noon.
Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his
dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready
afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch,
all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden.
Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and
didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that
had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earn
his bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for
it on Eden.
He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees in
the front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from the
rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not so
far he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still far
enough to give a man some space.
The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen window
where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy,
peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing the
flowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in the
trees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life like
that, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be.
He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because the
committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up all
groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn't
afford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap out
something that was splitting the colony right down the middle.
He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetables
were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here--plenty of rain,
plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the crops, not even enough
insect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures where
the colony's community stock grazed.
The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinking
pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of some
trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying down
in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The green
grass around them was so tall he could barely see their heads and backs.
His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it. Martha,
like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all you could see, as
the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She never
could stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked out
this spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and some
dim shapes of islands in the distance. Right nice.
Yes, it was all very peaceful--and tame.
That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got
restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets.
You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or
couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while,
maybe always.
On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make
a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right
for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow
death--almost as bad as living on Earth.
Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe
more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and
see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q.
that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy
living.
A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow
tall.
Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and
were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the
experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation
so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an
experimental colony.
And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal
to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could
afford to lose any.