Eight Keys to Eden Read online

  6

  The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance ofsolidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, wherethe west wall had been, another room seemed to join this one, an office.A large man in a brown suit made an entrance through the door of theoffice and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness.

  "I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the Edenarea. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules ofprocedure. I just want to say, as an aside, that the scientists involvedin this problem have been up all night reviewing every known fact aboutEden. We ask the indulgence of the E's not only for the kind ofknowledge that may prove too little, but for any strain caused by tryingto assemble such massive data into order in so short a time.

  "For the press, let me say we are aware of some questions of why wedidn't immediately send out a fleet of ships as soon as the call failedto come through. A military man does not rush troops into battle untilhe has some idea of what he must oppose; even a plumber needs to getsome idea of the problem before he knows what tools to take with him. Itwould serve no constructive purpose to rush an unprepared fleet out torescue, and might prove the highest folly."

  All over E.H.Q., in the various buildings where anybody was directlyconcerned, the same effect would be taking place as appeared here in theclub room. The tri-di screen wall would seem to join the room of theperson speaking. A pressed button signaled the desire to speak, and likethe chairman of a meeting, Bill Hayes decided whom to recognize. It wasa way to conduct a meeting of two or three thousand people as intimatelyas a small conference.

  "The E's have signaled they are ready for the Eden briefing," Hayescontinued formally. He faded out his own office, and was immediatelyreplaced by an astrophysics laboratory. The review of Eden was underway.

  With sky charts, pointers, math formulae and many references todocumentation, the astrophysicist established the celestial position ofCeti relative to Earth, and its second planet Ceti II--popularly called,he had heard, Eden. For his part, bitterly, he preferred a little lesspopularizing of scientific data, a little more exactitude. He would,therefore, continue to call it Ceti II.

  He reminded Cal of certain teachers in schools he had been asked toleave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, theyclung to their exactitudes--like frightened little children in a chaoticworld too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, somethingsafe, sure, dependable.

  The astrophysicist continued, at considerable length, to establish theposition of Ceti II to his own complete satisfaction.

  In his own mind Cal willingly conceded that, at least in terms ofthird-dimensional space-time continuum, Eden could be found where theman said it was. Then he reminded himself, sternly, that the essencemight be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closestattention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest hefind his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, afterall, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he laypeacefully in Linda's arms.

  He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little phrase,carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure. Didacticpedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, notvaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them.

  A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space tothe surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just soall the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed tobe humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance tochuckle with him.

  If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apologyfor this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worthbreaking up the review to oblige him.

  After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present hiscapsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.

  There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands ofislands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. Theislands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explainedthat Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universeexploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientistscould follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been leftfor future colonists to complete.

  He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzledby glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jetjockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solidsciences to keep up with the work to be done.

  A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with theinjection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence,and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have thegrant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to changethe human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead towardhumans with super-intelligence.

  Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that theEden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get that one outof the way first. Both scientists, by their expressions, indicated thatthey did not appreciate being frustrated, hampered, driven--but they didcomply.

  Back to Eden they went.

  The climate was something like that of the Hawaiian area. Partly thiswas due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly,partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted thatthere was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over theglobe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Somedifferential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no realviolence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoeshere on Earth.

  "Probably no sudden storm to wipe out the colony before they could sendnews, then," Wong suggested in an aside to Cal.

  "Or a freak one did occur and they weren't prepared because it wasn'tsupposed to happen," Cal said.

  Wong and McGinnis exchanged a quick glance, and Cal knew Wong had laid alittle trap to see how easily he might be lulled into a prematureconclusion.

  The gravity was slightly less, the geophysicist was saying, but only tothe extent that man, newly arrived from Earth, walked with a springierstep, didn't tire as quickly. Not enough to cause nausea, even to theinexperienced. The oxygen content of the air, in fact the whole make-upof the air, was so close to Earth quality there were no breathingadaptations necessary.

  So much for generalities. He went on to document them with exactitudes.He teamed up with a meteorologist to explain the distribution ofrainfall in spite of lack of frigid and torrid air masses. Cal's doubtwas not appeased. Weather prediction was about on a par with race-horsehandicapping, and easy to explain after it happened.

  Eventually the geophysicist and the meteorologist completed their duetto the accompaniment of oceanographers and geologists.

  A chorus of botanists replaced them on the tri-di screen, the majortheme of their epic being that an astonishing proportion of the plantforms bore edible fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, stems, roots, flowers. Achoir of zoologists joined their voices here to point out the largenumber of small meat animals, fish, and crustaceans--with the wholething sounding like a pean of thanksgiving.

  After two hours, the condensed information added up to a mostinteresting fact. In essence, due to quite _natural_ conditions--odd howmuch the scientists seemed to need stressing the word "natural"--Edenwas more favorable to easy human life than Earth!

  Cal leaned forward. Here was the spot where some student or apprenticemight distinguish himself by asking an embarrassing question or so. Saythe range of easily possible conditions on any given planet was a scaleten miles in length. Then that area on the scale where man could existwithout artificial aids would still be less than a hair's breadth. Andnow to find a planet more nearly perfect for man than the one on whichhe evolved....

  Or were the students considering this too obvious to mention? He decidedto nudge them a little. Sometimes a discussion of the too obvi
ousbrought out things not obvious at all.

  "How frequently," he asked, when Hayes had cut him in, "do we find amass revolving in such a manner that its poles revolve at right anglesto its forward revolution, so there is no real pole?"

  "It requires near-perfect roundness, and an even distribution of landand water masses, such as we have on Ceti II," the first astrophysicistanswered.

  "How frequently do we find that?" Cal repeated.

  "I know of no other," the astrophysicist replied shortly.

  "Any evidence of tampering with those ocean currents to get them flowingso beneficially?" Cal asked.

  "None yet discovered," an oceanographer cut in.

  Well, at least he hadn't stated with positiveness that there hadn't beenand couldn't be. But an anthropaleontologist inserted himself andspoiled the effect of open-mindedness.

  "There is definitely no life form on Eden with sufficient intelligencefor that," the man said, "nor has there ever been. Such a feat wouldrequire enormous engineering works. Such works under the ocean would bematched by comparable works on land, and would therefore show up in ouraerial surveys, however ancient and overgrown."

  Cal sighed softly to himself. The human kind of civilization, yes, thatwould have left traces. But what of some other kind? Perhaps a deep-seakind that had never come out upon the land? Never mind the argumentsthat such a civilization could not have developed--that was looking atit from the human point of view again. Had man grown so accustomed tonot finding comparable intelligence anywhere in the universe he hadbegun to discount, or forget, there could be?

  The review went on and on. The zoologist sketched in the prevalentanimals and fish forms, showed there was nothing in land animals higherthan a large rodent, no sea mammals at all, no fish larger than thetarpon. Nothing at all to hint at a line of primates.

  A bacteriologist exclaimed at length over the similarity of minute lifeforms to those on Earth, and used the occasion to again expound the oldtheory of space-floating life spores to seed all favorable matter, andthus develop similar forms through evolution, wherever found. Quicklyand tactfully Bill Hayes nudged him back on the track before theexpected storm of controversy could break out.

  Then there was a short lunch time, but not a leisurely one. Quite asidefrom the emergency of what might be happening to the colonists, therewas growing clamor from the people and pressure from variousgovernmental bodies to get off the dime and get going--rescue thosepeople, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the floodof telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted the pressures in favor of doing aworkmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of ahaphazard show, but was mindful of them nevertheless.