Wings Of Victory III

Vaughn Webner, professor of xenology at the University of Oceania, did field work on Cynthia but remains a theoretician who has become dogmatic whereas Aram Turekian, "...born in a sealtent on Mars...," (Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 6-7) is a spacefarer and adventurer who sounds as if he deserves his own series. Experience has taught Turekian to expect the unexpected.

Webner's theory tells him that the flying organisms on Ythri cannot be intelligent whereas Turekian suddenly realizes that, and how, they are but he must fight Webner to get himself and his companions out of danger before he has time to explain.

The moral of the story is not that practice and experience are good whereas theory is bad. Theory guides practice which tests theory. When one theory is disproved, another must be formulated.