ht to
jeopardize a colony of human beings by assigning an unqualified man to
the problem.

A question, too, of who had jurisdiction over the Juniors, the
apprentices, the students. How far down the line did the mantle of the E
extend to protect those not yet qualified? How far out did the
Administration of E.H.Q. extend to substitute for government? How much
of a state within a state had E.H.Q. become?

Now, while the public was clamoring for action, and E.H.Q. was, instead,
droning on through a mass of inconsequential detail, now while public
sentiment was crystallizing, or could be crystallized into placing human
welfare over science procedures, now was the time.

It was not difficult to find a judge who was predisposed to favor the
request of the attorney general.

8

After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the
review.

The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously
favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeed
they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly
nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on
Earth.

Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists
had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were
temperamentally suited to the work.

As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly as
possible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitive
ecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of this
first colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do only
what any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible.

In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had been
more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden of
their complaint was that they found living too easy. They were
professionals, accustomed to challenge.

They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred and
the planet given over to the second-phase colonists.

They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was making
farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft,
ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostile
conditions. There had even been threats that one of these days they
would all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stopped
them by threats of his own, that he would personally see th