"Poised on his perch, crested carnivore head lifted against the Milky Way, Hirharouk said..."
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 368-408 AT p. 394.
Hirharouk's head joins our list of objects seen against the Milky Way. The first such object to be noted was Aycharaych's crest.
Hirharouk, an Ythrian contemporary of van Rijn, is a flier but not a bird and sees God's shadow across the Polesotechnic League whereas Aycharaych, a Chereionite contemporary of Flandry, is probably descended from flightless birds and seeks to hasten the Long Night of the Terran Empire. Each speaks at the end of an era.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, Aycharaych did express skepticism in Chapter 1 of WE CLAIM THESE STARS of the accuracy of the Merseian computer generated predictions of when the Terran Empire would fall. He thought the confidence of the Merseian high command in those predictions to be "naive and rather touching." And even those predictions had the Empire stubbornly surviving for another 150 years. And Flandry's triumphs against the enemies of the Empire probably added ANOTHER century to the life span of Terra's Empire. And Flandry himself was hopeful enough at the end of THE GAME OF EMPIRE to think the Empire would last another two centuries. Or even longer?
Sean
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