The THUNDERBOLT And Her Passengers

"Brake."

On p. 219, the Planetary Engineer, Luke Devon, quotes Hamlet.

On p. 220, Banning deduces that Devon is a Rostomily Brother although we have to have read the earlier story, "Un-Man," to make much sense of Banning's reflections on that earlier period when the embattled UN world government had been defended by Un-men including Rostomily clones.

Engineers began to terraform Ganymede and Callisto in "The Snows of Ganymede." Now, Devon takes terraforming equipment to Europa.

In conversation with Serge Andreyev, Devon summarizes much information for the readers' benefit:

the Thunderbolt is a large spaceship;

she is beyond Mars en route to Jupiter;

there are fifteen people, crew or passengers, on board.

Banning lists the passengers:

Cleonie Rogers, tourist;

Devon, the Engineer;

Andreyev, Solar Union bureaucrat sent to negotiate a trade agreement;

Robert Falken, nucleonic technician accepting a job offer on Callisto;

Morgan Gentry, astronaut, hired to pilot inter-satellite shuttles in the Jovian Republic;

Gomez, professor of advanced symbolics, starting a position at the new University of X.

There was an X on Ganymede before but not a University: the familiar combination of history and change.

After Andreyev has pulled a gun on Devon, Banning regards the other passengers with suspicion.