The Wersgor prisoner, Brantithar, learning Latin quickly, is told to fly the ship, with the entire population of an English castle and village on board, first to France, to win a war there, then to Jerusalem, to recapture the Holy Land for Christianity. Instead, he sets the ship on automatic pilot to the nearest colony planet of his race. Brother Parvus, who had spotted what the reader knew to be an air lock, is now scandalized to see mountains and craters on what should be the perfectly circular Moon.
The narrative has now left England, Earth and even the Solar System never to return. There is a sort of nightmare inevitability to the plot. I saw that Anderson was going to take his characters as far as he could but not that he would take them as far as he did.
The large ship had had a small crew because it was supposed to return to base with many samples of Terrestrial life. Thus, it is big enough to accommodate not only the knights but also their wives, lemans, children, clergy, serfs and farm animals. There is an explanation for everything.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Why should you find a kind of "nightmare inevitability" to the plot of THE HIGH CRUSADE? Many of the Wersgor were not very nice people and and they were quite frankly brutal in how they ruled their empire.
Sean
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