Since the alien ship refuses to communicate, Torrance prepares to lead a boarding party, leaving van Rijn on the bridge. Here we see the two sides of van Rijn's character. On the one hand, he protests loudly at being left in charge. On the other hand, he smoothly hauls the Hebe G.B. by tractor beam toward the larger ship, astonishing Torrance with the realization that this old swine is a skilled spaceman. The loud protestation was an act. In Torrance's absence, van Rijn knows that he is the right man to handle the ship. Otherwise, he would have delegated the job to someone better skilled than himself. We were told earlier that he sometimes throws crockery at the steward and regularly fires everyone on the ship. I think that that is taking the act a bit too far. Again, he would not behave like this with a crew who were unable to accept such histrionics as "...normal." (p. 559)
The alien flees through hyperspace but van Rijn casually performs the difficult task of phasing in, evades a pressor beam, reestablishes the tractor beam link, then cuts his hyperdrive since he can now be carried along inside the alien's force-field and needs to preserve his own convertor. Torrance must board while the two ships plunge through hyperspace toward an unknown destination.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I am inclined to agree that in "real life," Old Nick takes his dramatics and histrionics too far. But, Anderson wanted to use such dramatics to give us some comedy and to encourage unwary readers to underestimate van Rijn. Also, in van Rijn's "real life," I suspect many of the crew are USED to the Boss's and realizes it's largely put on, an act.
Yes, Old Nick's extremely competent handling of the "Hebe G.B." is one means used by Anderson to tell us van Rijn is not actually the brainless buffoon he pretends to be.
Sean
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