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.
"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once," the operator called out. "Something very important."
"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."
But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed, tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.
"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line opened.
"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal. "What now?"
"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the Captain said without any preliminaries.
"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."
"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out first."
"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"
"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said. "A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man. Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray. Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E Gray on the surface of Eden."
"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain," Hayes said accusingly.
"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then in ten days she'd ..."
"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board my ship," the captain said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide direct intervention.
"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis will talk to him."
"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.
The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was quite explicit.
"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin, in conference."
"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil did they get into your ship?"
"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I ever do get back."
"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were hard to find.
"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the communication.
