the frame buildings are well-weathered;
therefore, they have stood for a long time;
therefore, Imperial construction methods, involving alloys, concrete, synthetics and energy webs, have been out of use here for a long time.
Other evidence of primitiveness:
two horses draw a wooden haycutter, its blades merely edged with metal;
the creaking and bouncing of the haycutter indicate that it has neither wheel bearings nor springs.
One positive sign: the absence of weapons implies freedom from banditry.
Questions:
Why make hay on a planet with little seasonal variation?
How can such a small planet have air and water?
A wooden windmill with fabric sails pumps water into a raised cistern from which wooden pipes run to the house and sheds where the water drives machinery like a stone quern so why does the farm use no atomic, electric, solar or combustion energy although such sources are visibly in use elsewhere on Nike?
Why is such a young planet (as they think) metal-poor?
If the answer to the fourth question is that the system formed in the thin interstellar dust and gas of the galactic halo, then drifted into this spiral arm, then why is its proper motion normal?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I also wondered how you could use "energy webs" for construction.
And don't forget politics! Yasmin deduced, from the modest but real prosperity of this Nikean farm that the Engineer's rule was not unduly harsh.
Ad astra! Sean
We're used to thinking of hay as cold-season fodder. But it's more globally accurate to think of it as non-growing-season fodder. Many places have dry seasons when grass doesn't grow and the standing vegetation isn't very nutritious.
Haying allows you to feed your livestock according to the -average- productivity of the land rather than the seasonal -minimum- productivity, by transferring nutrients from the growing to the non-growing periods.
If I saw them haying in an area without low temperatures, I'd assume there were periods that were too dry for growth, or had some other impediment.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
This only goes to show I need to pay more attention to even the tiniest of details in Anderson's stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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