The Tower and the Hive Read Online Free PDF Page B

space, their own settlements including finer hibernatories, better than those on their home planets, Clarf and Sef, although there was considerably more prestige in going to a Clarf facility.
    As a Prime Talent, Damia was far more aware than most people that the. Mrdini worlds were overpopulated and the pressure on them needed relief: much of her awareness derived from her oldest daughter, Laria, who was Clarf’s Prime. The High Council had discussed the disposition of colonial expansion in private and public debates. Since the seven Human colony worlds had been free from the Hiver assaults until the Hivers’ abortive attempt on Deneb—known as the Deneb Penetration—Human worlds were by no means as critical in population densities as the five Mrdini planets were. With the Alliance, fewer ’Dini were dying in combat against spheres, although their birth rate remained as high as it had been when more spacers were needed. The Allied Council had voted, almost unanimously, that the first nine suitable planets would be given to the Mrdini and the tenth made available for Humans. That decision had immediately met with resistance from a new faction, calling itself Planets for People, to the many disparate “voices” on the twelve Alliance worlds. However, the High Council was not moved to award an equal distribution of suitable worlds, since the intent of that opposition was specious.
    In the first place, an “ideal” Mrdini planet would be hotter than those comfortable for Human habitation. In the second place, few Humans realized how desperately crowded the five Mrdini worlds were, in conditions no Human would tolerate. The Humans had only begun to spread out across the earth-type planets in the Capella, Deneb and Iota Aurigae systems. Their need was not as urgent—unless it was prompted by obvious tit-for-tat mentalities. On Clarf and Sef, the two most overpopulated Mrdini worlds, a corresponding faction immediately erupted, demanding that the first twenty suitable worlds should be Mrdini, since their race had struggled alone for two hundred years against the Hivers.
    In the third place, the disposition of any new colonial worlds depended on many factors, the most important being that the relevant planet not already be occupied by an emerging sentient species. To which the obvious argument was that if the Hivers had already rid the planet of any large, possibly predatory life-forms, that wouldn’t be a problem, would it? Since Talavera, a world that had been “prepared” for Hiver occupation, was ecologically ill, how many other prospective planets would be in a similar state?
    There would probably be as many theories—and opponents of those theories—as there were M-type planets in the galaxy. And who knew what other intelligent spacefaring species might exist in the quadrants not yet explored by Mrdini, Human and Hiver ships?
    While most Humans met Mrdini on equal terms, not all Humans and not all Mrdini were in favor of continued close association now that the enemy—the Hivers—had received a major setback. Matters closer to home and divisive individual concerns often received more attention and publicity than the problem that still faced the Allies: finding Hiver-occupied worlds and somehow restricting the alien creatures to them.
    Masses of details needed to be gathered by elements of both Navies: discovering which worlds the Hivers occupied, how full they were, which M-type planets ignored by the spheres trying to find a new homeworld would be suitable for Mrdini or Human occupation.
    One loud group didn’t want any further Human expansion. A more virulent sect wanted to control FT&T because FT&T were “weasel lovers” and should not be trusted to conduct the Towers in strict accordance with its original Charter. This ominously growing group took note of the most minute variation, discrepancy or minor modification undertaken by Towers or