David Johnson wrote:

> These are the sort of questions that leave me wondering about "another
> Merlin" back on Terra. I buy Beam's explanation for why Travis and his
> officers, who had fought a long war to a punishing victory, might do
> this. But that doesn't explain why folks back on Terra would stand for
> it (even if some of them didn't want to be "upstaged" by a computer)
> -- especially of they had another Merlin at their disposal.

Foxx Travis might well have asked other questions of Merlin.

If the Terran Federation is a point source that is failing, what
strategy would  force an exodus from the Alliance to have a substantial
population outside the failure zone?

Is the Terran Federation as a whole a zero-sum entity? How much economic
expansion for one world might comparatively impoverish other nearby
worlds? What is the political effect of comparative impoverishment?