Chapter III: Part 3

The tests showed normal atmosphere. It checked exactly with the readings for this altitude established by the surveying scientists. To complete the record, Cal repeated them aloud each time so the open communicator would carry the information back to Earth where, by now, not only McGinnis and Hayes would be listening, but probably a group of scientists as well. Perhaps their hands, too, gripped the edges of tables, showed bloodless at the knuckles?

To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.

Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made no comment.

Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the ground.

"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.

Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.

"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them. And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less themselves.

But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below them. He was frozen and unheeding.

The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.

"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."

Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank, looked through the opening into the woods beyond.

And while they looked, a man came from behind the screening protection of some shrubbery. He was followed by two other men. All of them were completely naked.

"You three stay inside the ship until I signal you to come out," Cal instructed. "If anything unusual happens to me, stand off from the planet until help can come from Earth. Don't be foolish and try to help me."

"You're the E," Tom repeated. When a man is outside his own knowledge, heroics might do more harm than good.

Cal stepped through the exit and walked slowly down the ramp.

The three colonists seemed in no panic. They walked toward him, also slowly, obviously in attempt at dignified control. Yet their faces were breaking into broad grins of relief and welcome.

Cal stepped off the ramp, took a step toward them, then it happened.

He heard breathless grunts of surprise and pain behind him. He whirled around. The three crewmen were lying awkwardly on the ground. There was no ship. The three crewmen were completely naked.

Cal felt the stirring of a breeze, and looked down quickly at his own body. He also was nude.

He turned back to face the colonists. They had stopped in front of him. Their joyous grins had been replaced by grimaces of despair.

Behind him the crewmen were in the act of getting to their feet. A quick glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the ground and buried his face in his hands.

Tom and Frank stood over him, in the way a man would try to shield some wounded portion of his own body, instinctively.

A fact obvious to all of them was that their own communication with Earth had been shut off. In this daylight they could not see the observer ship hovering out in space, but its occupants had no doubt seen them, seen what had happened. It, no doubt, was telling Earth what it had seen--the attorney general's office, at any rate. Doubtful that it was including E.H.Q. in its report. Problematical that the attorney general would tell E.H.Q. what had happened.

Cal hoped the observers would have enough sense not to try to land.

12

A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was personally involved?

For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze, shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind, there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer.

The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still picture from a modernist ballet.

Or a charade. Guess what this is!

He felt laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning of hysteria, and the impulse was washed away.

With that portion of detached curiosity he watched his mind functioning, darting frantically here and there for rational explanation, and momentarily taking refuge in irrationality. It was all being done with trick photography! Such a sudden transition could take place in a motion picture, a transition from reality into a dream sequence lying discarded on the cutting-room floor.

Reversion to the primitive, accounting for the phenomena by devising a mind more powerful than his own. The childhood view of the omnipotent parent, reality's disillusionment, the parent substitute, the creation of a god in his parent's image without the weakness of his parent, so that he might go on in perpetual irresponsibility since he could now place responsibility outside himself.

Or this was a fairy story in which he lived. This was the spell of enchantment. This was magic. And at the first concept of magic, the first lesson of E sharpened into focus once more.

"Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science if you do."

In that odd, detached portion of his mind he deliberately used the statement as a foundation. Upon it he reconstructed the science of E. The universe and all in it is logical, logical at least to man because he is part of that universe, of its essence. There can be nothing in the universe that is wrong, or out of place, except and only as the limited interpretation of man who sees a force in terms of a threat to the ascendancy of himself-and-his at the center of things. This is the sole basis of morality, and prevents man's appreciation of total reality.

He had been trapped in the first concept, and was accepting these phenomena as a statement of Eminent Authority. But what if this were not the whole of reality, what then?

Once begun, his mind progressed rapidly through the seven stages of E science, and in the seventh he found rationality. If there is only one natural law, and we see it only in seemingly unrelated facets because of our ignorance, because we cannot apperceive the whole, then this, too, is no more than another facet.

