Sunset And Sunrise On Merseia

"Ahead, on the ocean's rim, smoldered a remnant of sunset."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT Chapter Twelve, p. 116.

When a spaceship rises from the planetary surface:

"Korych flamed over the edge of the world. That sunrise was gold and amethyst, beneath a million stars."
-op. cit., Chapter Thirteen, p. 137.

The Sun rises and sets every day. Poul Anderson regularly celebrates the diurnal process in appropriately colorful language. Don't just follow the flight of the spaceship. Pause to appreciate the gold and amethyst of flaming Korych.

In the spaceship, Flandry says again:

"'I only work here.'" (ibid.) (See here.)

He does more than work for his living. He could have done his job as an ensign simply by accepting that he was under arrest. Instead, he escapes into space and is hunted by the forces of two interstellar empires but this turns out to have been the best thing to do. Anderson imagines remarkably capable heroes.

Further observations:

space is the realm beyond sunrises and sunsets;

the diurnal process symbolizes historical beginnings and endings, e.g., the period after the end of Empire is called the Long Night.