By the time the first of many Morrig colonists made planetfall and began assembly of their basic relay beacon and fuel base, a new colony ship for Tyr was already in space, about half-way to its waypoint just beyond the intense radiation belts of the Whynil system, with a small contingent of defensive fighters following in its wake - demonstrating that the people of Betelgeuse could occasionally do some things right, at least. The departure of some 40 million cool cats for Morrig - mostly en route to Tyr - from Betelgeuse itself was also strictly according to plan, though the minimal factory counts that left all those millions unemployed in the midst of pursuing expansion and important technologies certainly left room to question the trade council's sanity. Most observers however - particularly observers on Betelgeuse itself - would agree that the council's most questionable decisions were embodied in the tax laws they put into effect immediately following the launch of the Tyr colony ship. All throughout the Betelgeuse and Toranor systems, taxation would continue at record-setting rates for a full decade - and though the Morrig colony was immune for a while, at first due to nonexistence, and then because the costs of supporting the fuel supply runs to Whynil that would enable the colony ship to make it up to Tyr left its first two million residents nothing left to tax in any case, it too would later feel the burden for four long years while its transports were en route to Tyr. In theory, the resources gathered this way would speed the development of Tyr 2's colony-to-be, and certainly they did that, but the cost to the Betelgeuse people in the meantime was staggering, and their overall economy would unquesitonably have been better off if they'd made do without any treasury at all, in spite of the fact that it was emptied over the first several years of the new colony's existence helping Tyr 2 finally get up to speed.
What the newsdroid didn't know when it announced the population of the Betelgeuse trading scouts' merchant empire as fourth-largest among the significant factions in the galaxy - referring to them by the familiar term they sometimes used for their race in reference to the Betelgeuse national pastime of immitating motorboat noises with their lips - was the presence of some 60 million more "Mrrshans" in two waves of transports, the first and larger wave on the point of arriving at Morrig just as a big green flying saucer prepared to land among the deserts of Tyr. What the Betelgeuse "Mrrshans" didn't know at the time either was that they had made their big colonial push ... prematurely.
The colonization of Tyr was a huge step forward for the people of Betelgeuse, not only because of the desert world's riches, but because they at last could finally get over their obsession with the place and get on to the regular business of living. The by-then-traditional listing of the prior year instead of the present in the first publicity photos of the landing resulted at the very worst in a modicum of confusion, and some of the trade council's most obviously insane policies were being rescinded. The crippling taxes they had imposed would persist for four years more since Tyr's tiny new population - already stretched thin supporting the little fighter fleet in orbit above their world - was too new to be affected by the tax rates right away, but even these taxes, among the worst of the ill-advised, Tyr-driven Betelgeuse policies, were finally, finally canceled in 2339, when the first wave of transports from Morrig arrived in the Tyr system.
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NEXT: Going Even Further Out On A Limb
