y were getting hungry, and they began to
realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.

Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd been hurt.
Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.

The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do was go
down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it to
their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their faces
into the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know they
could.

The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts to
eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to depend
on seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it.

The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage their
supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sort
of hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then.

By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people in
the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. The
darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, the
stranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people were
starting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the dusk
you could see the same thought in all the gleaming eyes.

They couldn't have fire!

Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain what had
happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with an
explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, looking
back, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's a
comfort.

But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing it
can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained. And yet,
isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation for what's
happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?

Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some sleep.
Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any children. That was
one of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn't
have children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'd
have to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't have
been surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than the
grown folks.

The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animals
take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort fr