1960 Ballantine #F639 "Eight Keys To Eden" - Mark Clifton

Mark Clifton is a winner of both the Jules Verne Award and the International Science Fiction Award. The storyline of this clever writing goes along these lines:

"EDEN - an Earth colony eleven light years away in the black void of space was not answering the urgent signals of Communications from Earth. The colonists were a tough, determined, disciplined group. It was their job to colonize - they had been doing so for years - setting things up for other, less rugged groups to come, and then passing on to the next planet Earth assigned them to. It was unthinkable that some one person among them would not find a way to respond to Earth's signals - unless something was very, very wrong indeed on Eden."

This printing of 160 pages is moderately and evenly toned, and gently read. The cover and binding show normal wear but with no tears or creases. All pages are tight to the spine with no dog-ears, writing, or markings on the pages that I can see.