ble to understand what we
want, and maybe they can make it clear to you."

"As you wish, brother."

The baron terminated the contact and turned to his staff with a
satisfied smile. "I think we shall have what we need and be gone
quickly," he said.

"The elder took it well. They must be afraid of us."

"Respectful awe is more like it," the baron grunted.

"I suggest the answer is in the word 'brethren,'" came a voice from the
back of the room.

"Meikl! What are you doing in here?" ven Klaeden barked irritably.

"You called my department for a man. My department sent me. Shall I go
back?"

"It's up to you, Analyst. If you can keep your ideals corked and be
useful."

Meikl bowed stiffly. "Thank you, sir."

"Having it in mind that our only objective is to go through the
tooling-mining-fueling cycle with a minimum of trouble and time--have
you got any suggestions?"

"About how to deal with the natives?"

"Certainly ... but with the accent on _our_ problems."

Meikl paused to snap the tip from an olophial and sniffed appreciatively
at the mildly alkaloid vapor before replying. "From what we've gathered
through limited observation, I think we'd better gather some more, and
do our suggesting later."

"That constitutes your entire opinion?"

"Not quite. About the question of recessive kulturverlaengerung...."

"_Our_ problems, I said!" the commander snapped.

"It's likely to be our problem, sir."

"How?"

"In Earth culture at the time of the Exodus, there were some patterns
we'd regard as undesirable. We can't know whether we're still carrying
the recessive patterns or not. And we don't know whether the patterns
are still dominant in the natives. Suppose we get restimulated."

"What patterns do you mean?"

"The Exodus was a mass-desertion, in one sense, Baron."

A moment of hush in the room. "I see what you mean," the commander
grunted. "But 'desertion' is a pattern of _action_, not a transmittable
determinant."

Meikl shook his head. "We don't _know_ what is a transmittable
determinant until after it's happened." He paused. "Suppose there's some
very simple psychic mechanism behind the 'pioneer' impulse. We don't
feel it, but our ancestors did, and we might have recessive traces of it
in our kulturverlaengerung lines."

A wingman coughed raucously. "To be blunt with you, Meikl ... I think
this is a lot of nonsense. The whole concept is far-fetched."

"What, the kult'laenger lines?"

"Exactly.