Perhaps it was this which broke the spell. Perhaps it was the movement of the colonists. They were moving, withdrawing, walking backward step by step. Their faces were masks of despair, and in them Cal read the knowledge that what had just happened to him, his men, his ship, had previously happened to them.

Slowly they backed away, backed out of the open space, sought the shelter of a great and spreading tree at the edge of the clearing. There they paused.

It was a return to ballet, a gravely executed change in the proportions of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch, uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as possible.

In the same grave choreography he turned to look at his crew. And at the turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly, apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to his body against his will.

The old flash of an expression which seemed to say, "This is just the kind of dirty trick life always plays on me," came back into his eyes for an instant, and he tried to grin. But the attempt was a grimace of terror. He cowered back down at their feet, his courage swamped in funk.

"Let's get him under the tree," Cal said, and wondered why he had spoken in such a low voice, almost a whisper. That, too, was a part of the classical pattern of fear, to make no noise. As was getting him under the tree, an animal's instinct to hide from the eyes of the unknown.

As the four of them approached the tree, with Tom and Frank half-carrying, half-dragging Louie--and he still trying to make his legs behave, support him--the colonists made a fluttering movement of uncertainty, as if to bolt, to run in panic, farther and farther back into sheltering protection of the deep forest.

But they stood their ground, in acceptance. The seven men came together under the protecting branches of the tree. Protection? From what?

Louie sank down gratefully, and clutched the trunk of the tree, as if, on a high place, he feared falling.

"Sorry," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just can't help it."

One of the colonists answered first, the tall, leather-faced, spare-framed one. Stamped on his face was his origin, the imperishable impression of the West Texan, grown up in a harsh land that can be made responsive to man's needs only through strength, his will to survive against all odds.

"It figgers," the man said in his quiet drawl. "We've all been like that for days, maybe a week or more. Lost count. You're doin' all right. Better than some."

Cal drew a deep breath, consciously squared his shoulders, fought off the urge to like dejection.

"Then everybody's still alive?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, sure. Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess."

To talk, to hear himself talking, and that to strangers, to tell somebody about it, seemed to restore some confidence in himself. Something of quiet dignity came back over him, a knowledge of responsibility for leadership. He straightened, as if silently reminding himself that he was a man.

"I'm Jed Dawkins," he said. "Sort of the kingpin of the colony, I reckon you might say. Mayor of Appletree, or what was Appletree. I don't rightly know if I'm mayor of anything now. This here is Ahmed Hussein, and this miserable hunk o' man is Dirk Van Tassel. Manner of speakin'," he amended. "He ain't no more miserable than the rest of us."

"I'm Calvin Gray," Cal answered. He indicated his crew. "This is Tom Lynwood, Frank Norton, Louie LeBeau. They're all good men. Just under the weather right now."

"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him. "Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the job, and that's all we got left."

Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.

"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."

"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him. Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."

"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One place is good as another right now."

The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.

"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even provide a cup of coffee."

"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"

He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two sticks flew apart and out of his hands.

"Try it," he invited Cal.

Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together. Suddenly, he simply lost interest.

"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His astonishment at himself was a shock.

There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of gets you, doesn't it?" he said.

Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.

"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been going on?"

"Cain't explain it," Dawkins said. "Sort of hoped you bein' an E, and all ..."

"Maybe if you told me just what happened, started at the beginning when everything was normal...."

"Something else you should tell him, Jed," Ahmed spoke up. He looked at Cal, and explained himself. "We don't think easily," he added. "Can't keep our minds on anything for more than a minute or so. In fact, I'm a little surprised that we've been able to carry on the conversation this long. From the way we've been behaving, I would have expected more that we'd have wandered away back into the woods before now--simply left you to your own devices without interest in you. Strange."

"Yeah," Jed confirmed, "I was thinkin' that, too. Funny thing. Right now I feel like I could tell the whole yarn. I feel like ... Well, while I'm in the mood I'd better git it said. Don't know how long I can keep interested.

