Murder Bound, Chapters I-III

In Poul Anderson's first Trygve Yamamura novel, the central character looks up at the stars, as real people and literary characters have ever done, but also thinks about the planets of those stars, thus applying a modern scientific knowledge of the universe. Anderson displays the scientific knowledge and cosmic perspective of a physics graduate and hard sf writer even more overtly twice in the opening chapters of the third Yamamura novel, Murder Bound (New York, 1962).

In another night time scene:

"His cigarette end made a tiny red Cepheid star, waxing and waning..." (p. 2)

Some readers might have to google "Cepheid star"?

Secondly:

"A stunning photograph of the Andromeda Nebula dominated the room." (p. 28)

Many years later, artificial intelligences traveling at sub-light speeds approach the Andromeda in Anderson's late hard sf novel, Genesis, whose title expresses a new beginning long after the extinction of humanity.

In Chapter II, there is a fascinating summary of a tramp ship's round the world voyage:

from Oslo with electrical machinery and matches to Ceylon;
from Ceylon with rubber to Rangoon;
from Rangoon with rice and teak to Hong Kong;
from Hong Kong with cement to Yokohama;
from Yokohama with textiles and ceramics to San Francisco;
from San Francisco with lumbering equipment to Oslo.

Not every cargo mentioned is delivered to every destination mentioned but this is as much as I could glean from the captain's brief account to Yamamura, who is investigating a death or disappearance on the ship. Since the disappeared man, a suspected Nazi collaborator, fought three others while wielding an axe before falling overboard, it is disconcerting for one of the three when, later, he is attacked by an axe-wielding figure in his hotel room. Without going to look it up at this late hour, I remember a similar night attack scene with the missing Samurai sword in the first novel?