To

Charles Steinberg

who made writing possible for me

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 loo