"Well, there we were, one day, seems like it ought to be about a week ago, give or take a couple of days. Anyway, I remember it was around noon...."

13

It was one day around noon.

Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch, all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden. Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was ordained to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and there's no reason to sweat for it on Eden.

He was lying on the hammock that was stretched between two big trees in the front yard of his house. The house was set a little way off from the rest of the village, oh maybe five hundred yards more or less, not so far he couldn't be handy when he was needed by the colony, but still far enough to give a man some space.

The domestic sound of rattled pots and pans came from the kitchen window where his wife Martha was washing up after dinner. It was a drowsy, peaceful time. Honeybees they'd brought from Earth were buzzing the flowers Martha had planted all around. A bird was singing up in the trees above him. A man ought to be pretty contented with a life like that, he remembered telling himself. Ought to be.

He felt like taking a nap, but made himself keep awake because the committee was coming right over, and he didn't want to wake up all groggy, the way a man does when he sleeps in the daytime. Couldn't afford to be groggy because the committee was all set up to scrap out something that was splitting the colony right down the middle.

He remembered looking out at the fields where the grains and vegetables were growing, thinking how easy it was to farm here--plenty of rain, plenty of sun, no storms to flatten and ruin the crops, not even enough insect pests to worry a man. He looked out at the fenced pastures where the colony's community stock grazed.

The horses had eaten their fill and were ambling up from the drinking pond, getting ready to take a siesta of their own in the shade of some trees at the corner of their pasture. The cows were already lying down in a grove of trees and were sleepily chewing their cuds. The green grass around them was so tall he could barely see their heads and backs.

His house was on top of a little hill, knoll you might call it. Martha, like himself, had been raised in West Texas where all you could see, as the city feller said, was miles and miles of miles and miles. She never could stand not being able to see a long ways off, and she'd picked out this spot herself. They could see all the valley and the sea, and some dim shapes of islands in the distance. Right nice.

Yes, it was all very peaceful--and tame.

That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets. You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while, maybe always.

On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow death--almost as bad as living on Earth.

Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q. that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy living.

A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow tall.

Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an experimental colony.

And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could afford to lose any.

Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a Lotus Land, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, got plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailing it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get a little black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick it out. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to follow it. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth for a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idle right now because there weren't enough experimentals to go around.

They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another job too. Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them than living here.

Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half wanted to leave right now. That was what the committee was going to decide today. He'd done some checking around, and it looked like they were going to vote to go. He'd also checked with them who wanted to stay permanently, and it looked like, in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to be men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sure of it.

Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was the trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind the community together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and get along when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves.

It would mean deserting the planet entirely. Even though his sympathies were with the ones who wanted to go, Jed felt there was something wrong, real bad, about deserting the planet. Still and all, if they voted to go he couldn't stop them.

Maybe Earth would let the three-generation colonists come on out without the total test period. But maybe not. Maybe E.H.Q. would decide that Eden was too hard to colonize because it was too easy. Maybe they'd abandon the planet entirely. There'd be no more humans here, and no more coming.

That was when he hit the ground with a solid thump!

He first thought the hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, and he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else for his own fault. There wasn't any hammock.

At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly in the direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standing there on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not a stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.

And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!

His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to stand right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter with her anyhow? He peered quickly down toward the village to see if anybody was looking up in this direction.

The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't any hammock. There wasn't any house.

There wasn't any village.

He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where the village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around as if they'd fallen down.

And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.

And so was he! He'd just realized it.

It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the tree was still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stood out above all the rest. Still singing.

Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind a tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody saw him standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird.

The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong, real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't there. Nothing.

For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong direction. He'd got turned around or something in the confusion, because there was a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grove they'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the trees because it had a peculiar shape.

And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power saw for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to save the wood for furniture because it was real pretty. That was the tree, there on the edge of the grove.

