sentences:  Trouble, however, approaches from all sides.The Outward Fleet has been deeply corrupted from the top down, and Festina's ship is soon sabotaged by a rather incompetent saboteur.Indeed, it becomes clear that the human society of New Earth, which calls itself the Technocracy, is rife with incompetence and corruption on all levels—part of a pattern of degeneracy that is afflicting other societies helped by the Shaddill, societies that have grown increasingly "decadent, temperamental, and culturally sterile", and filled with "wicked, arrogant, self-centered" individuals.