"Not wise enough to wait until all the evidence was in," Adler said enigmatically. "All in all, Jarl, I'd say 'prodigious' is the word for it. This is easily the most successful seeding job any team has ever done, at least in this limb of the galaxy. And what a stroke of luck, to be on the spot just as it came to term, and with a couple at that!" "What does he mean?" Honath said. "Just this, Honath. When the seeding team set your people up in business on Tellura, they didn't mean for you to live forever in the treetops. They knew that, sooner or later, you'd have to come down to the ground and learn to fight this planet on its own terms. Otherwise, you'd go stale and die out." "Live on the ground all the time?" Mathild said in a faint voice. "Yes, Mathild. The life in the treetops was to have been only an interim period, while you gathered knowledge you needed about Tellura and put it to use. But to be the real masters of the world, you will have to conquer the surface, too. "The device your people worked out, that of sending criminals to the surface, was the best way of conquering the planet that they could have picked. It takes a strong will and courage to go against custom, and both those qualities are needed to lick Tellura. Your people exiled just such fighting spirits to the surface, year after year after year. "Sooner or later, some of those exiles were going to discover how to live successfully on the ground and make it possible for the rest of your people to leave the trees. You and Honath have done just that." "Observe please, Jarl," Adler said. "The crime in this first successful case was ideological. That was the crucial turn in the criminal policy of these people. A spirit of revolt is not quite enough, but couple it with brains and--_ecce homo_!" Honath's head was swimming. "But what does all this mean?" he said. "Are we--not condemned to Hell any more?" "No, you're still condemned, if you still want to call it that," Jarl Eleven said soberly. "You've learned how to live down there, and you've found out something even more valuable: how to stay alive while cutting down your enemies. Do you know that you killed three demons with your bare hands, you and Mathild and Alaskon?" "Killed--" "Certainly," Jarl Eleven said. "You ate three eggs. That is the classical way, and indeed the only way, to wipe out monsters like the dinosaurs. You can't kill the adults with anything short of an anti-tank gun, but they're helpless in embryo--and the adults haven't the sense to guard their nests." Honath heard, but only distantly. Even his awareness of Mathild's warmth next to him did not seem to help much. "Then we have to go back down there," he said dully. "And this time forever." "Yes," Jarl Eleven said, his voice gentle. "But you wont be alone, Honath. Beginning tomorrow, you'll have all your people with you." "_All_ our people? But you're going to drive them out?"