B. Get the Novans to nuke each other. Not hard but they'll probably nuke my fleet, too, on general principle. The FSC would, for a certainty; bastards can hold a grudge. So they nuke each other and us. Sets them back also four or five hundred years. Then they build a fleet and come looking for Earth.

C. Leave things alone. Within one hundred years my fleet is a worn- out ruin. Within one hundred years the Novans are more than capable of launching their own ships. Then they come looking for Earth.

D. Change Earth. Not going to happen. Half the reason they sent me here, instead of leaving me home, was that I was even capable of thinking about changing Earth. History ended there and the Consensus doesn't want it to start up again. Besides, what would we do with half a billion educated, industrialized, militarized proles? Ugly thought, that is. And if the wretches started to actually think?

E. Change Terra Nova. But how…

The auction went well, a beneficiary of Terra Nova's cosmopolitan upper class's newfound fetish for the luxuries of Old Earth. With what the serfs on Atlantis could grow, Robinson had enough to feed his fleet for another few decades, and even to buy-under the table- most or even all of the parts and fuel he needed. It put him into rather a good mood, actually, an especially good mood when he considered the portion, twenty percent of the auction's proceeds, that was his by right as the high admiral of the fleet.

So good was Robinson's mood that he was even willing to listen to Unni Wiglan, the commissioner for culture from the Tauran Union.

"I was thinking about your question, High Admiral," the leggy blonde said between sips of champagne. "I admit, I was a little shocked at it. I am, all we cosmopolitan progressives are, so used to thinking of Earth-its advanced social development, technology and culture-as being so superior to what we have that it sometimes comes as a surprise that you are not omnipotent."