Stanislaw Lem - Eden

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Eden

by Stanislaw Lem

Translated by Marc E. Heine

a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Note from the Scanner: There was no back cover info for this edition of the book. The following is

from an editorial review at Amazon:

After crash-landing on an alien planet known as Eden, the crew of a spaceship begins to explore -- and

hopelessly misinterpret -- the strange surroundings. In this "stylistic departure from his usual satirical, antic

approach. . . Lem creates an intricately detailed exotic environment in a thoughtful, often exciting story,"

said Publisher's Weekly.

HBJ

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,

recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any

part of the work should be mailed to:

Copyrights and Permissions Department,

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers,

Orlando, Florida 32887.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lem, Stanistaw.

[Eden, English]

Eden/Stanislaw Lem; translated by Marc E. Heine.- 1st ed.

p. cm.

Translation of: Eden.

"A Helen and Kurt Wolff book."

I. Title.

PG7158.L39E313 1989

891.8'537-dci9 89-1963

Printed in the United States of America

Because of a miscalculation, the craft dipped too low and hit the atmosphere with an earsplitting

scream. Lying flat in their bunks, the men could hear the dampers being crushed. The front screens

showed flame and went black; the cushion of incandescent gas at the bow was too much for the outside

cameras. The control room filled with the stench of hot rubber. Under the force of the deceleration, the

men temporarily lost their vision, their hearing. This was the end.

No one could think. No one had the strength, even, to inhale. Breathing was done for them by

the oxypulsators, forcing air into them as into straining balloons. Then the roar abated. The emergency

lights went on, six on either side. The crew stirred. Above the cracked instrument panel, the warning

signal showed red. Pieces of insulation and Plexiglas rustled across the floor. There was no roar now,

only a dull whistle.

"What --" croaked the Doctor after spitting out his rubber mouthpiece.

"Stay down!" warned the Captain, who was watching the one undamaged screen.

The ship somersaulted, as if hit by a battering ram. The nylon netting that enfolded them twanged

like the string of a musical instrument. For a moment everything was poised upside down, and then the

engine began to rumble.

Muscles that had tensed in anticipation of the final blow relaxed. The ship, atop a vertical column

of exhaust flame, slowly descended; the nozzles throbbed reassuringly. This lasted several minutes. Then

the walls throbbed; the vibration increased -- the turbine bearings must have worked loose. The men

looked at one another. They knew that everything depended now on whether or not the vanes would

hold. The control room suddenly shook, as though a steel hammer were striking it furiously from the

outside. The last screen became covered with a cluster of circles; the convex phosphorescent shield

darkened. The faint light of the emergency lamps cast enlarged shadows of the men on the sloping walls.

Now the engine howled. Beneath them there was a grating, a breaking; then something split with a shrill

sound. Jolted repeatedly, the hull was like a blind and lifeless thing. They held their breath in the

darkness. Their bodies suddenly were flung against the nylon cords, but did not strike the shattered

panels, which would have torn the mesh. The men swayed like pendulums. . .

The ship seemed to move in an avalanche. There were distant, dull reverberations. Lumps of

earth that had been thrown up slid along the outer hull with a feeble sound.

All motion stopped. Beneath the men, something gurgled. The gurgling became louder, more

rapid -- the sound of water leaking -- and there was a repeated, penetrating hiss, as though drops were

falling, one by one, on heated metal.

"We're alive," said the Chemist. In total darkness, he could not see a thing. He was hanging in his

nylon bag fastened on four sides by cords. The ship had to be lying on its side: otherwise the berth would

have been horizontal. There was a crackle, and the pale glimmer of the Doctor's old lighter.

"Roll call," said the Captain. A cord on his bag snapped, causing him to rotate slowly, helplessly.

He reached out through the nylon netting and tried unsuccessfully to grab a knob on the wall.

"Here," said the Engineer.

"Here," said the Physicist.

"Here," said the Chemist.

