When we were First Year we dreamed up situations like this and argued like mad over them, but they were a lot too neat for real life and too dramatic as well.
However one thing M'Clare said to us, and every other lecturer too, just before the Finals, was Do not spend time trying to figure what the examiner was after but answer the question as set; I am more than halfway decided this is some mysterious Oriental idea of a joke but I get busy thinking in case it is not.
The planet is called Incognita in the reel and it is right on the edge of the known volume of space, it got settled by two groups somewhere between three and three and a half centuries ago. The rest of the human race never heard of it till maybe three years back.
(Well it happens that way, inhabited planets are still turning up eight or ten a century, on account of during the Exodus some folk were willing to travel a year or more so as to get away from the rest).
The ship that spotted the planet as inhabited did not land, but reported to Central Government, Earth, who shipped observers out to take a look.
(There was a rumor circulating at Russett that the Terry Government might employ some of us on that kind of job, but it never got official. I do not know whether to believe this bit or not.)
It is stated the observers landed secretly and mingled with the natives unobserved.
(This is not physically impossible but sounds too like a Field Trip to be true.)
The observers are not named but stated to be graduates of the Cultural Engineering Class.
They put in a few months' work and sent home unanimous Crash Priority reports the situation is _bad_, getting worse and the prognosis is War.
I know people had wars, I know one reason we do not have them now is just that with so many planets and cheap transportation, pressure has other outlets; these people scrapped their ships for factories and never built more.
There are only about ten million of them and surely to goodness a whole planet gives room enough to keep out of each other's hair?
Well this is not Reasoning but a Reaction, I go back to the data for another look.
The root trouble is stated to be that two groups landed on the planet without knowing the others were there, when they met thirty years later they got a disagreeable shock.