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up the
planet almost irreparably. Clique warfare, destructive hedonism and complete
disregard for the native ecology had reduced the colony to a state of near
barbarism. But in the four hundred and fifty nine years since a dying
woman's brilliant vision, there had been no warfare, no ecological abuse, no
cultural excess of the sort which had destroyed countless empires before.
There had been times of stress, of course, times at which the future had
seemed bleak; there had also been women of action and women of insight, but
the overwhelming majority of the planet's human history had been a tale of
survival by indifference.
When the MetaC drive had been invented, allowing journeys that had taken tens
or hundreds of years to be made in weeks, merchant ships had begun arriving
every few days. What had the government done? They had imposed trade limits
to keep the planet's economy the same as it had been during the time that a
single ship's arrival made the histor
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