Learning From Mistakes

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER TWO.

On his clandestine mission for Leon Ammon, Flandry learns too late that superfluous oxygen bottles have been packed instead of more helpful "impellers," personal flying gadgets:

"I should have checked the whole lot when we loaded it aboard on Planet Eight, he thought. I'm guilty of taking something for granted. How Max Abrams would ream me out!... Well, I guess Intelligence agents learn their trade through sad experience like everybody else." (p. 223)

More than everybody else, probably. When, a few weeks into a new job, I asked a question and realized that I had heard the answer before, I was not going to ask it a third time.

When, approaching a new planetary system, Tryntaf the Tall informs Flandry that the Merseians call the star Siekh and its inhabited planet Talwin, Flandry asks which other Civil War heroes they have honored, then Tryntaf's sharp look reminds him that he should always let the enemy underestimate him.

When Ydwyr mentions Aycharaych, Flandry queries the reference instead of pretending to understand it in order to encourage Ydwyr to divulge more.

Thus, readers of the Technic History receive a three-stage introduction to the central villain of the Flandry series. Aycharaych:

is mentioned by Ydwyr in A Circus Of Hells;
meets Chunderban Desai in The Day Of Their Return;
finally meets Flandry in "Honorable Enemies," although this was the earliest written Aycharaych story.

Flandry makes another mistake, not yet learning from it:

"...at his age he dared not admit to any girl that he could be scared." (ibid.)

Fear is a survival mechanism. We deny it at our peril. Meanwhile, Young Flandry is learning to become Captain Flandry whom Anderson had already written.