"Then came the Terran War, and when it had passed by, ruined landscapes lay underneath skies gone strange." (p. 14)
A major event, a war, has happened but it is finished. Either we have read about the Terran War in the previous volume or we must wait to learn more. Our human author, Poul Anderson, has to allow for either of these two possibilities. Meanwhile, however, the Ythrian author of this passage has identified himself on the preceding page:
"It is Hloch of the Stormgate Choth who writes, on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother." (p. 13)
Another scene-setting sentence greets us on the facing page:
"Our part in the Grand Survey had taken us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis." (p. 15)
This is a human, not an Ythrian, narrator. The Ythrians are just about to be discovered. The phrase, "...great suns...," evokes great events to come and indeed great events will occur in Sector Alpha Crucis many centuries later.
It is worthwhile to possess copies both of the Earth Book and of the Saga even though the entire contents of the former are reproduced in the latter. We keep looking both forwards and backwards in time.
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