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 they never got
another assignment.
He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Some
organisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, to
make their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until the
second or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phase
colonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet could
be opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning a
little chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredom
might be just the very inimical condition they were having to test.
Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
colonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction from
their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawing
attention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps,
but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treated
unfairly.
This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let his
disappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrative
hassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior.
Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the whole
of the problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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