ach of these explanations has serious drawbacks The Aurelian exiles who found and re stored Tupile knew nothing of spice, yet by 84 B G they understood its navigational benefits In that year Norma Cevna made the first spice trance-guided journey through hyperspace By the year 10, when the Guild joined the Impenum melange had been extensively tested and its use in hyperspace was routine If the Guild, or its forerunner, the Society of Mystic Manners, had discovered melange on their own, the find must have come between Aurelms Venport's departure from Ix in 110 B G and Cevna's first flight in 84 B G Arrakis was the sole source of melange Therefore if the Aurehan exiles touched on an uninhabited Arrakis (a possibility) and found it uninhabitable (a cer tainty), how could they have located melange, and if they had, what possible reason would they have had for taking some with them1? Its value would have been unknown to them (they surely could not have tested it m situ), and we must remember that the exiles were searching desperately for a homeworld, not for a new cuisine If the exiles learned of the effects of spice after settling on Tupile, where did that spice come from9 It seems beyond reason that the Society, wrestling with the problem of hyperspace navigation without computers, would have sent scouts on years-long realspace journeys to remote planets on the off chance that one might find some natural substance of value in navigation No matter how intelligent and energetic, how does a small group (numbenng m the hundreds) rebuild a planetary industry restore its educational system, overawe and regiment its populace, redesign spacecraft along revolutionary lines, and carry out lengthy and numerous random explorations, atl in sixteen years9 That the Ixian exiles accomplished the first four of these jobs is marvelous, that they did all tive is incredible A second hypothesis has attracted more support On Praxus III, the exiles admitted to their group a woman who claimed to have been cast out of the Bene Gessent-Dardamus Leona Shard Her name at least is consonant with her allegation of Reverend Mother status According to the second theory Leona taught Norma Cevna about melange To accept it we must believe that the B G knew of spice a century before the rest of humanity, a fact for which there is no evidence We know that the B G used many substances m the rite that conferred Reverend Mother status, and melange is never mentioned among them SPACING GUILD OPERATIONS 465 SPACING GUILD, OPERATIONS Finally, the "voices within" of the Bene Ge