From CARM #2 he had learned of the death of Claire Dalton. Claire had died at one hundred and thirty-eight, less than two months before the message arrived. No other survivors were known to the CARMs. Many deathdates had been recorded.

Amazing that Claire had lived so long.

There had been a mutiny. Kendy had stored it in CARM #2's computer before he erased it from his own memory. Sharis Davis Kendy had mutinied against his crew. Fool, not to have seen that! Their descendants used mutineer as an insult!

He'd made an irretrievable mistake. But how? His reasoning was straight. His orders were unambiguous . . . weren't they?

1) ... YOU WILL VISIT EACH OF THESE STARS IN TURN. OTHER TARGETS MAY BE ADDED . . . THE STATE EXPECTS TO SETTLE THESE WORLDS, SPREADING HUMANITY AMONG VARIABLE ENVIRONMENTS, AGAINST DANGERS THAT MIGHT AFFECT ONLY SOL SYSTEM.

2) ... THE HUMAN SPECIES IS NOT INVULNERABLE. THERE IS FINITE RISK THAT THE CREW OF ANY INTERSTELLAR SPACECRAFT MAY FIND, ON ITS RETURN, THAT IT HAS BECOME THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. YOUR CREW AND THEIR GENES ARE YOUR PRIMARY CARGO.

CLASSIFIED.

3) YOUR TERTIARY MISSION IS TO EXPLORE . . .

-LING CARTHER, FOR THE STATE

How could it be clearer?

Kendy knew how the dinosaurs had died. The State had explored the ringed black giant planet that periodically hurled flurries of comets into the solar system. The State could stop comets now. The solar system was tamed. Ten planets were better than one; cities and industrial sites on thirty moons and hundreds of asteroids were better than none; but the lesson of the dinosaurs remained. Planets are fragile.

Earthlike worlds had been found in the habitable zones of nearby stars. Green life had emerged on two. At Discipline's departure they were in the process of final terraforming. On twenty-six worlds, poisonous air resembling Earth's primordial reducing atmosphere had been seeded with tailored algae. In a thousand years some would be ready for further attention. The seeder ramship program had been running since seven hundred years before Kendy's birth.

And Discipline had found a habitable nonplanet! Humanity was to be spread as widely as possible. The dangers here were not a planet's dangers. The Smoke Ring and its enveloping gas torus were dense enough to protect Earthly life from radiation from the old neutron star, and from other radiation too. Radiation sources were normal throughout the universe. A supernova explosion near Sol... a passage of Sol and its companion stars through a region of star-creation ... a catastrophe in the galactic core . . . events known and unknown could cause havoc through Sol system and all nearby systems. But none could harm the Smoke Ring!

His own message to Earth, sent in year 1382 State, was long and detailed. CARM #2 had the record: