Chapter V: Part 5

"Well now," the chairman argued, and sweat began to come out on his forehead. "He's only a Junior. We have decided his judgment isn't mature enough for this problem."

"I have every confidence in Junior E Gray," McGinnis said acidly. "And every E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you have decided. Either the science of E means something, or it doesn't. Either we have complete freedom to handle a problem, or we don't. Let me remind you, gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E is a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to repeat past disasters?"

"If we don't land a ship, E McGinnis"--the chairman was all but pleading now--"Gunderson's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take a firmer control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policy demands it. Perhaps the whole future of E demands it."

A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine voice.

"Gentlemen," she said, "this is Linda Gray. I requested that I be cut in on any communication concerning my husband, and E McGinnis made it an order before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I want to be with my husband."

"I will not be landing on Eden, Linda," E McGinnis said firmly. "An E has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. No other E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health, and apparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us against landing. He must have a reason. We don't know, yet, what it is.

"Now he has stopped communicating, we don't know why. He must have a reason for that, too. It is probably a sound reason. E science has been drilled into him until it is a part of his every mind cell, perhaps even every body cell.

"I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him, because communicating with us distracts him from solving the problem. If E.H.Q. decides to send out a ship on its own, and risk landing in an unknown co-ordinate system, against the orders of two E's, which will become the combined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. If you wish to be on it, that is your decision.

"I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that E.H.Q. cannot connect with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted any further. I'm trying to think."

The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in a vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination to do something, anything.

They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it was their duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help, and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as his means of regaining control over the E's and E.H.Q. for civil authority. Didn't the stupid E see the danger? Wasn't it the same danger that men of science had always faced, the same mistake they had always made--leaving out the human element in a problem?

The eternal blind spot in men of science! The average man doesn't give a tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only that he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things, the inevitable, the only possible goal of the non-science mind. Surely the history of science versus non-science should have made this evident long ago! Surely there had been enough incidents in history....

Very well, it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself. If he refused the see the clear danger to his whole structure--and their own ascendant position at the center of it--it was their clear duty to protect him nonetheless.

They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, a miniature E.H.Q., at least to be there on the scene; to help in any way they could, perhaps to counter the moves Gunderson's police might make, at least to stand by.

At least, in the face of all this public clamor about Eden, to show their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully, without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascendant at the center of things at all costs, and thereby maintained the tradition of all non-science endeavors.

"Gentlemen," he said in summary, "we have a grave responsibility not only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, in every rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only a Junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein lies Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of the people. A Junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affecting the life or death of fifty people. More than that, perhaps the future progress of mankind.

"May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should become necessary for us to land a ship to rescue those colonists, in spite of the Junior's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not be overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proved his capacity to merit an E.

"We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson on that. If we must honor the command of the Junior E, then why not the Associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E? Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is extra smart?

"The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over the individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never been clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but it has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the E structure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhaps if we concede his control over the Juniors on down, we can maintain the immunity of the Senior E. We must work to save at least that much."

The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, left six hours later.

Linda was on it.

20

There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind.

His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the messages spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in the semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring.

It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals, separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positions would do the job.

Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of others on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up in opposition.

There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that Junior E, place him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise to let the colonists off easy--he could easily show that it was the influence of the Junior which had made a disgusting orgy develop there on Eden. Never mind that they were naked before the Junior arrived. The public could always be razzle-dazzled about the nature of the evidence, its order and meaning. It was an old police, prosecution, and political trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good one; for the public never bothered to know the whole context of anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all the public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury, observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence, only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits he formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set up his case accordingly.

His own course was clear.

His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally clear:

_1. Proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime._

_2. Ignore any protests from the E ship already out there, or any
other ship E.H.Q. might have sent._

_3. Ignore any signals from the Junior E on the planet._

_4. Land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main site of
the lewd and obscene crime._

_5. Place Junior E Calvin Gray under arrest._

_6. Place the crew of the Junior E's ship, Thomas Lynwood, Franklin
Norton, Louis LeBeau, under arrest._

_7. Place any colonist who opposed the police under arrest._

_8. Place the remainder of the colonists in detention under
protective custody._

_9. Place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any way with
the police in carrying out the foregoing orders._

The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final order.

Place a Senior E under arrest?

Certainly, a Senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to wander around, free as air to do as they please. It was one thing to let them get away with making such statements as "The police attitude toward the people is the major cause of crime." It was something else, and time the E's found it out, for them to make any overt move to interfere with the police in their performance of duty.

Personally, he hoped the old E would be fool enough to resist. It would strengthen his case.

The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. He proceeded to the scene of the crime.

He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis, received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to make an arrest for an illegal act--and certainly running around stark naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public, was an illegal act--would pay any attention to the request of an onlooker which amounted to "Aw, let 'em alone, copper"?

