Elkor's fleet has about ten octad ships. Eight-fingered Jovians count in eights. Norlak estimates that the Nyarrans outnumber their enemies by sixteen per sixty-four.
Reeves wage continual warfare against floods, volcanoes, landslides etc but Theor acknowledges that these differ from hostile minds. So the Jovians have not personified natural forces?
Theor, a quadruped, does not run but gallops. Carrying only a third of the sex of his race, he is said to be less self-aware than a human being but why should this be?
Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 5, pp. 36-38.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! These fascinating comments are makes me want to reread THREE WORLLDS TO CONQUER, and I already have too many other books to read! (Smiles)
Sean
For humans whose legs are much stronger than their arms, anything that allows humans leg strength to be applied to moving boats is an advantage. See the sliding seats on racing human powered boats. I have seen the suggestion that the Athenians used a sort of greased cushion tied to the buttocks sliding on a board to give their rowers a similar advantage at Salamis.
See also this:
http://www.h2proped.com/
Something Stirlings Nantucketers might have found useful.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but depending on rowers still has limits. Such as rowers soon getting tired and needing to be replaced by fresh shifts of rowers. To say nothing of the food and water so many men need.
Ad astra! Sean
Sure
Which is why cargo vessels used sails until practical steam engines were developed.
I was thinking Stirling's Nantucketers could have found that pedal plus screw propeller device useful on canoes that would be portaged to inland waterways upstream of rapids.
Canoes were used for the initial exploration and trade in the north & east 3/4 of N. America, a good option for the Nantucketers in the "Island in the Sea of Time" series, but for plot purposes Stirling needed an expedition crossing the dry SW part of the continent.
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