correctly according to status.

"If you're so smart," he muttered to the absent machine, "why didn't you
call them too?"

He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. It
would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....

At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes
dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key to
open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.

"How soon," the voice asked, "will we be able to get into this Eden
matter?"

"I'm setting it up now," he said quickly. "By tomorrow morning, surely.
That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor that
wouldn't require an E."

"Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available."

The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been broken. He
sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet with
sweat, that his shirt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that he
was grinning joyfully.

Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question of
whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybe
three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, the
students.

He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind it
being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize he
could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. He
understood.

"Hello, Dr. Mille," he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. "This
is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration."

"All right! All right!" the voice answered testily. "What is it now?"

3

In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and
the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved
methodically through his preflight inspection.

Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E
wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. To
Lynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath his
broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He
liked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described the
substance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how
they behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could
also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to wait
until the theorists had turned such equations into machines, contro