Of the 219 habitable worlds found by Thrintun, 64 had life. Seventeen had intelligent life; 18 if you were broad minded. The 155 barren worlds would not be ready for Thrintun occupancy until after a long seeding process. Meanwhile, they had their uses.

They could be seeded with a tnuctipun-developed food yeast. After a few centuries the yeast generally mutated, but until then the world was a food planet, with all its oceans full of the cheapest food in the galaxy. Of course, only a slave would eat it; but there were plenty of slaves.

All over the galaxy there were food planets to feed the slave planets. The caretaker's palace was always on the moon. Who would want to live on a world with barren land and scummy seas? Not to mention the danger of bacteria contaminating the yeast. So from the moons a careful watch was kept on the food planets.

After the yeast had mutated to the point where it was no longer edible, even to a slave, the world was seeded with yeast-eating whitefood herds. Whitefoods ate anything, and were a good source of meat. The watch was continued.

At his present speed Kzanol would hit such a planet hard enough to produce a blazing plume of incandescent gas. The exploded rock would rise flaming into space, vivid and startling and unmistakable even to a watcher on the moon. The orange glow of the crater would last for days.

Chances were that Kzanol would end underground, but not far underground. The incandescent air and rock which move ahead of a meteorite usually blow the meteorite itself back into the air, to rain down over a wide area. Kzanol, wrapped safely in his stasis field; would go right back out his own hole, and would not dig himself very deep on the second fall. The caretaker could find him instantly with any kind of rock-penetrating instrument. A stasis field is the only perfect reflector.