Chapter 28

Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E’s stateroom he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered his ship by any normal means.

Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E’s and Linda. He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive, darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him to adjust to them.

He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that somehow interfered with their visoscope’s ability to penetrate and see what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship’s operator had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E’s pilot and the chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have been made that rapidly.

He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people were all clothed. It couldn’t be done, but he had seen it. But he kept his head. E science must be farther along than he’d realized, to produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to that, otherwise...

He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and take custody.

But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.

He told himself that all wasn’t lost. Maybe the E was back in control of Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs! Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals issue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.

It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the ship’s vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in the vault was one little slip of paper which read, “Shame on you for taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray.”

The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the favor returned tomorrow.

Without concrete evidence...

He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship, confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and swallow him--perhaps wishing one would.

“I don’t know just what to do with you,” Cal said a little sadly, ruefully. “Far as the E’s are concerned, you’ve only been a minor nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As far back as man’s history goes the growth of police powers immediately preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.

“It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that destroyed both the United States and Russia.

“Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in trying to destroy you.

“We in E don’t want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.

“Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an organized society without some special body to enforce that organization. It’s a problem which the E’s haven’t solved, probably because we know too little about the natural laws affecting the behavior of man. Perhaps it is still a field belonging to non-science, because science doesn’t know enough yet to take hold of it.

“I would suggest, Gunderson, that you turn your talents and your organization to solving this problem of how to build an organized society instead of destroying it.”

The chair where Gunderson had sat was empty.

E McGinnis looked at Cal; he too was sitting silent and immobile. But E science had inured him to shock. He waited because it was E Gray’s show, and he was letting Cal handle it.

“Where is he now?” McGinnis asked when he saw the empty chair.

“Sitting at his desk in his office back on Earth,” Cal said with a grin. “Our boy has a few things to think about.”

“You’ve explained the theory back of all this”--McGinnis changed the subject--”but I still find it incredible. It’s still just theory.”

“Well,” Cal said, “theory comes first. Even to add two and two, you first have to get the idea that it can be done, a theory of how it is done, but that still won’t get you four. You’ve got to learn how to apply the theory.