"I'm here," said the Cyberneticist, holding his head.

"And here, that's six," said the Doctor.

"All present and accounted for. Congratulations." The Captain's voice was calm. "And the

robots?" There was no reply.

"Robots!!"

Silence. The lighter burned the Doctor's fingers; he put it out. "I always said we were made of

better stuff."

"Anyone have a knife?"

"I do. Should I cut the cords?"

"It would be better if someone could crawl out without cutting them. I can't."

"I'll try."

Struggling, heavy breathing, then a pounding, and a grinding of glass.

"I'm at the bottom. On the wall, that is," said the Chemist. "Doctor, throw a little light here, so I

can help you."

"Hurry up. The thing's almost out of fluid." The lighter brightened again. The Chemist went to the

Captain's cocoon but could reach no farther than the legs. At last he managed to open a side zipper, and

the Captain dropped to his feet with a thud. The two of them together could work faster. Soon everyone

was standing on the slanted wall of the control room, which had a semi-elastic covering.

"Where do we begin?" asked the Doctor, applying a band-aid to the cut on the Cyberneticist's

forehead. The Doctor always carried odds and ends in his pockets.

"We see if we can get out," replied the Captain. "First we need light. Doctor, shine it over here --

there may still be current in the panel, or at least in the alarm system."

This time, the lighter produced only a spark. The Doctor thumbed the flint over and over again

above the Captain and the Engineer as they rummaged through fragments of metal on their knees.

"Found anything yet?" asked the Chemist, behind them.

"Nothing yet. Anyone have a match?"

"The last time I saw matches was three years ago. In a museum," the Engineer muttered

indistinctly. He was attempting to strip the end of a wire with his teeth. Suddenly a small blue glow filled

the Captain's cupped hands.

"Here's current," he said. "Now for a bulb."

They found an undamaged bulb in an emergency display above a side panel. A sharp electric light

illuminated the control room, giving it the look of a tunnel with curved walls. High above them was the

door. "More than twenty feet," said the Chemist gloomily. "How are we going to get up there?"

"I once saw, in a circus, five men standing on top of one another," said the Doctor.

"We're not acrobats. We can climb up the floor," the Captain said. He took the Chemist's knife

and began making cuts in the spongy floor covering.

"Steps?"

"Yes."

"Why is the Cyberneticist so quiet?" asked the Engineer. He was sitting on the shattered

instrument panel, applying a voltmeter to some protruding cables.

"The man feels orphaned," replied the Doctor with a smile. "What's a cyberneticist without his

robots?""I'll fix them," said the Cyberneticist. He was looking at the screens. Their yellow glow grew

dimmer."The accumulator, too," muttered the Physicist. The Engineer got to his feet.

"So it would appear."

A quarter of an hour later, the six-man expedition was working its way toward the front of the

ship. First they entered the corridor; from there they went to their separate quarters. In the Doctor's

cabin they found an old flashlight. (The Doctor liked to collect things.) They took it with them. There was

devastation everywhere. The furniture, bolted to the floor, had not been damaged, but the instruments,

tools, vehicles, and supplies made a sea of junk through which they waded.

"Now let's try to get out," said the Captain when they were back in the corridor.

"What about suits?"

"They're in the air lock. They should be all right. But we won't need suits. Eden has a breathable

atmosphere."

"Has anyone ever been here before?"

"There was a cosmic probe twelve years ago, when Altain disappeared with his ship.

Remember?"

"But no men landed?"

"No, none."

The inner hatch was overhead, at an angle. Their feeling of unfamiliarity -- because the walls were

floors and the ceilings walls -- gradually passed.

"Here we will need a living ladder," declared the Captain. He began a careful inspection of the

inner hatch with the Doctor's flashlight. The hermetic seal was intact.

"Looks good," said the Cyberneticist, craning his neck.

"Yes," agreed the Engineer. He had feared that the terrific force that bent the girders and crushed

the main instrument panel between them might also have jammed the inner hatch -- but he had kept the

thought to himself. The Captain asked the Chemist to stand by the wall and bend over.

"Legs apart, hands on your knees -- it'll be more comfortable for you that way."

"I always wanted to be in the circus!" the Chemist said, crouching. The Captain placed a foot on

his shoulder, climbed up, and, pressing against the wall, caught hold of the nickel-plated lever with his

fingertips.

He tugged at it, then hung from it. With a grating sound, as though the lock mechanism were full

of crushed glass, it made a quarter-turn and stopped.

"Are you pulling in the right direction?" asked the Doctor, who was shining the flashlight from

below. "The ship is on its side."

"I've taken that into account."

"You can't pull it a little harder?"

The Captain said nothing. Hanging from the lever with one hand, he tried bringing the other hand

up as well. This was difficult because of his position, but he finally managed it. He drew up his knees to

avoid kicking the Chemist beneath him and gave the lever several jerks -- by pulling himself up and then

dropping with the full weight of his body. He grunted when his torso hit the wall.

On the third or fourth drop, the lever moved a little more. There were still about two inches to

go. The Captain braced himself and did one more drop. The lever engaged the catch with an awful

squeak: the bolt had been pulled.

"Perfect, perfect," said the Physicist, delighted.

The Engineer said nothing, his mind elsewhere.

Now they worked at opening the inner hatch -- a more difficult task. The Engineer tried the

handle of the chamber door, but knew it was hopeless: the pipes had burst in a number of places and all

the fluid had leaked out. In the light of the Doctor's flashlight, the wheel gleamed above them like a halo,

too high for their gymnastic abilities: more than twelve feet.

They gathered broken equipment, cushions, books. The library proved particularly useful, with its

thick celestial atlases. Under the Engineer's direction, after a few false starts, the men built a pyramid of

these, like bricks. It took them almost an hour to make a six-foot pile.

"I hate physical work," wheezed the Doctor. The flashlight, wedged into an aperture in an

air-conditioning unit, lit their way as they hurried to the library and returned, their arms filled with books.

"I would never have believed that such makeshift measures could be taken -- on stellar voyages." He was

the only one talking now. At last the Captain, helped by his colleagues, gingerly climbed the pyramid and

touched the wheel with his fingers.

"Not quite," he said. "Two inches short. If I jump, the whole thing will come down."

"I happen to have here The Theory of Tachyons," said the Doctor, hefting a volume in his hand.

"That should do the trick."

The Captain clung to the wheel; as the flashlight moved, his shadow leaped across the white

plastic that covered what was now the ceiling. Suddenly the mountain of books shifted.

"Careful," said the Physicist.

"There's nothing to push against," complained the Captain in a muffled voice. "Damn!" The wheel

slipped from his hands. He swayed for a moment, then regained his balance. No one looked up now; the

men linked arms and pressed the unstable structure from all sides to keep it from separating. The Captain

caught hold of the wheel again. Suddenly there was a scraping sound, and the books tumbled. He hung in

midair -- but the wheel had made a complete turn.

"Eleven more times," he said, dropping onto the pile of books.

Two hours later, the problem of the inner hatch had been solved. When it began to open, the

entire crew cheered.

Suspended halfway up the corridor, the open hatch formed a kind of platform from which the

chamber could be entered without much difficulty. The suits turned out to be undamaged. The lockers

that contained them were now horizontal. The men walked across the locker doors.

"Do we all leave?" asked the Chemist.

"First let's see if we can open the outer hatch. . ."

But the thing would not budge, as if the levers had fused with the main body. All six pushed

together with their shoulders; then they tried turning the screws in different ways, but the screws would

not turn."Arriving is easy -- the hard thing is to disembark," concluded the Doctor.

"Very clever," muttered the Engineer. The sweat was burning his eyes. They sat down on the

locker doors.

"I'm starved," the Cyberneticist said in the general silence.

"We'd better get something to eat," said the Physicist. He offered to go to the storeroom.

"The kitchen would be better. There's food in the freezer. . ."

"I can't do it by myself. There's a ton of junk in the way. Any volunteers?"

The Doctor agreed to go; then the Chemist reluctantly stood up. When their heads disappeared

over the edge of the half-open inner hatch, and the last gleam of the flashlight, which they took with them,

was gone, the Captain said in a hushed voice:

"I didn't want to say anything. You understand the situation?"

"Yes," said the Engineer. In the darkness, he touched the Captain's shoe and kept his hand on it.

He needed the contact.

"You think we can cut through the outer hatch?"

"With what?" asked the Engineer.

"We have a blowtorch."

"Did you ever hear of a blowtorch that could cut through a foot and a half of ceramite?"

They fell silent. From the depths of the ship came a hollow noise, as if from a vault.

"What's that?" asked the Cyberneticist nervously. He got up.

"Sit down," said the Captain gently but firmly.

"Do you think the door. . . fused with the hull?"

"I don't know," the Engineer replied.

"Do you have any idea what happened?"

"We ran into atmosphere at cosmic velocity, where atmosphere should not have been. Yet the

autopilot could not have made an error."

"The autopilot didn't make the error, we did," said the Captain. "We forgot to correct for the

tail." "What tail?"

"The gas that extends behind every planet with an atmosphere, in the direction opposite to its

motion. You didn't know that?"

"Yes, of course. So we fell into such a tail? But it must be extremely attenuated."

"Ten to the minus six," said the Captain. "Or on that order. But we were traveling at more than

forty-five miles a second, my friend. It stopped us like a wall. That was the first impact, remember?"

"Yes," said the Engineer, "and when we entered the stratosphere, we were still doing six or

seven. We really ought to have smashed to pieces. It's strange that the ship withstood it."

"Strange?"

"She's designed for a load factor of twenty, and before the screen blew, I saw with my own eyes

how the arrow jumped off the scale. The scale goes up to thirty."

"And how about us?"

"What do you mean?"

"How were we able to withstand a constant deceleration of thirty g's?"

"Not constant. At the maximum, yes. After all, the retarders gave their all. That's what started the

pulsation."

"But the autopilot equalized. It was the air compressors. . ." said the Cyberneticist with

annoyance in his voice. In the depths of the ship something began rolling. It sounded like iron wheels on

sheet metal. Then it stopped.

"Don't blame the air compressors," said the Engineer. "If we went to the engine room, I could

show you that they did five times more than they were supposed to do. Remember, they're only auxiliary

units. First of all, their bearings were loosened, and when the pulsation began --"

"You think there was resonance?"

"Resonance is a different matter. The fact is, we should have been smeared across several miles

of space, like that freighter on Neptune -- remember? You'll believe me when you see the engine room. I

can tell you now what's there."

"I'm in no hurry to see the engine room. What's taking them so long? I can't see a thing."

"We'll have light, don't worry," said the Engineer, unaware that he still had his fingertips on the

shoe of the Captain, who remained silent and did not move.

"Let's go to the engine room, then. It'll kill time. What else can we do?"

"You really think we won't get out of here?"

"I was just joking. I always joke."

"Enough of that," said the Captain, coming alive. "Anyway, in a pinch, there's the emergency

hatch." "Which happens to be underneath us. The ship must have cut one hell of a trench, and I'm not

even sure the outer hatch is above ground."

"We have tools. We can dig a tunnel."

"And the loading bay?" asked the Cyberneticist.

"Submerged," the Engineer said. "I looked into the shaft. One of the main tanks must have burst.

There's at least six feet of water there. And probably radioactive."

"How do you know?"

"The reactor cooling system always gives out first -- you didn't know that? Forget the loading

bay. We'll have to get out this way, unless --"

"Unless we dig a tunnel," the Captain said softly.

"Yes, that is possible," the Engineer agreed, and fell silent. There was the sound of footsteps;

sudden light in the corridor beneath them made them blink.

"Ham, crackers, tongue, whatever you like. Everything in cans! There's chocolate, too, and we

have thermoses," the Doctor shouted, clambering up first. He shined the flashlight for the others as they

entered the chamber and passed out cans and aluminum plates.

"The thermoses are intact," the Cyberneticist observed, pouring coffee into his mug.

"Yes, and the cans held up well, too. But the refrigeration units, the ovens, the small molecular

synthesizer, the water filters -- they're all smashed."

"And the purifier?"

"That, too. We could repair it if we had the tools. But it's a vicious circle -- to get a repair robot

going you need current, but you can't get current unless you fix the generator, and to fix the generator you

need a repair robot."

"So you've been deliberating, my scientific colleagues? What ray of hope have you to offer us?"

asked the Doctor, spreading crackers with butter and laying slices of ham on top. Not waiting for a reply,

he continued:

"The science-fiction books I read as a kid must outweigh this poor wreck of ours, yet not once

did I come across a story anything like what has happened to us."

"Because it's so prosaic," the Cyberneticist said, grimacing.

"Yes, this is something original -- a kind of interplanetary Robinson Crusoe," said the Doctor.

He sealed the thermos. "When I get back, I must try to write it, to the best of my ability."

They began gathering the cans. The Physicist suggested throwing them into the lockers with the

suits. The men had to press against the wall so the doors -- on the floor -- could be shut.

"You know, we heard a strange noise while we were rummaging in the storeroom," said the

Chemist.

"What kind of noise?"

"As though something were crushing the ship."

"A rock?" asked the Cyberneticist.

"It's something quite different," the Engineer said. "When we hit the atmosphere, the external

shield reached a very high temperature. The prow may have begun to melt. And now parts of the frame

are cooling and shifting, and internal pressures will develop. Hence the noise. You can hear it even now.

Listen. . ."

They heard a groan in the interior of the craft -- then a series of short, diminishing cracks -- then

silence. "One of the robots, do you think?" said the Cyberneticist, hope in his voice.

"You saw how it was with the robots."

"But we didn't look into the reserve hold." The Cyberneticist leaned out over the edge of the

platform and shouted into the dark corridor, "Reserve robots!"

His voice echoed. Silence was the only reply.

"Come, let's take a good look at this hatch," said the Engineer. He knelt at the slightly concave

plate, shone the light along its rim, inch by inch. In the same way he checked the seals, which were

covered with a network of tiny cracks.

"Nothing melted from the inside, which isn't surprising, since ceramite conducts heat poorly."

"Maybe we should try once more?" suggested the Doctor, touching the wheel of the outer hatch.

"There's no point," said the Chemist.

The Engineer placed his hand on the hatch, then jumped to his feet.

"We need water! Lots of cold water!"

"Why?"

"Touch the hatch!"

Several outstretched hands felt it simultaneously.

"Very hot," said someone.

"Fortunately for us!"

"How's that?"

"The hull, heated, has expanded, and the hatch, too. If we cool the hatch, it will contract, and we

might be able to open it."

"Water won't do it. There might still be some ice -- in the refrigeration units," said the Captain.

One after another, they dropped into the corridor, which began to echo with their steps. The

Captain remained in the chamber with the Engineer.

"It will open," he said softly, as if to himself.

"If it hasn't fused," the Engineer murmured. He ran a finger along the rim to check its temperature.

"Ceramite starts melting over three thousand seven hundred degrees. You didn't notice what the shield

registered at the end?"

"At the end the dials were useless. When we threw on the brakes, it was over two and a half, if

I'm not mistaken."

"Two and a half thousand degrees is still not much."

"Yes, but later on!"

The Chemist's flushed face appeared over the edge of the platform. He had tied the flashlight

around his neck. In its swaying light the pieces of ice in his bucket gleamed. He handed the bucket to the

Captain."Just a minute. How are we supposed to --" The Engineer broke off. "I'll be back." And he

disappeared into the darkness.

More steps could be heard. The Doctor arrived with two buckets of water, ice floating on the

top. The Chemist held the light while the Doctor and the Physicist poured water on the hatch. The water

flowed across the floor and into the corridor. After dousing the hatch for the tenth time, they heard a faint

sound coming from it -- a squeaking. They cheered. The Engineer appeared, wearing a reflector (from a

suit) taped to his chest. Its glare made everything brighter. He threw an armful of plastic pieces taken

from the control room onto the floor. The men began packing the hatch with chunks of ice, keeping them

in place with the plastic, with air cushions, and with books that the Physicist kept bringing in. Finally,

when their backs ached and little remained of the ice -- the hot metal melted it very quickly -- the

Cyberneticist grabbed the wheel with both hands.

"Not yet!" shouted the Engineer. But the wheel turned with astonishing ease. Everyone jumped

up. The wheel rotated more and more rapidly. The Engineer grabbed the center handle of the triple bolt

securing the hatch and pulled. There was a sound like thick glass cracking, and the door fell inward,

gradually at first, then suddenly striking those who stood closest. A black avalanche rushed in, covering

them up to the knees. The Chemist was thrown; the hatch pinned him to the side wall but left him

unharmed. The Captain, barely managing to jump free at the last moment, practically knocked the Doctor

over. They all froze. The Doctor's flashlight had been hit and went out; the only light came from the

reflector on the Engineer's chest.

"What is it?" asked the Cyberneticist in an unsteady voice. He stood behind the others, near the

edge of the platform.

"A sample of planet Eden," the Captain replied. He was helping to extricate the Chemist from

behind the door that had been pushed open.

"Yes," said the Engineer. "The whole hatchway is underground!"

"Then this must be the first landing beneath the surface of an unknown planet," observed the

Doctor.Everyone began to laugh. The Cyberneticist laughed so hard, tears came to his eyes.

"Enough!" said the Captain. "We can't carry on like this until morning. Get your tools, men, we

have digging to do."

The Chemist bent down and picked up a heavy, compact lump from the mound on the floor.

Earth protruded through the oval opening. Now and then blackish bits trickled down the surface of the

heap as far as the corridor. The men withdrew to the corridor; there was no longer room enough on the

platform. The Captain and the Engineer were the last to jump down.

"How deep are we, do you think?" the Captain asked the Engineer in a whisper. In the corridor,

a patch of light moved far ahead of them. The Engineer had given the reflector to the Chemist.

"It depends on many things. Tagerssen penetrated two hundred and fifty feet."

"Yes, but what remained of him and his ship!"

"Or take the Moon probe. They had to tunnel into rock to get it out. Into rock!"

"On the Moon you have pumice. . ."

"But who knows what we have here?"

"It looks like marl."

"At the hatchway, yes -- but beyond?"

The instruments were a problem. Like all long-range craft, the ship carried a duplicate set of

robots and remote-controlled semiautomata for every sort of task, including ground-surface tasks under

various planetary conditions. But the machines were dead, and without current there was no chance of

repairing them. The only large-scale unit they had, an excavator powered by a micro-reactor, also

required electricity to be started. So they would have to make do with primitive tools: shovels and

pickaxes. This, too, presented problems. After several hours of toil, the crew went back and got three

hoes, flattened and curved at the end, two steel poles, and large sheets of metal -- to reinforce the walls

of the tunnel. They carried the earth in buckets as well as in large plastic boxes supported litter-fashion by

short aluminum tubing.

Approximately eighteen hours had passed since the crash, and the men were exhausted. The

Doctor felt that they should have at least a few hours' sleep. But first they needed to improvise beds of

some sort, since the bunks in their sleeping quarters, bolted to the floor, were now vertical. It would have

taken too much effort to detach them, so the men lugged air mattresses to the library (now almost half

empty) and lay down side by side.

But, except for the Chemist and the Engineer, no one could sleep. So the Doctor got up again,

took his flashlight, and went in search of sleeping pills. For almost an hour he cleared a path to the

first-aid room through a hallway filled with broken equipment and instruments that had tumbled from the

wall compartments. At last -- his watch showed four in the morning, ship time -- the pills were dispensed,

the light was extinguished, and fitful breathing soon filled the dark room.

They awoke unexpectedly quickly -- all except the Cyberneticist, who had taken too large a

dose and was like one drunk. The Engineer complained of a sharp pain in the back of his neck. The

Doctor discovered a swelling there: the Engineer had probably got a sprain when they were grappling

with the hatch wheels.

Spirits were low. Even the Doctor was not talkative. The food supplies in the air lock were

inaccessible now, buried beneath a heap of dirt, so once again the Physicist and the Chemist trudged off

to the storeroom for cans of food. It was nine when work resumed on the tunnel.

They went at a snail's pace. There was little room to move about in the oval opening. The men in

front broke the packed earth with their hoes, and those behind them removed it to the corridor. Then it

was decided to pile the earth in the navigation room, which was closer and contained nothing that might

be needed in the immediate future.

Four hours later, the soil in the cabin was knee-high but the tunnel was only six feet long. Though

the marl, compact, was not that hard, the poles and hoe blades kept getting stuck in it, and the iron

handles bent as the men labored frantically. The steel hoe that the Captain used worked the best. The

Engineer, afraid that the ceiling might cave in on them, took care that it was always well propped. By

nightfall, when, smeared with clay, they sat down to supper, the tunnel, which led up from the hatch at a

steep, almost seventy-degree angle, extended no more than twenty feet.

The Engineer looked into the shaft that led to the lower level, where the loading-bay hatch,

steel-plated, lay a hundred feet astern of the main hatch, but all he could see was black water. The level

was higher than on the previous day; one of the tanks must still be leaking. The water was contaminated,

radioactive. He verified this with his small Geiger counter, closed the shaft, and returned to his comrades

without mentioning his discovery.

"If all goes well, we'll be out tomorrow. If not, it'll take us two days," the Cyberneticist declared,

drinking his third mug of coffee from the thermos. They were all drinking coffee.

"How do you know?" the Engineer asked with surprise.

"Just a feeling."

"He has the intuition his robots lack," said the Doctor, laughing. As the day progressed, the

Doctor was in increasingly good humor. When relieved of the digging, he would run back to the ship's

quarters, scavenging. He added two magneto lanterns, a portable shaver, vitamin-enriched chocolate,

and a stack of towels to their supplies. The men were filthy, their suits were covered with stains. No one

had shaved, of course, given the lack of electricity.

The whole of the following day was spent digging the tunnel. The navigation room was now so

full, it became difficult to dump the soil through the door. Next they used the library. The Doctor had

misgivings here, but the Chemist, with whom he was carrying the improvised handbarrow, tipped a heap

of marl onto the books without hesitation.

The tunnel opened up unexpectedly. The soil had been getting drier and less compact for a while

now, and though the Physicist had noted this, the others did not agree: the soil they carried into the ship

seemed to them no different. The Engineer and the Captain, beginning their shift, had just taken up the

tools still warm from previous hands, and were hacking at the irregular wall, when a section suddenly

disappeared and air poured in through the opening. They could feel the draft: the pressure of the

atmosphere outside was a little higher than in the tunnel or the rocket. The hoes and steel poles worked

feverishly. No one any longer carried away the soil. The rest of the crew, unable to help those in front

because there was no room, formed a tight group at the rear. After a few final blows, the Engineer was

about to crawl outside, but the Captain stopped him. The Captain wanted to widen the exit first. He also

gave orders for the last chunks of soil to be carried into the ship, so that nothing would obstruct the

tunnel. Another ten or twenty minutes passed, therefore, before the six men crawled out onto the planet's

surface.

It was dusk. The tunnel opened near the base of a gently sloping knoll about forty feet high.

Beyond, a vast plain stretched to the horizon, over which the first stars twinkled. There were vague,

slender treelike forms in the distance, but the light of the setting sun was now so dim that everything

merged into a uniform gray. The men stood silently. To their left, the huge hull of the ship jutted at an

angle into the air. One hundred twenty of its two hundred feet, the Engineer estimated, were embedded in

the knoll. But no one was interested any more in the silhouette of the tube ending in useless vanes and

exhaust cones. The men inhaled the cool air, with its faint, unfamiliar odor that no one could give a name

to, and a strong feeling of helplessness came over them. The hoes and pipes dropped from their hands.

They stood gazing at the plain, its horizons in darkness, and at the stars shining overhead.

"The Pole Star?" the Chemist asked in a hushed voice, pointing to a low star flickering in the east.

"It wouldn't be visible from here. We're now. . . yes, we're directly under the Galactic South

Pole. The Southern Cross ought to be over there somewhere. . ."

They craned their necks. The black sky was bright with constellations. The men pointed them out

to one another, naming them. This raised their spirits for a while. The stars were the only things familiar on

the empty plain.

"It's getting colder, like the desert," said the Captain.

"We'll accomplish nothing today. We'd better go back inside."

"What, back in that grave?" the Cyberneticist exclaimed, indignant.

"Without that grave we'd perish in two days here," the Captain said. "Don't be childish." He

turned around, walked steadily to the opening, which was barely visible from several feet higher on the

slope, lowered his legs, and pulled himself inside. For a moment his head was still visible; then it

disappeared. The others looked at one another.

"Come on," muttered the Physicist. They followed him reluctantly.

As they began crawling into the narrow opening, the Engineer said to the Cyberneticist, who was

last in line, "Did you notice the smell in the air?"

"Yes. Strange, pungent. . . Do you know its composition?"

"Like Earth's, with something added, I forget what. Nothing harmful. The data are in a small

green volume on the second shelf in the --" Then he remembered that he himself had filled the library with

soil. "Damn," he said, and squeezed himself through the hole.

The Cyberneticist, now alone, suddenly felt uneasy. It wasn't fear but an overwhelming sense of

being lost, of the strangeness of the landscape. And, too, there was something humiliating, he thought,

about returning to the ground like worms. He ducked his head and crawled into the tunnel behind the

Engineer.

The following day, some of the men wanted to carry their rations to the surface and have

breakfast there, but the Captain was against this. It would cause, he maintained, unnecessary trouble. So

they ate by the light of two lanterns, in the air lock, and drank coffee that had grown cold. Out of the

blue, the Cyberneticist said, "Wait a minute. How did we have good air the whole time?"

The Captain smiled. There was gray stubble on his hollow cheeks.

"The oxygen cylinders are intact. But purification is a problem: only one of the automatic filters is

functioning -- the emergency one, on batteries. The electricals, of course, are worthless. In six or seven

days we would have begun to suffocate."

"You knew that?" the Cyberneticist asked slowly. The Captain said nothing.

"Now what do we do?" asked the Physicist.

They washed their utensils in a bucket of water, and the Doctor dried them with one of his

towels. "The atmosphere has oxygen," said the Doctor, tossing his aluminum plate on top of the others.

"That means there's life here. What information do we have?"

"Next to nothing. The space probe took a sample of the atmosphere, that's all."

"You mean it didn't land?"

"It didn't land."

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EdenbyStanislawLemTranslatedbyMarcE.Heinea.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOFNotefromtheScanner:Therewasnobackcoverinfoforthiseditionofthebook.ThefollowingisfromaneditorialreviewatAmazon:Aftercrash-landingonanalienplanetknownasEden,thecrewofaspaceshipbeginstoexplore--andhopelesslymisinterpret--thestrangesurrou...

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Stanislaw Lem - Eden

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