Planetfall.

Here the forest was green and cool. A soft, damp wind promised rain. The colonists moved down the ramp, staring at the crew members piling crates of supplies in the meadow beyond.

Frowns. Then whispers.

Saxon glanced up. His nostrils flared. "Hurry," he told the crewmen, and came forward, beaming. He was tired. It showed in his feverish, too-bright smile as he said, "Afraid Engineering's a little behind schedule. They'll be here tomorrow morning to erect your city. Tonight you'll have to rough it."

Reactions varied. The women murmured and moved closer to their men. Some smiled. One man thoughtfully eyed the mounting pyramid of supplies.

"You're getting a choice world, Jarl," Saxon said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Survey spent thirty years here, balancing the ecology, wiping out the bugs and carnivores. Eden." Saxon tasted the word like wine.

Jarl Madsen's face was stone. "Aren't they all named Eden?"

From the forest came a chittering bark, like anthropomorphic laughter. Saxon shivered, remembering the thing that chittered, the three-inch fangs and the talons. "Hardly," he lied. "That, incidentally, was a Narl. Herbivore, very harmless."

Madsen walked past him, towards the supplies.

Saxon moved among the colonists, shaking hands, congratulating, speaking of green fields and good crops and a virgin planet where every man could carve an empire. These last moments were the worst, when you said goodbye, knowing that thirty percent of them would be dead within the week. He saw Madsen opening a supply case. Damn him! Just three more minutes!

The last crew member dumped his load and hurried into the airlock. Saxon started casually after him, too late. Madsen stood there, his grin taut, nailed on.

"Primitive pre-fab shelters," he said thickly. "Axes and seeds! The city was a lie. We're on our own, is that it? Why—"

Saxon's palm flashed and Madsen fell writhing. There were shouts, hands clawing at him as he tore free, sprinting for the ship.

Always running, he thought bitterly. I'm getting old.

He walked through the silent corridors of the ship, a lonely figure in the black uniform of the Inhibition Corps, and once he stared through the porthole at Eden XXI, a mottled sphere receding into the star-frosted night. His mouth twisted. Conceive a colony in fear, breed it in terror. Watch it adapt, grow. If it grows too fast, hurt it. Hurt it with disease, famine, dictatorship. If it keeps growing—destroy it.

The captain came down the corridor and stood at respectful attention before the black uniform. "Stereo call, Commander. Prime Base."

Saxon slowly went to his cabin. The stereo panel was flashing steady crimson to designate top priority and he restrained a savage impulse to shut the thing off. He slumped in the control chair, and the tri-di image of a man at a desk slowly coalesced. It was a granite-featured old man with eyes like blue ice, and Saxon's head snapped sharply erect. It was Primus Gant, Corps Director. At ninety parsecs Gant's features were slightly hazed, but his voice was clear, sharp as a sword.

"Report, Commander."

"My extrapolation went through an hour ago. Also my resignation."

Nothing moved in Gant's face or his eyes. Saxon said stiffly, "Planetfall uneventful. Area inimical. Initial shock conception, probable God-betrayal mythology by fourth generation. Those things in the forest should get thirty percent of them the first week. Weaponless, they'll run. The two to one female ratio should make for an agricultural matriarchy by the sixth generation. Recommend intermittent check at that time." He took a slow angry breath. "Why didn't we give them weapons?"

Gant's smile was acid. "Because we haven't yet tried an agricultural matriarchy, Commander. Because the lower the initial survival factor, the slower the culture development. Getting squeamish?"

Saxon said doggedly, "They didn't have a chance."

"Neither did twenty million people on Earth in the last atomic war." The Director's voice was soft. "All colonists volunteer. Some have a vision. Others have a latent power drive that stasis can't satisfy. They're misfits regardless, potential threats to stasis. Remember your last leave, Commander? I believe you met my son."

Saxon nodded curtly. He remembered the Director's son as a quiet, soft-spoken youth with the yearning for far places in his eyes.

"I had hoped he would qualify for the Corps." Gant looked suddenly old, tired. "Instead he's volunteering for Colonial Service. Did you ever lose a son, Commander?"

They stared at each other across the humming emptiness and Saxon finally whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Stasis is all we can afford," the Director said numbly. "Man can't have Utopia yet. Because he's still—Man. Perhaps he'll never have it. But by God he'll try! Resignation withdrawn?"

Saxon nodded. He could not speak.

"I'm glad. The ship's captain had orders to burn you down had you refused." Gant's face was wooden. "Inhibition agents never quit, they just die in harness. You'll take the lifeboat to Eden XI for sixth generation check. Good hunting, Commander."

The image faded. Saxon sat for a long time, staring into the darkness.

Eden XI was three parsecs distant, near Algol. For the next ten hours Saxon paced the marvelously equipped lifeboat and absorbed data from the robot recorder. He stared at the hard crystal ache of the stars and thought of the Director's son. He thought about the shining cities of Earth, and about stasis.

Stasis meant—control.

It meant control of a billion people, a rigid planetary economy. It meant the Assassination branch of the Corps. Assassination (carefully contrived to appear accidental) took care of those few malcontents who were either too smart or too stupid to sign up for colonization. It meant a gradual weeding out of the unsane, the power-mad, it meant learning the true meaning of sanity and peace and racial brotherhood.

And it meant the stagnation of science, a thick film of dust gathering on the textbooks of the military tactician, and warships rotting at anchor. It meant the white spire of the Stasis Administration Center at New Washington, and the words graven over the golden portals:

Know thyself, Man. Or die!

Was the dream worth it?

Or was Man doomed to die like a brawling ape, playing with lightning?

Saxon could not answer.

Meanwhile the colonies had to be inhibited. One interplanetary war could smash the fragile structure so painstakingly built over the last few hundred years. This was the turning point, the final cross-roads of Man's destiny.

Saxon smiled bleakly.

Ultimately there would be a colony they could neither inhibit or destroy. The adaptive ultimate. That colony would be Man no longer, but Homo Superior.

But by then, it wouldn't matter.

The lifeboat came in on the night side of Eden XI, and hung above the blue mountains like a basking shark. Saxon checked his coordinates. This had been the original landing site, almost two hundred years ago. He switched the infra-view on maximum, and began to cruise in widening spirals. These sixth generation hops were usually routine. If nomadic, a few political shifts could help warp the culture into a set pattern. A simple matter to play the visiting deity, pick one warped psychotic, and invest him with power. A dictatorship was by far the best way of inhibiting a young culture. Agricultural city-states were almost as easy. Designate a particular crop as sacred, kill the rotation program, impoverish the land, introduce serfdom.

By dawn, Saxon found what he was looking for. A row of cleared fields and a farmhouse. He reconnoitered a hundred miles farther and frowned. There was no clump of dwellings, no sign of a village trading community.

He brought the ship down in a forest three miles away from the farmhouse and camouflaged it to look like a great mossy boulder. He spent the entire morning testing the atmosphere and the soil with a savage patience. In the early years of the Corps, virus mutations had taken a fearful toll of intermittent spotters.

Finally he discarded his uniform and selected a pair of homespuns from the ship's wardrobe locker. Under the homespuns reposed his utility kit, a miniature arsenal.

Late that afternoon he emerged from the forest and stood at the edge of the cleared fields, a weatherbeaten itinerant, obviously willing to chop wood for a meal. Abruptly his jaw muscle twitched.

The scene was pastoral, perfect.

The man, plowing the south forty. The little girl, playing in the shadow of the sleepy farmhouse.

But no beast pulled that plow. A giant of a man with power and intelligence stamped on his bronze features pushed the plow by hand, in a die-straight furrow.

The little girl was blonde and elfin. She wore sandals, her tunic was brief and plain. She was playing follow-the-leader—

With a robot.

The robot was tall. The sun struck sparks from its steel carapace as it lumbered after the girl. Saxon stood frozen as she came flying towards him in a burst of tossing blond hair and laughter, as she saw him and came to a dead halt.

"Hello," Saxon said. He tried to smile.

"Hello." Her inflection was slurred. After six generations, naturally. Her blue eyes sparkled. "Foot-sore, stranger?"

