"How?"
"In Earth culture at the time of the Exodus, there were some patterns we'd regard as undesirable. We can't know whether we're still carrying the recessive patterns or not. And we don't know whether the patterns are still dominant in the natives. Suppose we get restimulated."
"What patterns do you mean?"
"The Exodus was a mass-desertion, in one sense, Baron."
A moment of hush in the room. "I see what you mean," the commander grunted. "But 'desertion' is a pattern of action, not a transmittable determinant."
Meikl shook his head. "We don't know what is a transmittable determinant until after it's happened." He paused. "Suppose there's some very simple psychic mechanism behind the 'pioneer' impulse. We don't feel it, but our ancestors did, and we might have recessive traces of it in our kulturverlaengerung lines."
A wingman coughed raucously. "To be blunt with you, Meikl ... I think this is a lot of nonsense. The whole concept is far-fetched."
"What, the kult'laenger lines?"
"Exactly." The wingsman snorted. "How could things like that get passed along from father to son. If you people'd stop the mystical gibberish, and deal in facts...."
"Do you regard parent-child rapport as a fact?" Meikl turned to stare absently out a viewing port at the trees.