"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.