There was no communication at all from the Junior E on the planet's surface, so the third order did not apply.

It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into trouble.

He passed inside the orbits of the three other ships now circling the planet, the police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the E.H.Q. floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden's atmosphere.

The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled.

And nothing happened.

It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not lower the ship into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions against crashing. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothing happened. They lowered not another inch.

A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made their thrust with full speed and momentum.

There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did not penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick ice, and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetration would not do.

Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the ship at full power against the surface.

And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.

What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?

Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis. E science apparently had some kind of shield which they'd kept secret from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!

"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's a shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the specimen They want. There's an E down there.

"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."

21

Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known, that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with their experiment.

From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking out of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the consideration of a problem.

His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to determine his position in reality.

He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge. He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into the shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and texture as food.

At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness, awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of things. But there was awareness of more.

There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something stronger and more important than he.

To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not assume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.

If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that he must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he himself be destroyed.

So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributes magnified.

Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have survived to remain aware.

But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties. The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord with the answer.

The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond the primitive one was self-evident.

To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened. Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accident often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he was endowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environment that heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing had not become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the foolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.

Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reason for its creation?

He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was too new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things, to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers, those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.

But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be erased!

Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science, as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view, had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not yet been found.

Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than accompanying music.

The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.

As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference, the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of the Royal Society of London (1667)_.

"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only an enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a business of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."

He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most significant sentence ever written by man.

"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, and passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain a dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."

That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science, for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science method of making its judgments prevail over all others.

Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.

And now?

Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel? Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left behind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?

What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to reality must man now discover before he could continue his journey down the long road toward total comprehension?

He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for it contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.

For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of the colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men had caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly, the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He lay back down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.

Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed something, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, and had forgotten in science.

These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only to be a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of even the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, was their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one with their environment--unaware.

Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would they be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in their own image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?

Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.

In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship with them. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himself off from the gods ...

Loneliness.

Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose then his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?

Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of exploding exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding themselves woven into music, painting, literature.

"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none other than we who are aware?"

The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, the recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all others subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was that also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man, defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very willingness to live--and so died?

What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--and lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling that apathy? Facing that dissolution?

When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! To discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at least hope to discover it.

For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation, the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely different from the intent.

Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were no other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that closed mind be made?

All right.

Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Their frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all his efforts?

He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist and his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his rock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling faces.

"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young man said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to give you one too."

At least they were being impartial.

22

When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating.

He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too would be searching for awareness.

But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did not meet those terms.

That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws, the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debris which prevented communication of awareness as They defined it?

There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon the tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception, psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical tools, man stopped looking for answers other than these?

Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without the use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result?

A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to obtain the same result? But how?

To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (for the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the current) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of that diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one thought of the diagram of a receiver? How?

He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence too low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless circle.

Circle?

Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare sand at the river's edge.

In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.

Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it took, would know the circle.

He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip of his finger he quickly drew a circle.

The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!

He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of a circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you know?"

He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximating the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wrote R^2. He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign.

Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. They understood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet there was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sand before he saw what it was.

The = had changed to : !

Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate to" for "equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure, without tools he could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It was pedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, without tools, to draw a perfect circle?

Or was that running around inside his low fence?

He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was now smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what they meant.

He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."

Again = changed to : .

Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. They were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked down again, and the equation was gone.

Wrong track again.

He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.

The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference between physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an equation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the whole science of atomics was based.

"E = MC^2," he wrote.

Again = changed to : .

What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals sign? That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals was one of the possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that answer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in unbalanced equations?

He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see them erased. But they were still there. So he was starting on the right track. But wait.

Before his eyes he saw the C^2 smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M" remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the low fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was the ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But so all-inclusive as to be too vague for use.

For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's use of C^2 in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work, had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that much to their superstitions.

The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, but emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixed cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that would not shift.

The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?

He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the track.

It had changed again. Now it read "E{d}M": The form of the function of energy to matter is variable.

Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and the independent variable of the function vary together.

Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy to matter.

And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship between energy and matter.

He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.

"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."

There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in the sand.

"They talked to _you_," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve Them, but it was to _you_ They talked."

And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.

Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."

The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie, racked with broken sobbing.

Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in his youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them a tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to science--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations, making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations again--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in youth.

Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had talked.

"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees, grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship?

"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more than conquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would be pleasing to another intelligence?

"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement? The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denial of it?"

Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward the depths of the forest.

23

For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-content no longer required its use.

Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought. Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts of the herd, near the colonists but not of them. He had ceased to exhort, warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was thinking.

And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering his own food, catching his own fish.