He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that whole area of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only they hadn't, because that was virgin forest, too.

Maybe he'd gone insane? He felt a flood of relief. Sure, that was it. He'd just gone insane, that was all. Everything else was all right.

"The calves have got loose to the cows and they're going to take all the milk, Jed."

He turned around and looked at Martha. If he was crazy, so was she. Her eyes showed it. Her words showed it, at a time like this to be worrying about them fool calves getting out. It took all the comfort away from him. Her face was white, her eyes were dazed.

"You got some dirt on your cheek, Martha," he heard himself saying. "And for Pete's sake, woman, put on some clothes. The committee's coming over, and you running around like that!"

He thought he had the solution then. He'd fallen asleep in the hammock after all, while he was waiting for the committee, and he was dreaming. Of course, he ought to have known all along. This was just the way things happened in a dream--even him and Martha running around naked. He even chuckled to himself. He must be a pretty moral kind of fellow after all, because even in a dream it was his own wife that was next to him there, naked--not some other man's.

The fool things a man can dream! Might as well make the most of it. He took her into his arms, and she clung to him.

Must have got the sheet tangled around his throat to choke him, and he was dreaming it was her arms. But there hadn't been any sheet in the hammock when he went to sleep.

And he wasn't dreaming.

"What's happened, Jed?" she whispered. Even her whisper was shaking with fear, and her arms were wound around his neck so tight now he could hardly breathe.

"Now, now, Martha," he cautioned. "Don't you go getting hysterical."

"What has happened?" she asked again.

"I don't know," he said. They were both talking in low tones.

"It's some kind of a miracle," she whispered.

"Now there's a woman's thinking for you," he chided her fondly, joshing her a little. "Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ... Well any scientist would tell you that ..." And then he stopped. He was pretty sure the frameworks of science, as he knew them, wouldn't be able to tell you.

He guessed that while they stood there clinging to one another, they both went a little nuts. It was sort of like drowning, he guessed. You'd have the feeling of sinking down and down, and there'd be nothing but blinding, swirling chaos all around you. Then you'd kind of come to for a minute, and there'd be the trees, the sky, the farm animals, the sea in the distance.

You'd look down toward the village, and make a mental note, almost absently, that people were getting to their feet now, some of them clinging together the way you and Martha were--and then back down into mental chaos you'd go again.

That went on several times, he remembered, before he'd begun to snap out of it a little.

"But the funniest thing of all," Jed said, and looked at Cal quickly, penetratingly. "I had the feeling all the time that we were being watched!"

Cal said nothing.

"You know," Jed explained. "Like catching an animal in a trap? Then watching it, to see what it will do?"

Cal nodded, without speaking.

"It was just another crazy thought, I guess," Jed said deprecatingly. "Plumb crazy."

But, clearly, he didn't believe it was.

14

At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The operator sat back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance at the adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everything said--had been for hours.

Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the E cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, all the way back.

He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how far did that word experimental take you? Some experiment! He realized his interest was running deeper than that of a detached technician's concern for well-operated equipment--mechanical, that is. Well, let it. Live a little once in a while. At least dream.

The department supervisor hovered near the back of the operator's chair, breathing down his neck. He gnawed at the knuckles of his hand, and hoped nothing would go wrong this time. That astronavigator, Louie LeBeau, was probably right. Those colonists had turned nudist, and were afraid to report what they'd done back to Earth!

Well!

He looked around guiltily, wondering if he'd exclaimed it aloud. He decided he hadn't.

If _he_ were out there, instead of that E, _he'd_ make them put their clothes back on, on the double. Getting everything all upset, causing all this trouble, getting everybody excited, all of E.H.Q. aroused, taking up the time of an E--just because they wanted to frolic around without any clothes on!

If they were going to act like irresponsible children, they should be spanked like irresponsible children.

He wondered if there were any young pretty female colonists who ought to be spanked.

