“That's what I thought,” I said. “And our moral calculation, I suppose, is to decide whether to report back.”
“That decision has been made,” said the ship. “I left some micro- satellites in orbit, which have already relayed our discoveries to the still‑functioning transmitters on the system's Long Station.”
I cursed ineffectually for a while.
“How long have we got?”
The ship took an uncharacteristic few seconds to answer. “That depends on where and when the decision is made. The absolute minimum time is at least a decade, allowing for transmission time to Lalande, and assuming an immediate decision to launch relativistic weapons, using their Long Tubes as guns. More realistic estimates, allowing for discussion, and the decision's being referred to one of the larger and more distant civilizations, give a median time of around five decades. I would expect longer, given the gravity of the decision and the lack of urgency.”
“Right,” I said. “Let's give them some reason for urgency. You've just reminded me that there's a Long Tube in this system, not calibrated to take or send to or from other Tubes.”
“I fail to see the relevance,” said the ship.
“You will,” I told it. “You will.”
The following morning, I walked back to the settlement, and talked with the young men for a long time. When I returned to the ship, I was riding, most uncomfortably, on the back of an animal. I told the ship what I wanted. The ship was outraged, but like all seedship AIs, it was strongly constrained. (Nobody wants to seed a system with a fast burn.) The ship did what it was told.
Two years later, Belated Meteor Impact, the tall young man who'd greeted me, was king of an area of several thousand square kilometres. The seedship's bootstrapped nanofactories were turning substrate into weapons and tools, and vegetation cellulose into clothes and other goods for trade. A laser‑launcher to send second‑generation seedships into the sky was under construction. A year later, the first of them shot skyward. Five years later, some of these ships reached the remnant cometary cloud and the derelict Long Station. Ten years after I'd arrived, we had a space elevator. Belated Meteor Impact ruled the continent and his fleets were raiding the other continents' coasts. Another five years, and we had most of the population of New Earth up the elevator and into orbital habitats. Our Long Tube was being moved frequently and unpredictably, with profligate use of reaction mass. By the time the relativistic weapon from Procyon smashed New Earth, thirty‑seven years after my arrival, we were ready to make good use of the fragments to build more habitats, and more ships.
My Space Admiral, Belated Meteor Impact II, was ready too, with what we now called the Long Gun. Lalande capitulated at once, Ross 128 after a demonstration of the Long Gun's power. Procyon took longer to fall. Sirius sued for peace, as did the Solar System, whereupon we turned our attention outward, to the younger civilizations, such as your own. We now conquer with emissaries, rather than ships and weapons, but the ships and the Long Guns are there. You may be sure of that. As an emissary of the Empire, I give you my word.
As for myself. I was the last survivor of the government of Earth, a minor functionary stranded on the Moon during a routine factfinding mission when the sudden onset of climate catastrophe froze all life on the primary. How I survived in the anarchy that followed is a long story, and another story. You may not have heard it, but that hardly matters.
You'll have heard of me.