earily, after a moment's hesitation. "Keep the channel open.
Keep trying to contact them. Let me know if signal resumes."

But he already felt the conviction that it would do no good. It was too
much of the same pattern as before. What could have happened?

There'd have to be another review, he supposed. A longer and more
detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in
the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to
speculate in that first one? But in the interests of time!

The scientists would grumble, even worse than before, because now each
one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that
had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew
what a needle looked like, could recognize it when you saw it.

It would probably all end with nothing solved. E McGinnis would go out
in a rescue ship. He'd already told E Gray that he would be available
in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency. And that would leave
E.H.Q. without a single E in residence.

Why didn't General Administration get busy and qualify more E's? It
shouldn't be so difficult as all that to teach people to think! There
was something mighty wrong with the way kids were brought up if only one
in a million could still think by the time he was grown. Less than one
in a million could qualify as an E.

A boy had to be a natural rebel to start with, because if he believed
what people said he wouldn't get anywhere, no farther than the people
who said it. And if he didn't believe what they told him, they punished
him, outcast him, whipped him, violenced him into submission if they
could. If they couldn't they shut him up in a prison, labeled him
dangerous to society.

It was a wonder that any were able to walk the thin line between
rebelliousness and delinquency! And if a few were able, they were still
of no use unless they learned what science had to offer as a base. Ah,
there was the rub. How to keep alive the curiosity, the inquisitiveness,
the skepticism; and at the same time teach him the basics he must have
for constructive thought? For if he were not beaten into submission by
the punitive methods of society, he was persuaded into it by his
teachers, who were ever so sure of their facts and proofs.

Now you take this Eden problem. Probably wouldn't be tough at all if a
guy could just think. But what could have happened?

He understood there was an observ