Part 22 (1/2)

It was as if some invisible s.h.i.+eld held him back. He could not lower the s.h.i.+p into the atmosphere gently, taking the normal precautions against cras.h.i.+ng. Very well then, not so gently. Full power. And nothing happened. They lowered not another inch.

A thrust. A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the proper site. They backed the s.h.i.+p farther out into s.p.a.ce. They made their thrust with full speed and momentum.

There was no sensation when they hit the barrier, but they did not penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick ice, and they shot back out into s.p.a.ce again. The tangent penetration would not do.

Very well, then. A direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared to put braking forces into immediate power, lest they crash the s.h.i.+p at full power against the surface.

And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.

What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?

Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis.

E science apparently had some kind of s.h.i.+eld which they'd kept secret from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!

”Why sure,” E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, ”sure there's a s.h.i.+eld. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the specimen They want. There's an E down there.

”So, naturally, the trap door is closed.”

21

Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known, that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with their experiment.

From the moment he walked away from the gra.s.sy slope where he had signaled the outer s.h.i.+p, he moved and thought as someone detached from ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the frantic signals from the s.h.i.+p out in s.p.a.ce, he felt he was also walking out of a sh.e.l.l of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the consideration of a problem.

His conviction was complete that the s.h.i.+p could give him nothing he needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to determine his position in reality.

He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.

He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into the shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them with their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and texture as food.

At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness, awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of things. But there was awareness of more.

There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something stronger and more important than he.

To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not a.s.sume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.

If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that he must a.s.sume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he himself be destroyed.

So man created his G.o.ds in his own image, with his own attributes magnified.

Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have survived to remain aware.

But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.

The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord with the answer.

The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond the primitive one was self-evident.

To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.