The Enemy II

"A Sun Invisible."

In Poul Anderson's works, we have found:

mankind as his own "protean enemy";

the universe as mankind's outer enemy, fought, in particular, by Planetary Engineers.

For both of these enemies, see here.

Now, David Falkayn gives us the universe as an enemy fought by merchant adventurers. Denying that merchants work just for money, he explains:

"'No, it's adventure, new horizons, life's conquest of inanimate nature - the universe itself, the grandest enemy of all.'" (III, p. 289)

Like "The world's great age begins anew..." at the beginning of the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place," and "A loftier Argo cleaves the main...," at the beginning of a later van Rijn story, "The Master Key," Falkayn's "'...it's adventure, new horizons...'" could serve as a rallying call for the Polesotechnic League. However, when he says this, Falkayn is trying to impress a young woman so his mind might not be entirely on the new horizons or the conquest of nature.