Despite this, Explorations (New York, 1981) has been on my shelf for years yet I have no memory of ever reading "The Ways Of Love" and either had not known or had completely forgotten that this story is a sequel to Anderson's The Enemy Stars.
A logical sequel: the novel climaxes with First Contact so how was that contact perceived by the other side? And what happened next?
"Sometimes a vessel in transit gets used as a relay station by a couple or a party bound for too distant a world to make it in a single jump. Then they stop for a short visit. This would happen in Fleetwing, she being on our uttermost frontier and bound onward into strangeness." (p. 118)
Meaning and context make it clear that the word "not" should be inserted between "...would..." and "...happen..."
In the novel, human matter transmission is by instantaneous gravitational propagation whereas, in the short story, the Arvelans use a "...modulated tachyonic beam..." (p. 118). Tachyons, although not instantaneous, are faster than light with no upward speed limit so they would clearly be able to serve the same purpose.
The Arvelan process of child-nurturing fully involves both parents, ensuring that:
they are naturally monogamous;
their basic social unit is the nuclear family;
remarriage would mean becoming a different person;
they become killing machines if their partners are threatened (Terrestrial kidnappers do not know what has hit them);
they have never had nation-states! (This is a revolutionary idea - make love, not war - that the Terrestrial Protectorate all too understandably wants to suppress.)
It is good to see what had happened to two human characters after the events of the novel. The sole survivor of a space expedition married his shipmate's widow although this shocks their Arvelan friends.
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