And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.

Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright stars above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis, and from the E.H.Q. laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's attempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness, her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.

McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson in person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable to believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person to take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave it alone.

Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal the reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away and unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting strains of a song remembered from long ago.

For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given the key--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportion and you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and the door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it.

Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had to be for his job as pilot.

"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign." He scratched a formula in the dirt:

"2 + 2 = 4"

The = changed to : . Then to {d}. Then through the series of variable relationships.

Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.

"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't variable. It equals."

Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.

"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what They have to say than in trying to convince Them that They're wrong."

"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom argued, "then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate relationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would be solid, dependable."

"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly. "Not a house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of proportion--and they aren't there anymore."

24

Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door.

This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most bogged down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of some other answer.

Everyone knew the equation E = MC^2, but few could implement it to build an atomic power plant.

Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he might be to consider something else.

In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their own weight.

Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other side of the equation to restore balance.

To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality. To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X factor to keep reality unchanged.

But how to do it still eluded him.

At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along the direct route toward his goal.

Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could only draw the right design.

Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.

One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them, strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of outside it?

In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm to try?

He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who would care.

"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And you can't carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its shipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not much in the way of food growing there. So we never went back."

"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered," Cal said. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding. But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think I'll go."

"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you needn't worry about us either."

"You want me to come with you, Cal?" Tom asked.

"No," Cal answered, "I think better if I'm alone."

He left them then, went past some colonists who were picking berries and eating them, and on up the valley that ran between two ridges.

It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became a ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and ripening fruit was sweet.

Before he left the ravine to begin his climb he ate some of the fruit, and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with a long, cool drink of water from one of the many springs that fed the stream.

He looked up at the mountain above him, and his eye picked out the most likely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in terms of those tremendous, tortured skin folds of other planets. Hardly more than a high hill in terms of those. Nor, as far as he could see, would the climb be difficult or hazardous.

The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on Earth came into his mind, although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they might not have lived so long in the minds of man, since the mountain was more easily climbed, and therefore man would have been the more easily convinced after repeated explorations that no gods lived there after all.

Would the Greeks, as with the later religions, have placed the site of heaven farther and farther away, retreating reluctantly, as man explored the earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat until at last the whole idea was patently ridiculous?

Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet--to what may man now turn in rapture? In ecstasy? In communion? What, in all physical science, filled the deep human need of these expressions?

The climb of the first slope, up to the crest of the ridge he intended to follow, was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him, at the valley of the colonists below, and far down where the valley merged into the sea, and far on out at the hazy purple line of another island. As he started to turn back again, to resume his climb, his eye caught a flash of something moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown, bare skin.

He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees. As he had suspected it was Louie, still trying to keep him always in sight.

His first impulse was to call out, to wait for Louie, ask him to join in the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from all others. And sympathetic and compassionate though he might be, the confusion in Louie's mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had his earlier attempts to comfort Louie met success.

Let Louie follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear his mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louie's tortured mind intended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Even a boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for that would be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodily attack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable.

He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it swept upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was not difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here, and provided clear spaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to his bare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt no physical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from the branches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind into trivialities.

Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason out the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality.

Instead, there was a sense of well being, anticipated completeness, a merging of the often quite separated areas of thought, intuition, and appreciation.

Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed they were replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low, creeping growths which his feet avoided without mental direction.

A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcroppings of crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of scar left by the geologist's hammer, no imperfections where nodes may have been broken away. They were complete, singularly unweathered.

There was no path, nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or colonist had ever passed this way.

The ridge swung back into line, and still he climbed, effortlessly and without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seemed to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he, alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it as he was encompassed by it.

Yet not alone! Their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any instant, the veil of blindness would disperse and They would stand revealed.

Now up the final slope of the mountain he threaded his way through higher outcroppings of a more perfectly formed quartz, with deeper amethystine hue scintillating in the Ceti sun's light, diffracted not only in the purples but into greens and reds and blues.

As he came around the base of one of these, there towering above he caught his first full view of the greater spires, pinnacles, buttresses, and arches of the mountain's crest.

It was the crystal palace.

The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below, yet his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and rest, to gather his energy for the last steep assault upon the peak.

Far below him he saw Louie toiling up a slope, then dropping with every appearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still he would rest no more than a minute, and always his head was turned to keep sight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to his feet; and slowly, step by step, begin his climb again.

As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guilt of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's inadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil, these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance or threat to the ascendancy of me-and-mine at the center of things, and had no meaning beyond that context.

He turned from watching Louie, pitying him, and made the last sharp climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near to the towering structures of the crest, now he was beside them. Now he walked beneath and through an arch which seemed almost a gothic entrance.

And stood transfixed in ecstasy.

Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him. Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture.