Prologue

After decades of finding only worlds barren of life human space explorers finally came on a planet so teeming with it that they named it Eden. There even appeared to be intelligent inhabitants in an early stage of agricultural civilization. But when the first landing party reached the surface they were immediately attacked by the natives, and only two of the party escaped alive.

Many years later a second expedition was dispatched to Eden, led jointly by sociologist Amanda Meiersdottir and military Col. Carlos Igwanda. This time the Edenites seemed friendly, but that was soon unveiled as a mere ruse when they mounted a surprise attack on the landing party. Igwanda, who alone had remained suspicious of the aliens' motives, rebuffed the assault by deducing that they were telepathically conjoined in a "hive mind" and interrupting their mental link.

He and Meiersdottir remained on the planet to further explore the Edenites' mentality and motivation, and began to forge the beginnings of a relationship with the alien collective. They learned that the Edenites were both afraid of the human incursions and covetous of their weapons and other artifacts, and offered to teach the rudiments of technology in exchange for the natives' reciprocation about, especially, their unique mind connection.

When they returned to the mothership for consultation, however, two members of Igwanda's military task force—in fact military intelligence operatives—sought to destroy the native community with nuclear weapons they'd smuggled on board. The colonel, though, had previously uncovered the weapons and disarmed them, and the two operatives chose to commit suicide rather than face punishment after their effort failed.

Over time a friendship came into tenuous being between the humans and Edenites, only to be rudely cut short when a freak storm caused a second interruption of the aliens' mental link. Forewarned by the human defense against their first attack the collective mind had put in place a directive that every Edenite should seek to kill all humans if their mental connection again failed. Igwanda saved the party this time by leading the humans into the Edenites' subterranean nest where the females, who were at the heart of the mental collective, were sequestered.

Both humans and Edenites were initially reluctant to resume their relationship, but Meiersdottir and the chief Edenite female negotiated a more solid foundation for the interspecies friendship. So greatly did the relationship ripen that when Igwanda and Meiersdottir—who'd become lovers during their sojourn on the planet—married the colonel chose an Edenite to serve as his best man; and when Meiersdottir later gave birth to their son a native female attended her, using a contact form of the natives' mental powers to suppress all sensation of pain.

Because the Edenites' mind link worked by a low-frequency electromagnetic signal they'd been geographically restricted to a single small colony; across longer distances the linking signal became too attenuated and time-lagged to work effectively. When the humans showed them how to use alternative frequencies, however, they decided to split into two colonies and send out an exploratory vanguard in search of additional deposits of metal ores.

But the humans couldn't stay to see the results of this brave experiment. Because of fundamental differences in the ecologies of the two worlds Eden food sources wouldn't nourish them, and the great mothership was running low on supplies. The explorers were compelled to return home before the remote Eden settlement took hold.

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