NOVELS
Eight Keys To Eden
They'd Rather Be Right*
The Forever Machine*
NON-FICTION BOOK
Opportunity Unlimited
NOVELETTES
Remembrance and Reflection
How Allied
What Thin Partitions**
Sense From Thought Divide
Star, Bright
Hide! Hide! Witch!
A Woman's Place
Clerical Error
What Now, Little Man?
Do Unto Others
SHORT STORIES
What Have I Done?
The Conqueror
Kenzie Report
Bow Down To Them
Reward For Valour
Progress Report**
Crazy Joey**
We're Civilized**
Solution Delayed**
ARTICLES
It Can't Be Done
The Dread Tomato Affliction
* In collaboration with Frank Riley
** In collaboration with Alex Apostolides
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
1960
All of the characters in this book
are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470
Copyright © 1960 by Mark Clifton
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
To
Charles Steinberg
who made writing possible for me
1 Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis,without question.
2 Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general contrariness.
3 Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then toaccount for the phenomenon?
4 How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purposethat he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?
5 What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant,the obscure prevalent?
6 What if the statement were reversible, that which is consideredeffect is really cause?
7 What if the natural law perceived in one field also operatesunperceived in all other phases of science? What if therebe only one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us inmany facets because we cannot apperceive the whole, ofwhich we have gained only the most elementary glimpses,with which we can cope only at the crudest level?
And are those still other doors, yet undefined,
on down the corridor?
One minute after the regular report call from the planet Edenwas overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor.His finger hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he grittedhis teeth and pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling outof his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the fortyoperators hunched over their panels.
"What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came toa stop.
"Eden's due. Overdue." T