Explorers

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Sherrinford refers, on p.202, to what explorers have found among extraterrestrial species. No doubt each colony has records of earlier explorations but are there any current explorations of new planets? Not from Roland or even from Beowulf. At least I think that Beowulf has launched just the one spaceship which merely visits already colonized planets.

Are any other planets launching exploratory ships and maintaining laser contact with them and also communicating by laser with Beowulf? And is Beowulf in contact with its single ship? Laser messages will take decades or centuries to traverse interstellar space. Sherrinford has been on Roland for twelve years so it might be nearly that long since the ship left. He mentions, on p. 194, that decades have elapsed since he left Beowulf and that he does not know what has happened there since then.

So we do not know whether there is any current exploration and we do know that, if there is any, then the reporting of its discoveries is always out of date. If there is current exploration, is it leading to new colonization? Is human space expanding or does it just consist of ships like the one that brought Sherrinford touring around existing colonies?

Why does Sherrinford say, on p. 194, that the Cherokee side of his ancestry might partly account for the tradition of detective work in his family?