a family affair."

"Yes--that happens to be one of the few things I was right about." Ashby
motioned them to the chairs. "Through you we located our major error. It
was our identifying rebellion with colonization ability. Colonization is
not a matter of rebellion at all. The two factors merely happen to
accompany each other at times. But the essence of colonization is a
growth factor--of the kind you so very accurately described when Bonnie
pushed you into digging up some insight on the matter. It is so often
associated with rebellion because rebellion is or has been,
historically, necessary to the exercise of this growth factor.

"The American Colonists, for example, were rebels only incidentally. As
a group, they possessed a growth factor forcing them beyond the confines
of the culture in which they lived. It gave them the strength for
rebellion and successful colonization. And it is so easy to confuse
colonists of that type with mere cutthroats, thugs, and misfits. The
latter may or may not have a sufficiently high growth factor. In any
case, their primary drive is hate and fear, which are wholly inadequate
motives for successful colonization.

"The ideal colonist does not break with the parent body, nor does he
merely extend it. He creates a new nucleus capable of interchange with
the parent body, but not controlled by it. He wants to build beyond the
current society, and the latter is not strong enough to pull him back
into it. Colonization may take everything else of value in life and give
nothing but itself in return, but the colonists' desire for new life and
growth is great enough to make this sufficient. It is not a mere
transplant of an old life. It is conception and gestation and birth.

"Our present society allows almost unlimited exercise of the growth
factor in individuals, regardless of how powerful it may be. That is why
we have failed to colonize the planets. They offer no motive or
satisfaction sufficient to outweigh the satisfactions already available.
As a result we've had virtually no applicants coming to us because of
hampered growth. You are one of the very few who might come under our
present approach. And even a very slight change of occupational
conditions would have kept you from coming. You didn't want the
department leadership offered you, because it would limit the personally
creative functions you enjoyed. That one slim, hairbreadth factor
brought you in."

"But how do you expect no