No one could be seen near any of the fires in the two camps on the hill. Only the unarmed Outlanders, at their fires in the swale below, moved about without wariness. And it was not yet three hours from the landing of the ship.
Curry stopped before him, restrained anger on his arrogantly handsome face.
"You failed to report to me and turn your Frontier Guards over to my command as you were ordered," he said.
"Since your rank is no higher than mine I saw no reason to do so," Thane answered.
Curry smiled, very thinly. "Perhaps I can show you a reason."
"Perhaps. Let's have it."
"First, I want to remind you of our circumstances," Curry said. "The ship will never lift again and we're marooned here for centuries to come. You know what the reaction of the Outlanders will be."
The Outlanders were the outcasts of a society that could not tolerate individuality. Two hundred years before the complexities of civilization had combined technocracy with integration and produced Technogration. Technogration had abolished race, creed and color, nations and borders, had welded all into a common mass and prohibited all individual pursuits that did not contribute to the Common Good. The Outlanders, refusing to come under Technograte domination, lived as best they could in the deserts, plateaus and jungles that Technogration could not use. The ones on the ship had been bound for Capella Five where men accustomed to wrestling a living from hostile environments were needed. Under such circumstances Outlanders were given certain rights and freedoms. Until they were no longer needed. Then, again, they became a people without a world....
"For two hundred years the Outlanders have hated Technogration and wanted a world where they could set up their own archaic form of society," Curry said. "Now, those down there will think their millenium has arrived and they can refuse to recognize Technograte authority."
"I see," Thane said. "And you want my cooperation so that Technogration won't fall by the wayside?"