Ekser Engineering

"Hiding Place."

The discussion on pp. 587-588 is far too technical for me but nevertheless it remains part of Poul Anderson's hard sf:

the aliens, for convenience called "Eksers," do not tap their nuclear converter directly for electricity, probably because they have not developed Technic stepdown methods;

instead, they run a large generator with a heat exchanger;

they draw A.C. from the generator and pass the A.C. through copper oxide rectifier plates for D.C.;

the light-element-fusion converter of Technic civilization develops electric current directly but the Eksers' power plant might use heavier elements "'...with small packing fractions.'" (p. 588);

such a plant would need less refinement of fuel, which would be advantageous on unexplored planets despite the clumsiness of the heat exchanger and rectifier plates;

the Eksers might be better engineers than Terrestrials who had found heavy element conversion impractical;

what looks primitive in their system might be merely different;

"'We don't know a damn thing...'" (p. 588)

Obviously, the speaker knows a great deal but, the more we know, the more we realize how little we know. See "Yon Yonson."