Peter Paxton watched him walk off in the direction of one of the shuttle ramps, a man in the shadow of his father, the only son of Joe Finch trying to prove to himself that he was worthy of the title.

Junior didn’t know why he picked Jebinose. Maybe he had heard about their minor racial problem once and had tucked it into the back of his mind for future reference. Maybe he was drawn to situations in flux. Jebinose was in minor flux.

Jebinose was one of those mistakes that blot the early history of man’s interstellar colonization. In the old days of the splinter colonies, exploration teams were sent out to find Earth-class planets and now and then one of these teams became a little careless. A major criterion for colonizable classification was the absence of an “intelligent” native species. No one was quite sure just exactly what was meant by

“intelligent” but tool-making was the favorite rule of thumb for dividing the intelligent from unintelligent.

The Jebinose fiasco had nothing to do with interpretation of the rules. The fact of the matter is that Jebinose was given an “M” classification (Earth-type, suitable for settling) after the most cursory of examinations. The colonists were indeed surprised when they found out that they were sharing the planet with a tribe of primitive humanoids.

No one knows too much about the early colonial history of Jebinose. The splinter colony that landed there was conspicuous only by reason of its particular ineptitude at the task of colonization. But for the Vanek, not a single member would have survived a decade.

The Vanek are an alien enigma. They are quiet, humble, peaceful, fatalistic. They are few in number, in tensely religious and welcomed all newcomers to their fold. They are humanoid with blue-gray skin and long spindly arms. Their civilization had reached a plateau in its development and they were quite willing to let it remain there. They swallowed up the colonists.