The Meteor crash lands:
"We hit." (p. 30)
When Captain Argens regains consciousness and goes to find his men, he meets Valland who:
gives him a full report on the half-flooded ship with two dead, one mortally injured and the survivors in the saloon;
suggests that the captain joins the rest while he himself looks outside before reporting back.
Definitely the kind of man that you want to have with you in a shipwreck or in any other catastrophe. He remarks:
"'I came through fairly well, myself,'..." (p. 31)
He has been coming through fairly well for three thousand years. We can bet on Valland continuing to survive for quite a while yet.
Usually, we do not see fictional characters' deaths although James Blish felt obliged to show us his antiagathics-user meeting their ends at nothing less than the end of the universe.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
A good sign, Valland only saying he survived fairly well. A man who survived for so many centuries is well advised to avoid being boastful/overconfident.
Ad astra! Sean
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