Commonalty Rangers

The post-human stage of evolution - in diverse sf works by Poul Anderson - is the Danellians, self-conscious computers or artificial neural systems, i.e., artificial brains. The phrase "self-conscious computers" raises philosophical questions discussed earlier. Computation will not become conscious merely by becoming faster or more efficient whereas an artificial brain, i.e., an artifact exactly duplicating the functions of an organic brain, will, by definition, be conscious.

In the Polesotechnic League and Terran Empire periods of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, consciousness-level computers can be constructed but it is considered more economical to keep organic intelligences in charge of unconscious computers. However, millennia later, in the Commonalty period, circumstances have changed. Rangers regularly facing cosmic unknowns need to travel in intelligent spaceships.

The computer in Daven Laure's ship, Jaccavrie, simultaneously displays a requested text on a screen, manages planetary approach, converses with Laure and awaits further instructions. It would be able to run the ship in his absence. Despite being served by such versatile ships:

"...every year, a certain number [of Rangers] did not come home from their missions."
- Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 711-794 AT p. 711.

Presumably, a Ranger would be safe if he were to remain inside his vessel but his work obliges him to leave it. Laure investigates element distribution on the surface of a planet in the central region of the Cloud Universe even though the planet's ionosphere prevents radio contact between his sled and the orbiting Jaccavrie. When wind smashes the sled into a mountain, Laure must shelter in a cave hoping that the zero visibility storm ends before his powerpack does.

Suddenly we understand why some Rangers do not return.