by Anthology
Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell away from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleys watered by perpetual streams.
It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain and the sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named the first settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, and everybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit of knowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to the planet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone was referring to it that way.
"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course we still designate it as Ceti II."
As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progress pictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they had started to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here they were converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the first houses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship. Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earth seed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them from Earth.
A collection of community buildings came next in the series of photographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, with a collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it all as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio. Productive, progressive, and peaceful--from a distance.
But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed normally also.
The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. His department would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms not developed. That would have been an abnormality calling for investigation.
Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the common temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, each group considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all who disagreed wrong.
The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember the classical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He stands upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realization that he can see about the same distance in all directions.
"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center of creation!"
His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was still at the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.
"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the most important event in all creation!"
Still later comes another realization.
"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, are also at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are not with me, and not a part of me-and-mine, are not at the center of things, and are therefore of an inferior nature!"
It could readily be seen--the psychologist was allowing a note of dryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy, religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even his scientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; the supreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the center of things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on the outside, and therefore inferior.
There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist left the generalities behind and came back to the issue.
The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, for there was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mine organism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided into nations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in some other nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been able to find to keep the nation from disintegrating.
Another nudge.
Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, as expected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longer tolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with the rest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the near ridge to settle in an adjacent valley.
Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out in classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyone knew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man been able to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed no civilization at all.
Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potent of all forces in driving him out to the stars.
Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided he could no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cut him off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simple statement.
The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance or not. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal course of E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They had been collated and extended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trends away from norm.
There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as well have originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about as unusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.
Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.
9
"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human existence than Earth."
He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness for take-off.
McGinnis and Wong looked at one another.
"You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?" Wong asked. His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was banished from an ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow."
"Not that so much," Cal said. "Not unless the whole concept of evolution is haywire, and we're reasonably sure it isn't that far off. Probably the colonists have gone on strike, but I still keep thinking that when we want to catch rats we set a trap with a better food than they can get normally."
There was a twinkle in McGinnis's eye.
"You think Eden is an alluring trap, especially baited to catch human beings?" he asked.
"I don't exactly think that. I just keep wondering," Cal answered.
They were interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on the door. This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors, who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stood facing the door. The orderlies looked to the E's for instruction. At a nod from McGinnis, one of them walked over to the door and opened it.
Bill Hayes was standing there, flushed with embarrassment.
"Your pardon, E's," he said hurriedly. "I'm just an errand boy, under instruction from General Administration. We have been served with a court injunction to prevent assignment of a Junior to the Eden matter."
Cal froze in alarm and disappointment. At the last moment to have his chance snatched away from him. He should have gone immediately the review was over, without waiting for any advice McGinnis and Wong might care to give. Now ...
McGinnis caught his eye and gave a slight nod toward a door that opened on another hallway. He flashed a command with his eyes to get going, then turned back to Hayes.
"I was unaware that the E's must heed court orders," he said frostily.
"It's a question of where civil jurisdiction stops and E jurisdiction takes over," Hayes explained nervously. "While the colonists are employed by E.H.Q., and under their direction, it is held they are also Earth citizens, with citizen rights. Civil authority feels it must answer for their welfare."
"I thought restrictions upon the E were removed by act of World Congress some seventy years ago," Wong said mildly.
"The injunction makes it clear there is no restriction upon the Senior E; just the Junior, who really isn't an E yet."
"It is the decision of th
e E's that a Junior will handle this problem," McGinnis said, and turned his back as if that settled the matter.
Hayes cleared his throat nervously.
"I'm sorry," he said. "If it were up to me ... Well, the argument before the court ran this way: That where there is no restriction upon the E in arriving at a solution, there is also no compulsion upon civil authority to adopt that solution. They cited instances ... Well, any number of instances. It seems ..."
Cal heard no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, he slipped out the door.
The orderly at that door raised a finger in salute, and at Cal's request quickly wheeled a hall-car from a storage closet.
"Take me out to the Eden ship," Cal said quietly. "You know where it is?"
"Yes," the orderly answered. He took his place at the controls and Cal slipped into the seat beside him.
They sped through the halls at maximum speed, out the rear exit of the E building, down the maze of ramps and out across the landing field to the entrance of the ship.
Cal expected to see guards posted there to enforce the injunction, but none were in evidence. As they drew up to the open door, he saw Lynwood and Norton, pilot and engineer, standing just inside waiting for him. There was no strain in their faces to show they had received orders not to take off with him.
He climbed out of the car, and with another nod the orderly drove it back to the E building. Henceforward the ship's crew would be the E's orderlies.
Cal climbed the short ramp and entered the ship.
"You have clearance to take off at once?" he asked Lynwood.
Lynwood nodded. "Since early morning," he answered.
"Fine. Let's get going," Cal said. "I'm in a hurry, of course," he added with a grin.
"Of course," the two men answered, then seeing his grin, relaxed and returned it. Apparently this E was human.
It took only a minute for them to reach the control room, where Louie sat in his navigator's cubby; and only ten more seconds for the ship to lift clear. And still no command came over the radio to halt them.
Someone in civil authority had slipped. Had Gunderson really felt that a simple injunction would stop everything, that the E's would not challenge this encroachment? Was he playing some deeper game, allowing the Junior to slip through his fingers in the hope he would louse up the Eden rescue, add strength to the campaign to bring the E's back under civil control--his control?
Or had someone genuinely slipped?
The command to halt, turn around, and return to base did not come until their second hop had brought them into the Mars orbit. Then it came from space police in charge of shipping traffic at that point.
"I am under orders from E.H.Q. to proceed," Tom answered, after a quick, questioning look at Cal.
"The attorney general's office orders you to halt," the voice commanded.
Tom looked at Cal again, questioning. This was bucking the federal government, his license wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on if he ignored the order. To say nothing of any other punishment they might choose to hand him.
"Keep going," Cal answered shortly. "And make your next jump as quickly as you can."
"I am under orders to keep going," Tom answered the police. If he refused the request of an E, a lifetime of work would go down the drain.
Over in his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through the intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were working as one man.
"I am under orders to disable you if you refuse," the police warned.
"We have an E on board," Tom answered. "You'd be risking a lot."
"I am advised he is a Junior E," the voice said in clipped speech. "Not such a risk."
"Far as I'm concerned," Tom answered laconically, "he's an E. I have to follow his orders."
He nodded to Frank who touched the jump switch. There was an instant silence. They were at the approach to the asteroid belt.
"They can get us here," Louie spoke up. "We have to give over controls so they can take us through. No chart can keep up to the microsecond on these asteroid movements. They have to calculate a path in short hops, and take us through a step at a time. I keep saying there ought to be an expressway out of the solar system, but ..."
"What about a good long jump at right angles?" Cal asked. "Get over it instead of through it?"
"It's illegal," Louie complained.
"Our necks are already out," Tom said quietly.
"Okay, you're the boss. But I'll have to figure it. It takes time to figure it."
"Well, get going on it."
"There's stuff all over," Louie explained. "Not just a band, like most people think. The asteroids have moved at right angles, too. Not so thick, but there's a globe of stuff, not just a belt. Maybe a bunch of little jumps."
"We can't start making them until you figure them, Louie," Frank reminded him.
The radio gave its hum of life, and a voice came through.
"We have orders from space police not to escort you through, to turn you back."
"This is an E ship, with an E on board. His command is to come through," Tom said.
"I just work here," the voice answered as if it were bored and tired. "I take my orders from Space Control."
Tom looked over at Louie. Louie apparently caught the look out of a corner of his eye, and impatiently waved a finger not to bother him. His other hand was speeding through the movements of manipulating the astrocalculator. Then he nodded his head, still not looking up, and the co-ordinates flashed in front of Frank. Now, as rapidly as Louie, Frank set up the pattern of the jump band.
"I take my orders from the E's," Tom answered in a voice that matched the boredom, tiredness. Then with a nod from Frank, "Now!" he said.
There was silence again.
"It's going to add at least an hour," Louie complained. "I've got to pick my way through this muck."
"We've got time now," Tom answered easily. "Not likely they can find us out here, away from the regular lanes."
"Not unless we run across a prowl ship," Louie said. "You know there's some smuggling, and now and then a shipping company thinks it can beat the rap, not pay the toll, by doing the same thing we're doing. The prowl patrol is on to all the tricks. We're not the first ones to try it."
"Just keep figuring, Louie," Tom said.
"All right, all right!" Louie quarreled back.
Tom looked at Cal and grimaced.
"Louie's all right," he said. "Just has to complain."
"I'm sure of it," Cal answered with a grin.
It took closer to two hours. They had no way of knowing how many times the space police had made a fix on their position only too late to catch them hovering there. There must have been some fix made and a pretty careful calculation of where they could go next, for as they neared the outer moons of Jupiter the radio crackled into life again.
"This is your last warning. We intend to board you and take over. We will disintegrate your ship if you resist."
Cal took the microphone in his own hand to answer.
"We intend to keep going," he said. "This is a jurisdictional dispute between the attorney general's office and E.H.Q. We will not allow you to board us, and I suggest you get confirmation of orders to disintegrate us directly from the attorney general in person. Meanwhile you can pass the buck to your Saturn patrol if those orders are confirmed."
Tom nodded to Frank, and the next jump key was pressed.
In the Saturn field, still another voice came through. "Orders from the attorney general himself are to allow you to proceed. Say, Lynwood, what is this all about?"
"Some sort of petty squabble over who gives orders to who," Lynwood answered. "I just work here," he added tiredly.
"Well," said the voice. "So do I. Guess they'll fight it out in the courts now. You understand, we had our orders."
"You understand, so did I." Tom answered.
"Sure
," the voice answered, and cut out.
Cal wondered whether the orders to disintegrate had been a bluff. Would the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior E on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one they didn't expect to have called.
Or maybe he had played directly into the attorney general's hands by defying him, and getting that defiance on record was what the man had wanted.
Whatever it was, the Eden matter had become bigger than merely finding out what had happened to some colonists. Whatever it was, he'd better find a successful solution, because the attorney general was counting on him to fail. And if he did fail, certainly the position of the Junior E would be altered, and possibly a deep thrust into the very heart of the Senior E position, as well.
10
Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no trouble getting to Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating the globe while still in space.
Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, they had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain at its center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescope viewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like a diamond set in jade.
The trouble began when they hovered over the location, when they amplified their magnification to get a close look at the Appletree village before dropping down to land.
Louie found the right valley. He said it was the right valley, and he stuck to his claim stubbornly.
But there was no settlement there. No sign there had ever been.
Louie could see that for himself, they told him. There was nothing but virgin land. The trees were undisturbed, and old. There were splashes of rolling meadows spotted here and there by other trees, untilled meadows sloping downward from the ridges to the river. And not a blemish nor scar to show that man had ever landed there.
"Fine thing," Norton chaffed him. "Fine navigation, Louie. Get us clear across the universe in great shape, and then you can't even find the landing field."