Confrontation And Conclusion In "The Pirate"

"The Pirate."

"'I demand you let me go back to my spacecraft and depart unmolested,' Trevelyan said.
"Faustina snickered.
"'You will not?' Trevelyan asked. He waited. A breeze whispered.
"'I can now testify under brainphasing that you are guilty of attempted crimes sufficient to justify your arrest. Will you come quietly with me?'" (p. 163)

I quoted all that just to highlight: "A breeze whispered." I have remarked before that, in Poul Anderson's works, the wind comments. Most recently, see Wind Whined. In "The Pirate," it is just a whispering breeze, maybe signifying that this confrontation will not be violent. Trevelyan's antagonist capitulates when he realizes that he has been outmaneuvered. The only drama is in the dialogue - and in a single warning shot from Trevelyan's concealed partner.

Unusually, the first person narrator, who has been off-stage since the opening page, returns to draw the moral of the story in the concluding paragraph:

the Coordination Service guards the great Pact at the heart of civilization, society and life;

if the living, the dead and the unborn were not kept one over time, then nothing would have meaning and maybe nothing would survive;

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 165)