"... E Gray has just stepped off the landing ramp," the pilot out there was reporting. "He is walking toward the three colonists. Now they have started walking toward him. They do not seem hostile. They seem glad to see us. My crew and I are still at our stations, ready for ..."

Silence.

The set simply didn't register anything more except that faint sigh of uncompleted force fields in space.

"What now? What now?" the supervisor pushed the operator to one side, and barely restrained the impulse to cuff him on the side of the head. "Now what did you do? Why did you meddle with it when it was coming in so clear and strong? What's happened?"

"I didn't do anything. I didn't meddle with it. I don't know what's happened," the operator flared back. "The signal just stopped. That's all."

There was an imperative flashing of the signal light on the line that had been rigged to give direct connection of the running report to Hayes's office. The operator hesitated, then flipped open the key, as if he were touching a rattlesnake.

"What's happened down there?" Hayes complained abruptly, without diplomatic softness. "This is a very crucial point!"

"I don't know what happened. I don't know," the supervisor quarreled back. "The signal just stopped coming. We weren't doing anything to the equipment."

He looked up at the continuously changing tri-di star map which made the far wall appear to be a view into a miniature universe. "There's no reason for an occlusion," he said to Hayes. "And the set here is alive. It must be at the other end."

He turned to the operator, and said loudly, "Bounce a beam on Eden's surface. Just see if any booster has gone out between here and there." Most of it was making a show of efficiency for Hayes.

"Here we go again," the operator mumbled to himself, and pressed down a key. The returning pips showed the signal was getting through to Eden.

"Pilot Lynwood! Pilot Lynwood!" the supervisor nagged into the mike. "Speak up! Do you hear me?"

The operator sighed deeply. His panel partner grimaced something halfway between a grin and a sneer of disgust.

"They don't answer," the supervisor said at last to Hayes. "It's the same as before."

"Here we go again," Hayes groaned, but not only to himself. "All right," he said wearily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the channel open. Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if signal resumes."

But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It was too much of the same pattern as before. What could have happened?

There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and more detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to speculate in that first one? But in the interests of time!

The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now each one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew what a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it.

It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go out in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be available in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leave E.H.Q. without a single E in residence.

Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? It shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! There was something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only one in a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than one in a million could qualify as an E.

A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believed what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the people who said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punished him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if they could. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled him dangerous to society.

It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were still of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a base. Ah, there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the inquisitiveness, the skepticism; and at the same time teach him the basics he must have for constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission by the punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by his teachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs.

Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if a guy could just think. But what could have happened?

He understood there was an observer ship out there, sent out by the attorney general's office. Why wasn't it reporting? Probably was--to the attorney general's office. Fine lot of good E.H.Q. would get out of that. He was no fool. He knew the attorney general would gladly sacrifice the whole lot of colonists, if it would give him a weapon to fight E.H.Q.

Why hadn't E.H.Q. sent along an observer ship also? These cocky E's! Probably hadn't thought it necessary. Always ready to assume they could handle the situation by themselves!

He wondered if he dared voice that criticism during the review, get it on record. He thought about it, and decided in favor of playing it safe. Maybe that was the trouble. Everybody was too concerned with his own skin, too willing to play it safe. But an employee of E.H.Q. to make a public criticism of an E! No, better play it safe.

He sighed heavily, and asked the operator to please see if E McGinnis would talk to him.

He suspected that E McGinnis would just stand off from the planet and wait for E Gray to get in touch. Nothing seemed to have happened while E Gray's cruiser was out in space. It must be something connected with landing, being on the surface of the planet.

But E Gray could signal to E McGinnis. Those pesky colonists! Why hadn't they signaled to E Gray? Why hadn't they come out of their bushes and signaled the danger? Surely they must know what it was. They were alive and healthy, three of them at least. Why hadn't they used their stupid heads?

But then, how could they have known E Gray was out in space, or even in their stratosphere? Well, they had telescopes, didn't they? Or did they? Sure they did. No matter what happened to the buildings, they must have all sorts of equipment hidden under the trees, or in caves.

