EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN

EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN




SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT


=1= Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without
question.

=2= Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general
contrariness.

=3= Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to
account for the phenomenon?

=4= How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that
he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?

=5= What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the
obscure prevalent?

=6= What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered
effect is really cause?

=7= What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates
unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there be only
one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in many facets
because we cannot apperceive the whole, of which we have gained
only the most elementary glimpses, with which we can cope only at
the crudest level?

=And are those still other doors, yet undefined, on down the corridor?=




1


One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was
overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger
hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and
pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle,
half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched
over their panels.

"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop.

"Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it
came out sullen.

The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punched
irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second
star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect
there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel.
The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include such
blunders. But he had to check.

There weren't.

He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on his
shift, never anybody else's.

"Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he
rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and
hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.

The operator looked skeptical instead.

Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental
colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, some
unprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothing
else apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as the
Extrapolators.

But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.

"Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications by
inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully tried out
another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last more
than an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using the
E frequency, anyway.

He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the other
operators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw him
away from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problem
would have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewed
on a knuckle and stared angrily at the operator who was sitting back,
relaxed, looking at him, waiting.

"You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the supervisor
asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"

The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer
with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for
supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the
surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the
supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention.
In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly
nagged employee over his features.

"Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor muttered
savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--their
pants out there!"

The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was about time,
and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down.
Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow
three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten
miles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring.