Frontiers

"Starfog."

The planet, Serieve, is located on two frontiers:

at one edge of the Milky Way galaxy;

at one furthest point of exploration and civilization within the galaxy.

"'We aren't far, here, from the northern verge of the spiral arm. Beyond is the halo - thin gas, little dust, ancient globular clusters very widely scattered. The interstellar medium from which stars form has not been greatly enriched by earlier generations.'" (pp. 719-720)

Within the galaxy:

in one direction, civilized planetary systems;

in the opposite direction, a mostly unexplored volume of space concealed by the Dragon's Head Nebula, which is "'...in transit through our skies.'" (p. 724)

The Kirkasanters, having arrived in an antiquated spaceship from beyond the Dragon's Head, claim to have come from "'...a shining cloud, two hundred light-years across...,'" (p. 711) full of red and unstable stars. Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, must investigate.

Will human beings ever live on the edge of the galaxy? Anderson describes it again, this time as seen from an orbiting space habitat:

"Space dropped dizzily from the viewport, thin starred black here on the rim. Huge and shapeless - we being still more or less within it - the galaxy streamed past and was lost to sight; we looked toward remoteness."
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 12.