Why hadn't E Gray been more cautious about landing? Rushing in there like a green school kid, without even rudimentary precautions. That's what came from sending out a boy to do a man's job. Maybe the attorney general's office had been right in its attempt to prevent a Junior from going. What was the use of all that E training, if the boy didn't have enough sense ...

At least E McGinnis would have enough sense to stand off, not go rushing in blindly. Grand old man, E McGinnis. Now there was a _real_ product of E science, the veritable dean of the E's.

E Gray would probably have enough sense to know he'd be followed by a rescue ship as soon as something went wrong. And between an E out in space and another on the ground, they shouldn't have any trouble in working it out. He wondered if he should suggest that to E McGinnis as soon as the operator located him. Even if the grand, lovable old man thought of it for himself, he'd compliment Hayes for thinking it, reasoning it all out!

The intercom operator came on his line.

"Sir," she said, and cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp. Her voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted E McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what he said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could."

"Well! Well!" he exclaimed impatiently. His brusqueness seemed to give her courage.

"Sir," she said a little stronger. "E McGinnis won't talk to you. He says the foggy, rambling way that review was conducted was a disgrace. He says why don't you get on with what you have to do instead of bothering people. He says not to waste any more of his time unless you can come up with something he doesn't already know. He says he doubts you'd know what that was even if it hit you in the face. He said to tell you the exact words, so I took it down in shorthand, so I could. Because--he said to."

She was all but wailing, as she finished.

"All right," Hayes sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder things were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me your notes so I can follow them carefully," he told the operator.

"So you can tear them up before they get spread all over the joint," she mumbled, but she had already thrown the key so he couldn't hear her.

Resignedly, because he knew he was going to catch it from the scientists just as bad, because he was feeling very sorry for himself that he must always be in the middle of things, he began to arouse the scientists.

He felt so sorry for himself that he dropped his tentative plan to have the midgit-idgit check the personal attributes of the individual colonists out there--to see if some of them might be young, pretty, female--34-24-34.

As if the idea were now red hot, he dropped the plan of telling General Administration that, since Eden was in his sector, perhaps he should go out there, personally.

15

The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was, indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office--to Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to be secret. All right for them to know, because they were very special persons, but the people should not be told.

"Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He is starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Making a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the crew isn't covering him. Now he is at the foot of the ramp. The three unclothed men are moving toward him, spread out a little, crouching, obviously going to attack. The stupid fool doesn't seem to realize it. He's ...

"Wait a minute. I don't believe it...."

"Well, what?" Gunderson exploded from his end.

"Sir," the assistant gulped, "the ship disappeared, just like that."

"Nonsense!"

"No, sir. It did. The three crewmen are sprawled on the ground. Now two of them are getting up. There isn't a sign of the ship, the ramp, or anything."

"Can't be. Has to be around somewhere."

"No, sir. Isn't. Sorry to contradict you, sir. It isn't anywhere."

"They probably set controls to send the ship back into space, and jumped out before it took off. Search space. You'll find it. Ships don't just disappear."

"I'll search, of course. But this ship just disappeared."

"All right, what's going on? What else?"

"They're naked. Naked as the day they were born. All four of them. Same as the colonists."

"Keep track of where they put their clothes. Photograph it. Get the evidence."

"Sir, their clothes disappeared right off their bodies. First they were fully dressed, Gray was, anyhow. Maybe the crew could have undressed inside the ship, but Gray was fully dressed--and then he wasn't. Just like that."

"Hm-m."

"Shall I land, sir? Place them under arrest?"

"Wait a minute. Let's think of a good charge. Something to stand up in court. Have to make this airtight right from the beginning in case some stupid judge decides to make a show of independence."

"Indecent exposure, sir? Lewd public behavior?"

"Pretty weak, in view of what's involved."

