(i) "The Sky People" is what the natives of Venus call Terrestrials. (p. 40)
(ii) "Everyone knew that the Sky People, while wizards of great power, were raving mad. Filling a sack with useless rocks and treating it like a treasure was typical of them." (ibid.)
Thinking that something is useless because we do not understand it: a bad mistake, one that I made in childhood.
(iii) Two hundred million years ago, Venus was somehow terraformed. It looks as if biological action pumped carbon out of the atmosphere and oxygen into it. (p. 39) We approach an answer to the central question of the novel.
(iv) "...un-transport..." (p. 50) - ?
(v) "You had to keep in mind that the world the size of Earth or Venus was a big place..." (p. 51) A valid point and typically Andersonian.
(vi) Colonists of Venus are heroes on Earth:
"Marc...was undoubtedly the thinly disguised hero of countless trashy novels and bad TV shows by now - and the illustrated heart-throb of countless girls." (p. 52)
So our viewpoint character is the real life version of a popular fiction hero - but we, in another timeline, are reading the true account. How cool is that?
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