reminded himself, sternly, that the essence
might be that Eden was there no longer; that he'd better pay closest
attention to everything said, however positive and didactic, lest he
find his own mind closed to a solution. He reminded himself that, after
all, these people had worked all night for his benefit, while he lay
peacefully in Linda's arms.

He reminded himself that one little bit of datum, one little phrase,
carelessly heard now, might mean his success or failure. Didactic
pedantry has its place in science, and these were scientists, not
vaudeville performers. Silently, he apologized to the lot of them.

A geophysicist took over the review. He quickly got down out of space to
the surface of Eden. Personally he didn't mind calling it Eden, just so
all the purists knew he was referring to Ceti II. This was supposed to
be humorous, and he waited until all the viewers had had a chance to
chuckle with him.

If the astrophysicist signaled his demand for a retraction and apology
for this public ridicule, Bill Hayes apparently didn't feel it worth
breaking up the review to oblige him.

After he had enjoyed his own humor, the geophysicist did present his
capsule of knowledge with excellent brevity.

There were no large continents. Instead, there were thousands of
islands, so many that the land mass roughly equaled the sea surface. The
islands had not been counted, he admitted, and then needlessly explained
that Eden had been discovered only ten years ago. Since universe
exploration was expanding much faster than properly qualified scientists
could follow to catalogue conditions, details such as this had been left
for future colonists to complete.

He took time out to complain that the younger generation was too dazzled
by glamor and wanted to become entertainment stars, sports stars, jet
jockeys exploring space, and there weren't enough going into the solid
sciences to keep up with the work to be done.

A biophysicist interposed here and stated that his research with the
injection of uric acid into rats caused a marked rise in intelligence,
and if the Administration would just pay attention and let him have the
grant he was asking, he felt confident that research in how to change
the human kidney structure would take us a long mutant leap ahead toward
humans with super-intelligence.

Bill Hayes cut him off as tactfully as possible and suggested that the
Eden problem was here and now, and perhaps we should get