That was the main trouble in the colony. Too tame. Some of them got restless. They argued the five-year test was all right for most planets. You needed every bit of it to prove that man could make it there, or couldn't, or how much help he would need from Earth, maybe for a while, maybe always. On Eden you didn't have to prove anything. There wasn't anything to make a man feel like a man, proud to be one. Maybe that would be all right for ordinary folks, but for experimental colonists it was a slow death--almost as bad as living on Earth. Sure, they'd made their complaints to Earth. Half a dozen times or maybe more. They'd asked for an inspector to come out and see for himself, and see what it was doing to the colonists. Jed put it right up to E.H.Q. that they were plumb ruining a prime batch of colonists with this easy living. A man had to stretch himself once in a while if he expected to grow tall. Some of the colonists were getting so lazy they'd stopped bitching and were even talking about maybe just staying on here after the experimental was over--maybe getting a doctor to reverse the operation so they could have kids--which, of course, you couldn't have in an experimental colony. And that was bad. What with easy living and wanting kids as was normal to most, experimental colonists weren't so plentiful that Earth could afford to lose any. Some of the colonists wanted to leave this--well, they called it a Lotus Land, whatever that was--right away, before everybody went under, got plumb ruined. They were all for taking the escape ship and hightailing it back to Earth. Sure, they knew there'd be a stink, and they'd get a little black mark in somebody's book for not obeying orders to stick it out. But that was better than losing their trade, their desire to follow it. Maybe there'd be a penalty and they'd be marooned to stay on Earth for a while. But they'd bet there was a hundred planets laying idle right now because there weren't enough experimentals to go around. They'd get a black mark, but after a while they'd get another job too. Anyway, living on Earth couldn't be any worse for them than living here. Half of them wanted to stay here permanently. The other half wanted to leave right now. That was what the committee was going to decide today. He'd done some checking around, and it looked like they were going to vote to go. He'd also checked with them who wanted to stay permanently, and it looked like, in a showdown, they'd come along. They were proud to be men, too, men and women. Everybody would join. He'd been pretty sure of it. Even the dissenters who'd moved away across the ridge. That was the trouble with them. There hadn't been enough hardship to bind the community together. People forgot how to be kind to one another and get along when there wasn't any hardship to share among themselves.