The words had the cadence of a ritual greeting. Saxon stared at the robot and said carefully, "Yes."

"He's only a primer model," she said, following his gaze. "Next year when I'm twelve Father promised to install secondary circuits. My name's Veena. What's yours?"

Saxon introduced himself, as the giant at the plow came forward. His white smile was a benediction, his voice a lambent organ. "Welcome, rover. Haven't seen one of you in months. I'm Lang. Agricultural hobbyist. You'll stay?"

His tone was almost pleading. Saxon nodded inarticulately, followed them towards the farmhouse. His hands were shaking.

The interior of the house was—dimensionless.

For a moment Saxon thought he was still outside. A silver brook tinkled through the mossy carpet that was the floor. The south wall was a golden vista of ripe wheat rippling in the warm breeze that ruffled his hair. Birds twittered in the sun-flecked foliage overhead.

"Nice house," Saxon said numbly.

Lang's smile was different. "A bit pretentious, I'm afraid. Grandfather built it right after the landing. We've been too lazy to do much remodeling. A remarkable man, Grandfather."

That explained it, Saxon thought in relief. One titan in an infant colony, warping it into a Utopian mold, passing on the heritage of his genius. How long, he wondered coldly, before they built starships and returned to demolish the Earth which had exiled them?

"It must be wonderful to be a rover," Veena said wistfully. "Lang, can I go with him when he leaves?"

"You haven't completed Basic Ecology. Mentor's waiting for your afternoon session."

Veena pouted and went outside to her robot. Lang grinned. "The precocious brat's beginning to ask him questions he can't answer. Soon I'll have to install a few more circuits."

Saxon shivered. Regardless of scientific attainment, any culture is vulnerable to inhibition.

So said his agent's handbook.

Later he met Veena's mother, Merl, a handsome woman with calm gray eyes who served them dinner by firelight. It was a good dinner. These colonists seemed like good people. A shame they qualified for inhibition.

Gently, Saxon began to probe.

In only six generations the colonists has scattered throughout the entire hemisphere. Although the matrix of their culture seemed to be the individual family unit, they lived according to whim. Some lived in small communal groups. Some lived alone. Some, by choice, were wanderers, rovers. They had science. Their philosophy seemed nebulous, based on a benevolent ecology, brotherhood with all living things.

Saxon frowned.

Six generations ago, the ecology on this world hardly had been benevolent for man. This area of the continent had been a steaming marsh, swarming with hungry saurians. Now it was all meadow and forest.

Saxon said thoughtfully, "Have you ever felt the need for organization? For a leader?"

He leaned back and waited for the seed to sprout. Two years ago on Eden VIII, near Rigel, he had said the same thing to a sixth-generation shaman, and it took scarcely a month for the shaman to start an intra-tribal war.

But now the seed fell on sterile ground. Lang said, "I don't understand. Any problem which cannot be solved at family level is referred to the annual council."

"A leader." Saxon was patient. "One strong man to represent everybody. To settle all problems as he sees fit?"

"Remember, Father?" Veena prodded. "Those arboreal cannibals Grandfather used to mention? They had a nomadic tribal culture based on brute strength."

Lang nodded somberly. "Good analogy. The most favorable extrapolation indicated a racial life expectancy of only ten thousand years. Their emotional stability index was nil, they would eventually have destroyed themselves. The first generation decided it would be more merciful to exterminate them. An unwise decision, I think."

He launched into a spirited ethnological discussion with Veena, and Saxon sat, numbly.

They had no emotional insecurity to feed, no power-hunger. No herd instinct to pervert, nothing to utilize as destruction potential.

No cultural weakness.

The room they gave him was small and comfortable. For a time he lay on the sleeping hammock, considering the situation. He was beginning to like them. That in itself, was dangerous.

The house was very still.

He got quietly out of the hammock and crept towards the door. He had to get back to the lifeboat, to feed facts into the monitor.

One thing disturbed him.

According to his agent's handbook, family-group anarchies didn't need inhibition.

He was halfway across the plowed field when Mentor's iron voice said, "Good evening."

