"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.