I just reread the story, and Fridge Logic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic ) struck. At the end, the protagonist is thinking about the future of the rescued passengers/crew:
When you get there, sixty to seventy percent will die in the first three years. You will die in childbirth, be eaten by animals, bury two out of three of your babies, starve slowly when the rains don't come. If you live, it will be to break your back behind a plow, sunup to dusk. New Earth is Heaven, folks!
Now wait just a minute. They have the technology to travel through time, and spacecraft that are, if not superluminal, at least capable of a significant fraction of c. They can't export the technology the colonists would need to build a new world? They can't even prevent death in childbirth?
Smell ya later, Scary Mary said to all of us, waddling toward the elevators.
Differences arise over what kinds of organization are desirable (eg, political parties or antiparties, professionalized organizations, decentralized networks, communes, grassroots groups) and over tactical questions of what is to be done[…]
Creepers threaded the wrecked windows of the coaches, ancient and chalky brown with their riveted seams and welted coamings like something proofed for descents into the sea.
