A Few Stars Gleamed

When Laure and his companions return from their walk, only a few stars gleam in the light night. Why only a few? Do clouds or nebulae hide the rest? No. There are very few.

Serieve is not far from the northern edge of its spiral arm of the galaxy. Beyond that edge, there is only the galactic halo with thin gas, little dust and very widely scattered ancient globular clusters. Within the edge of the spiral arm, stars average four parsecs apart as opposed to four light years in our part of our (different) spiral arm.

When Anderson writes that few stars gleam, he expects us to remember the galactographical position of Serieve and not just to think that the sky must be overcast.