"A suggestion, sir. Maybe a morals charge is the most effective weapon we could have. Attack the E structure on the grounds of bad scientific judgment, and every egghead on Earth will feel compelled to rise up in their defense--except, of course, those employed by the government. But on a morals charge there wouldn't be one voice raised--fear of being tarred with the same brush. Except maybe a few radicals that are already discredited. Any other charge might get public sentiment aroused against us, but a morals charge--think of the backing we'd get from the women's clubs, P.T.A., all the pressure groups determined to dictate to the rest of the world how it should behave. It's worked for hundreds of years, sir. Never fails."

"Hm-m," Gunderson mused. "You may be right."

"Shall I land, sir, make the arrest?"

"You've got plenty of photographic evidence?"

"All we'd need, sir, at least for the lewd, public indecent exposure charge."

"Wait a minute. How about the colonists? Got pictures of them?"

"The three men, sir. No others."

"Let's don't rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a ship they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybe we can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, or at least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than just that. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, in case they've gone nudist."

"You'd want to prosecute the colonists, too?"

"Might be a smart idea. That way, nobody could claim we'd been gunning for the Junior E. Make it impartial, play no favorites. Hm-m, even if we decided not to prosecute, we'd have the pictures in their dossiers, so that anytime in the future, for the rest of their lives, if any of them gave us any trouble, we could quietly let them know what we've got, and they'll just fold up and quit. That's worked for hundreds of years, too."

"Yes, sir. Smart thinking, sir." The assistant knew that already Gunderson had adopted the idea as his own, and to hold his job he'd better let Gunderson go on thinking so. Of course, if the idea should backfire, then Gunderson would remember quickly enough where it had originated.

"Hm-m, you know," Gunderson was saying. "This could work out all right. If their ship's gone they're not communicating with E.H.Q. And if they're not communicating, E.H.Q. will send out another ship to see why. Maybe there'll be an E on it. I hear the only one available is McGinnis--that guy who's planning to fight us on that injunction.

"Now suppose he landed. Suppose he went nudist, or we could make pictures look like he did. The guy would have to undress sometime, take a bath. Slap a morals charge on him. Nobody with a public reputation ever fights a charge like that, guilty or innocent. They pay up or knuckle under to keep it quiet. Have, for hundreds of years; always will, as long as a bunch of fat, old, ugly biddies, male and female, who nobody wants that way are viciously resentful that they can't have what somebody else is enjoying. Young ones, too, so twisted and warped with frustrations they don't dare try what they daydream about. They're even worse. Yeah, a morals charge is the way to get at him."

"But I understood there was a law, that we couldn't charge an E for any offense."

"We can try him in the newspapers, can't we? On the televiewers. That's the whole point. We can't charge an E now, but wait until we get things stirred up on a morals basis. That law'll be changed in a hurry, because any legislator that tried to hold out against changing it would be drawn and quartered by his constituents--and has enough sense to know it.

"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go about it. Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you guys would read your history of how police enforcement officers got things back under control each time some idealist started squawking about human rights, you'd think of these things, too.

"Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on every move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back under police control, the way scientists were before, I've got to have information.

"And keep taking pictures!"

16

"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship, everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any clothes on--what then?"

"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun."

Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now he could be more comfortable.

One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort. Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth, claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea that clothes encouraged immorality.

"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin' like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of, but, believe me ..."

He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of perplexity.

"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kids screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--only scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real truthful," he said, "most of the yellin' came from the men. The women, by and large, was real swell.

"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect ever seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she's tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make a jackass outta himself at the wrong time."

Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh from Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and made no apology about present company being excepted.

"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said, "where you begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up any pieces."

They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than the disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of those that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and tools to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them that's hurt, taking care of them as much as possible, first thing they think of is making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.

That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation following a cyclone or other freak of nature.

Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take care of the needy.

And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then, pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't likely to start up a passel of gossip.

He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.

Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden, and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.

By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over their hysterics.

"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."

Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd, scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into it until it boiled, Indian style.