Moonfire glimmered on metal. The robot stood impassively before him. Saxon said slowly, "I was just going for a walk."

"You are our guest: I shall walk with you."

"I prefer to walk alone."

"Guests prefer company. The house of Lang must observe the basic amenities."

Was there a hint of sardonicism in Mentor's voice?

They walked along the furrows, man and robot. Saxon felt beneath his shirt for the utility kit. He kept his voice level.

"Am I a prisoner?"

"You are a guest."

"Did Veena tell you I might try to escape?"

A pause, while relays clicked silently.

"That is classified information."

Saxon's fingers were steady as they touched his tiny blaster. Benevolent anarchy indeed! He said carefully, "Do the colonists resent their exile?"

Another pause. Mentor's voice was a flat drone. "The concept is meaningless, the question invalid."

Like hell it is, thought Saxon, and fired.

A cold blue wash of energy illuminated the robot. For a moment Saxon was blinded. When vision returned he saw Mentor standing immobile, unscathed.

"Please go back to bed," the robot said.

Saxon went back to bed.

Next morning Veena brought him breakfast. She seemed sad, withdrawn. "Lang and Merl went to visit Aunt Tarsi. She lives near the Equator. They won't be back till evening."

"How" Saxon had trouble breathing. "How did they go?"

"By transmitter, of course." She indicated a large shimmering platform in one corner. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot rovers hate the mention of any type of gadgetry." Her eyes grew impossibly earnest. "But we try to achieve some kind of balance, really. Once when I suggested that Father let Mentor help him plow the fields, he got furious."

Saxon restrained wild laughter. First the robot, invulnerable to atomic energy, now a matter transmitter.

Yet they plowed their own fields.

"Veena," he said.

She looked up at him.

"Why did you tell Mentor to keep me here?"

She bowed her bright head. Her blue eyes were brimming.

"Why, Veena?"

"Because I like you," she sniffled. "I wanted you to s-stay." Abruptly she fled from the room.

He stood bleakly looking after her. After a time he went outside and struck across the field towards the forest.

This time the robot did not stop him.

Do not allow the emotional charm of any culture, nor any individual of that culture, to sway your inhibition appraisal.

In the narrow confines of the lifeboat he repeated the quotation grimly. Good inhibition agents are inflexible. He was a good agent.

For almost an hour he fed data into the monitor tapes. Then he touched a stud and closed his eyes, waiting for judgment.

"Agricultural family-group societies are normally stagnant," the monitor droned. "Such cultures, regardless of technological level, do not warrent inhibition of any type. Reference: twelfth generation check on Eden V."

The room spun. Saxon whispered, "But they have cybernetics, matter transmitters."

"Regardless of technological level." The monitor was adamant.

This was madness. Saxon wiped his forehead and said, "Assuming geographical isolation no barrier to united group action in the event of emergency."

"United action is incompatible with family-group."

"Assume and advise!"

Relays chattered. Abruptly the entire panel flashed crimson. The monitor spoke one word.

"Annihilation."

Saxon referred to his Inhibition handbook. He had never annihilated a culture before.

One hour later he went into the forest. Birds sang overhead. The sun dappled him in light and shadow. He stalked a small furry quadruped that squealed at him from a log and brought it down with his sonic pistol.

Back in the lifeboat he watched the animal regain consciousness in an air-tight tank, and very slowly he pulled a lever. A green vapor rolled into the tank. The quadruped screamed. The green vapor fed.

It was the penultimate in sporedom, yet it was more than a spore. It had virus characteristics, and its propagation rate was almost mathematically impossible. There was no known defense, and once used, the entire planet was forever untouchable. To Saxon's knowledge it had been utilized only once on Eden I.

At dusk, he took the lifeboat up fifty miles. He released the spores in a widening spiral, and finally jettisoned the tank. He went into an orbit at ten thousand miles, and waited.

It would take approximately a week.

It was a long week. Saxon slept little. He paced the cabin. He looked at the stars and thought about a blue-eyed waif with tears in her voice, begging him to stay.

After a week the lifeboat came down at the edge of a grassy plain. Saxon took a sample of the contaminated atmosphere to determine propagation rate.

The atmosphere was pure.

Some freak of expansion. One uncontaminated spot in a hemisphere of death.

He selected another location. Then another. That evening he close the coordinates of his original landing site and tested the air again.

Finally he went outside the airlock. He breathed deeply, and the air was fresh and sweet, it smelled of forest and cool streams and evening dew. In the blue dusk birds twittered. A small marsupial very much like a squirrel scampered to the safety of a tree and scolded him.

Saxon began walking.

At the edge of the forest he saw the familiar plowed field. The farmhouse was a friendly beacon in the twilight.

"Hello," Veena said. She stood at the edge of the forest. She was smiling. "Welcome home, rover."

For the next few days Saxon was the perfect guest. He argued philosophical abstractions with the family by firelight; by day he hiked in the woods with Veena and listened to Mentor give her lessons. He asked questions.

"Veena, do you know what a microorganism is?"

"Benevolent or malignant?"

"Malignant. A plague."

She pursed her lips. "Organic or cultural?"

"Organic of course."

"Bacteria." Veena shrugged. "Quite a few of the first generation died immediately after the landing. Until they adapted. Until they analyzed the basic metabolism of the planet's dominant life-forms, and constructed a neutralizer."

"A neutralizer?"

"A protective shell of ionized particles," she said patiently, "keyed to the individual body-chemistry."

"Classified information," Mentor droned.

Saxon licked his lips. "You mentioned cultural microorganisms?"

"Much more deadly. I call them that, but Lang says I'm being semantically unsound. War, for example. Racial inferiority. To date we haven't found a cure." She broke off, and her eyes were shining wet.

"But you don't have wars," Saxon said.

"No."

"Then?"

"We have a—ghetto," the girl said slowly. "I can't tell you about it. Perhaps soon—"

Abruptly she changed the subject.

Slowly, Saxon's defenses began to crumble.

To all intents he was now a member of Lang's household, Veena's adopted big brother.

Big brother—or pet?

It did not really matter.

On the fourth day he went back to the lifeboat. He remembered his graduation day, the crash of the Corps anthem, and the pledge. I do faithfully swear to uphold the ideals of Man, to use this vested power for the absolute good of Earth. I will not shrink from any cup of duty, regardless of how bitter. I will guard stasis with my life, and the lives of innocent people if need be, people whose only crime may be that they are potential threats to stasis—

He tinkered with the ship's reactor for an hour. Then he ran.

Behind him the lifeboat dissolved in a white blossom of flame.

Farewell the cold stars and the ache and the loneliness. Farewell the destruction of newborn colonies to secure the rotting stagnancy of Earth.

He would have a great many bad nights, but he was used to bad nights. He thought of Veena and his stride quickened. She would be a beautiful woman.

They were waiting for him back at the farmhouse, Lang, Veena and Merl. They were staring at the dark pyre of smoke in the forest. Saxon took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "I've got a confession to make—"

They weren't listening. Lang said quietly, "You were right, Veena. He may qualify."

"Come." Merl took her husband's arm. "Let's call the Council."

They went inside. Saxon looked at Veena. He moistened his lips. "You knew," he said.

She nodded. There was a queer adult maturity about her as she said, "Wait. They're calling an emergency Council meeting to decide if you're fit."

"Fit," Saxon said. Coldly, it seeped in. To survive? To be a playmate, a slave? "It's been a game," he said, grasping her shoulders. "You've known all along."

"They're taking the transmitter to the Landing Site now," she said. "Would you like to watch?"

Watch judgment of the outcasts on one of those who had marooned them? Why not?

Lang and Merl were no longer in the house. Veena touched a silver stud in one corner, and one side of the room dissolved from a vista of golden wheat to a grassy amphitheatre. There were people assembled in the clearing. Lang and Merl stood on a mossy dais, making a speech.

He saw the ship.

It was a giant silver ovoid, fretted with strange vanes, pockmarked by the red cancer of rust. Towering forest patriarchs guarded that ship like a woodland shrine. A ship that had never been born on Earth. An alien ship.

Understanding came, and a quiet horror.

He lurched away from the screen, away from Veena. He was outside now, and running. He was a good Inhibition agent, he had been conditioned to the shock of alien concepts for half his lifetime, but the ground reeled beneath him as he ran and he could feel the hot trickle of blood where he had bitten through his lip to keep from screaming.

Aliens.

From outside.

Homo Superior, treating his ape-brother with an hospitable contempt. Playing their inscrutable game.

The lifeboat came down almost in front of him.

It came down with a whining snarl and settled into the plowed field. The airlock opened. Primus Gant stepped out. His blue eyes were very cold and he was smiling.

"Report, Commander."

Years of conditioned reflex brought him erect, made him whisper, "Mission unsuccessful." He swayed, almost fell. Gant held him.

"Easy, lad. We got the blowup a few minutes ago. It took us awhile to home in on the distress transmitter in your utility kit." He chuckled at Saxon's blank stare. "Whenever an agent's ship is destroyed his utility belt automatically functions as a distress signal."

Saxon shook his head painfully. "You've been waiting?"

"We started ten days ago when your monitor gave out with the annihilation alarm." He eyed Saxon keenly. "Just how bad is it?"

Saxon told him. Gant's face turned a dirty white.

"Aliens," he said thickly. "They probably murdered the original colony. You've come through nicely, lad. It may mean promotion." He turned into the ship. "Come on."

"Wait." Saxon's voice was a dry whisper. "You're not going to—"

"Demolition," Gant said. "I've got a task force up there that can crack a planet. Let's go, Commander."

I will not shrink from any cup of duty—

"Please," Saxon said huskily. "I don't believe they're inimical to Man. They're altruists."

"So?"

"They're benevolent," Saxon pleaded. "Both races can live together!"

"Don't be a fool," Gant grunted, and turned into the airlock.

Saxon leapt.

One palm came down hard at the base of the Director's skull.

And Gant twisted. He palmed the younger man with two deft blows, throat and plexus. Saxon slumped, retching. Gant stood above him, his smile strained.

"Amateur," he panted. "I was instructing hand tactics before you were born." He took out his blaster. "They've infected you," he said compassionately. "I'm sorry, lad. You'll get a posthumous decoration."

The blaster came up, steadied. Then Gant stood very still, a white-haired statue.

Mentor came around the ship and helped Saxon to his feet.

"Destroying guests is forbidden," the robot clicked. "The concept is irrational."

Later, in the shadows of the farmhouse that was not a farmhouse, Saxon watched the scout disappear into the sky. He turned towards Veena. "You're letting him go?"

"Mentor—treated him," she said dreamily. "He'll report that you destroyed the colony, died in the process, and this planet is unfit for further colonization. Incidentally, the council voted in the affirmative. Otherwise you'd be with Gant."

Aliens, playing a game with their ape-brother. Recognizing him at first glance, speaking his language, making him feel wanted, at home.

Why?

He was afraid to ask the question.

"We're on a vacation," Veena said. "We've only been here for one generation. We were due to return almost thirty years ago, but we found your colony."

"Did you—"

"Isolation," she murmured. "The ghetto. They're sick," she said. "Infected with the culture plague. We couldn't leave them and we couldn't help them." Her gaze was very steady. "Until you came."

It came to him. Man, clutching at the knees of Gods, envying, striving futilely, finally hating.

Only Man can help Man.

"It's not fair," Saxon breathed. He took Veena by the shoulders, made her look at him. "I'm happy here. You and Lang—Merl—I'm just beginning to learn! I'd hoped that in a few years—"

"We are not human," Veena said gently. "And our life span is four hundred of your years."

For the first time, he noticed the faint malformation of her ears, the subtle differences in facial bone structure. He glanced past her, saw Lang and Merl waiting in the doorway.

"It will mean months of study," she said. "You have so much to unlearn, to understand. They may reject you, sacrifice you. That will not matter. What does matter is your impact on their culture, what it will mean a thousand generations hence."

Diseased apes, with a touch of Godhood, suffering from an infection that might be forever incurable. Why should he be the sacrifice? Who was he, to help them?

Looking at Veena, he knew the answer.