Chapter 27

The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the aisle toward him.

“Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine,” he said enthusiastically. He’d thought it over and decided he’d better repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with the supervisor’s old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite his face.

“See that it does,” the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn’t have any more insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable period of punishment. “What’s been happening?” he asked with a curiosity that got the better of his desire to discipline.

“E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him. He’s standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up the mountain.”

“More of the same, I guess,” the supervisor said. “Nothing’s happened for ten days. Nothing likely to happen,” he said. He turned and started back down the aisle toward his own office.

“Wait a minute,” the operator called. “Here’s something.”

Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.

“Now, now; now, now!” the supervisor quarreled at them. “Get on with your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business.”

But of course it was everybody’s business. Anything different was everybody’s business. All over the world everybody was wondering about the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance, and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they weren’t any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man’s knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know what he was not meant to know.

The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor’s admonishments, to listen frankly.

“They’ve lost sight of the E,” the operator exclaimed. “No, wait a minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony.”

“Can’t have happened like that,” the supervisor grumbled. “Ten or twelve miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There’s going to be complaints about this.”

“Well, you were right here,” the operator said. “You were listening. I didn’t skip anything. It wasn’t my fault.”

“All right, all right.”

“Wait a minute,” the operator said. “Here, listen in.”

The supervisor’s eyes grew round.

“Can’t be,” he exclaimed.

“All the buildings, everything’s just like it was before,” the operator said loudly to the room at large. “All of a sudden, the way they report it.”

“They’re faking the reports,” the supervisor grumbled irritably. “Have to be.”

“Now, no matter how much they fake, you can’t rebuild all those buildings in a couple hours,” the operator argued.

“None of our business,” the supervisor cautioned. “We just take the reports. Can’t criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there’s doing.”

“And everybody’s got their clothes back on,” the operator said loudly.

There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.

“Now the E’s disappeared again,” the operator said, “They’re scanning all over, trying to find him.”

The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.

“I’m going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this reporting has been done. There’s going to be fur flying over these skips and jumps, and I don’t want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the complaint first,” he said to the room at large. “Now you call me if there’s any more of this bollix,” he said to the operator as he left.

An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some more. How to report without stepping on anybody’s toes?

His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.

“Oh, no,” he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up the aisle.