"Because there will be _some existing facilities_ on Earth, even though they're out of space. The job would take five years on Mars."
The analyst lowered his eyes, shook his head wearily. "I'm thinking of a billion earthlings. Aren't they worth considering, sir?"
"I've got to consider the men in my command, Meikl. They've been through hell. We all have."
Baron ven Klaeden paused ominously, then: "Besides, Meikl, your predictions of disaster rest on certain assumptions not known to be true. You assume that the recessive determinants still linger in the present inhabitants. Twenty thousand years is a long time. Nearly a thousand generations. I don't know a great deal about culturetics, but I've read that _kulturverlaengerung_ reaches a threshold of extinction after about a dozen generations, if there's no restimulation."
"Only in laboratory cultures, sir," sighed the analyst. "Under rigid control to make certain there's no restimulant. In practice, in a planet-wide society, there's constant accidental restimulation, unconsciously occuring. A determinant gets restimulated, pops back to original intensity, and gets passed on. In practice, a kult'laenger linkage never really dies out--although, it can stay recessive and unconscious."
"That's too bad," a wingsman growled sourly. "We'll wake it up, won't we?"
"Let's not be callous," the other wingsman grunted in sarcasm. "Analyst Meikl has sensitivities."
The analyst stared from one to the other of them in growing consternation, then looked pleadingly at the baron. "Sir, I was _summoned_ here to offer my opinions about landing on Earth. You asked about possible cultural dangers. I've told you."
"You discussed the danger to earthlings."
"I meant 'danger' to the personnel of this fleet--to their esprit, their indoctrination, their group-efficiency. I take it you see none."
"On the contrary, I see several," said the analyst, coming slowly to his feet, eyes flashing and darting among them. "Where were you born, Wingman?" he asked the officer at the opposite end of the desk.
"Lichter Six, Satellite," the officer grunted after a moment of irritable silence.
All knew without asking that the baron was born in space, his birthplace one of the planetoid city-states of the Michea Dwarf. Meikl looked around at them, then ripped up his own sleeve, unsheathed his rank-dagger, and pricked his forearm with the needle point. A red droplet appeared, and he wiped at it with a forefinger.