The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

principle of freedom of information applies to research findings in pure science. For a while, I’d actually bothered to keep up with the bulletins published in English by the Soviets, but I’d eventually realized that they were never going to tell me anything non-trivial that I didn’t already know. Whether acknowledged or not, the principle of sovereignty extended to knowledge as well as to territory. We probably had agents who knew everything that appeared in the Soviets’ own bulletins, just as they had agents who read ours in the original, but information like that doesn’t filter back to the poor sods who do all the work.
    “This is a matter for the concern of the entire race,” said Harmall smoothly. “We’re obliged to permit a soviet observer to participate in our investigations. We asked them to supply a competent professional, and they of course agreed. He’ll be here in two days. The Earth Spirit should be just about ready to set out by then, assuming that you can have your equipment stowed quickly enough. You can discuss weight and size restrictions with the quartermaster. Are you still with us?”
    I was still with him. It had never crossed my mind to consider the possibility of backing out. Obviously, the Ariadne ’s team had made a mistake. I thought of myself as the kind of man who never made mistakes. Ergo, I figured, there was nothing to be scared of.
    I broached what seemed to me, at the time, to be a much more important question. “On the basis of what you’ve shown us,” I said, “Naxos isn’t as...well-developed...as Earth. In an evolutionary sense, that is. All the vertebrates in those pictures are what we’d call primitive. Amphibious. The implication is that the cleidoic egg hasn’t yet appeared, nor internal temperature regulation as in Earthly mammals. I take it from what you said earlier that such a state of affairs wouldn’t be too surprising—climatic stability and an abundance of water seem to be the rule there. Am I right?”
    “There is no evidence of creatures resembling mammals,” he replied. “Our information is very limited, though. We would hesitate to make statements about the whole world on the basis of what was discovered in one locality in a matter of twenty days.”
    “You have supplementary evidence from the robots.”
    “Very little,” he said.
    He was playing coy. It wasn’t just scientific caution. For some reason, he didn’t want to jump to the oh-so-attractive conclusion that Naxos was a virgin world, ready for exploitation if only it could be demonstrated that humans could live there. Maybe, I thought, it was an official line, chosen so as to provide an excuse for holding the Soviets back from a more intimate involvement. If Naxos was what it seemed, then it surely was a matter to interest the whole human race; but while we could treat it as nothing more than another biological puzzle, with no real practical implications, it would be much easier for Space Agency to keep control.
    I didn’t bother to follow up the line of thought. It didn’t really interest me that much.
    “Have we finished for the time being?” asked Schumann.
    Harmall signaled that we had, though he looked around once more to see if there was any sign of anyone wanting to back out.
    “In that case,” said the director, “you’d better take Dr. Hesse to your lab, Lee. No equipment came up from Marsbase, and I doubt if Vesenkov will bring any from the Belt. You’d better start deciding what you need, before the Earth Spirit ’s quartermaster begins telling you what you can’t have.”
    I was the last to leave the room, and as I looked back at Schumann, he said, “Good luck.” I realized then that he had meant the remark about being expendable.
    “You don’t really think there’s something there that we can’t handle, do you?” I asked him.
    “Why do you think Zeno is included?” he countered. His voice was low. Zeno was out in the corridor, moving away.
    “He and