be houses and beds, fires and
clothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans
always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences
forgotten.

In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where the
dissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of the
ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same as
this side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure.

Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we still
weren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and join
forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down and
congregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was the
beginning of something that would come later, something Cal would see
for himself. That they were already not thinking the way humans do.
Thinking and behaving more the way dumb animals do.

Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the next. In some
ways it was still like a dream. The way people were just accepting
things, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered one
time an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man and
the average man than there was between that average man and the ape.
He'd resented it at the time, of course, but now he thought of it again
and began to realize what the E had meant.

Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back to nature,
wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How stupid it was for man
to knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing such
hardships, when all a man could ever want was right here.

Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He reminded
them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a prime
bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worse
than this, and had ought to keep their wits about them.

Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did it
because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because once
upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered, it had been his duty.

It was the next day that things got real rough.

Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be sure when
the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn't
see any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just go
away. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe that
you'd go away