Seven Conquests

Epub (my conversion)The old blue man sighed, and a smile tugged at his mouth. You didn’t work many centuries in the Service without becoming an idealist and a cynic. So many planets, spinning through night and cold, so many souls huddled on them…a half million full-status worlds, members of interstellar civilization by virtue of knowing that such a civilization existed… and how many millions more who did not know. The duty of true civilization was to guide its brothers in darkness— secretly, gently keeping from them the devastating knowledge that a million-year-old society already existed, until they had matured enough to take that bitter pill and join the League of the older planets.