To prevent all that, a small percentage of humanity was permitted to keep pushing outward, discovering and conquering new worlds and living in a more primitive style. Still subject to random gene mixing in the old tried and true ways, people out on the frontier were still very different-looking. Tight control was not exercised, for the Confederacy was not looking to make things easy out there. Hardship, deprivation, fierce competition, and aggression—all forced innovation, which was the safety valve for humanity, the system had worked for nine centuries because none were left to oppose the Confederacy—no alien races that could not be subjugated or eliminated easily, no competing empires that could threaten Man and his own empire.

Until now.

Until the nightmare theoreticians had warned about came to pass. Until there had come an enemy that so exploited the complacent egotism of the Confederacy that it could penetrate almost at will.

Juna Rhae 137 Decorator knew nothing of this. She was merely one of the products of the civilized worlds, a person whose job it was to meet with citizens wishing to alter their dwelling’s appearance. She would sit down and discuss new layouts with them, run them and then psych profiles through her computers, and come up with new and different ulterior designs that would please her clients. As her name implied, she had been raised for this job, and since the Confederacy made few mistakes, she loved it and could think of no other citizen she would rather be. She was at Tonowah Resort just relaxing for a week, since she knew she would be busy for some time thereafter. She was about to face the greatest challenge of her career, a redesign of a Children’s Family Center on Kuro that was switching its function from raising engineers to raising botanists, who, Confederacy computers projected, would be in short supply in about twenty years. Interior decorating was extremely important to career-based Family Centers, so she was looking forward to the challenge and was gratified by the confidence placed in her. Still, it would be a long time between vacations.