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reading a few of those Stellarnet articles in her queue, that neither Glin nor Tikat had anything like the space shifting technology. The Glin didn’t have machines, at all. Heck, they didn’t even have the wheel. Yet, somehow, Duin was here. “Why aren’t you on Earth?”
    “Your United Nations Security Council will not allow it. I can’t blame them. I wish that Glin could have done the same, when the Tikati invited themselves to visit us .”
    “So, you just stand here talking to the colonists?”
    “I have sent 2,163 requests, each to a different head of a different bureau of a different office—” he swirled his hand in circles for emphasis, “—throughout the various levels of your government, and to various organizations on Earth. But nothing has ever come of it. This is as close as I can get to humanity, and only after going through several physical exams, and giving of blood samples, and typing in webforms, and obtaining science clearances and…” He stopped swirling his hands and sighed. “And so from here I must make my case.”
    “You should put yourself on the Stellarnet.”
    “I don’t know how. I can access the Asternet from my compartment, but I am not very skilled in its use. And I don’t have one of these.” He took her by the hand and pointed at her bracer.
    His touch made her heart race. An alien, beside her, speaking to her, with the courage, born of desperation, to stand alone in every way among hostile strangers and beg for aid while his world was violated.
    “I’ll get you to Earth, Duin,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. She could feel firm muscle beneath the odd texture of his wallump suit. “I’m a blogger for Interstellar News Corps, and together we will tell Earth all about your world.”

Chapter Three
    Earth is no stranger to oppression, cruelty and ecological disaster, nor to those who engage in the struggle against them. Many nations have been made, and re-made, in the fight for self-governance, or in response to environmental devastation. Or both.
    Ireland was one of those nations. More than two centuries ago, the Great Famine killed an estimated one million Irish people and drove a million more to relocate. With the total human population exceeding twenty billion, two million people may not seem like many. It’s the average population of a city.
    But the total human population in the mid-1800s was only a fraction of what it is today. Two million was 25% of the entire Irish population at the start of the famine. Think of it this way: It is the same number of people presumed dead when we lost all contact with the Venus Cloud Colonies in 2045.
    Following the Reunification of Ireland in 2018, Britain petitioned for membership in the League of Penitent Nations (joining Germany, Vatican City, the United States, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Australia and others), and accepted responsibility for its part in the famine.
    But, unlike the United States, which paid reparations to such groups as Japanese-Americans (for unlawful internment during World War II), Muslims (again for unlawful internment during the War on Terrorism), and the descendants of slaves (thanks to the completion in 2032 of the Middle Passage Genome Project), Britain was not in the economic position to make financial restitution.
    During the Industrial Era, however, Britain was not contrite. It was the oppression and abuse of the native Irish by the British Empire which contributed to the atrocities of the Great Famine. It was also this oppression and abuse which gave rise to freedom fighters such as the Society of United Irishmen in the late 1700s, the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the 1800s and the Irish Republican Army in the 1900s.
    India experienced similar events during the Industrial Era. Drought, famine and the administrative policies of the British Raj converged to bring suffering and death to tens of millions of people. The Indian rebellion of 1857 was only the beginning of a revolutionary struggle which