Yet again, the Saxtorphs kill kzinti with seeming ease. This time, they make their robot prospector crash through the side of the artifact enclosing a mini-black hole, thus releasing radiation at just the right angle to strike the approaching kzinti ship. Weoch-Captain, dying of radiation poisoning, crosses to the artifact and launches it into hyperspace, thus depriving the "monkeys" of this new technology and power source. Something like this has to happen because such technology and such a power source do not exist later in the series. In the same way, Wells' Time Machine does not return and the Cavorite sphere is lost in space.
"'Ich kann nicht anders!'"
-Chapter XX, p. 300.
"I can do no other." Martin Luther is supposed to have said this. See here.
"'Du kannst nicht treu sein.'"
-Chapter XXI, p. 302.
"you cannot be true." This is a song.
"...farstuhl..." (elevator)
-Chapter XXII, p. 303.
"'Ja, was wollen Sie von mir?'" (Yes, what do you want with me?")
-Chapter XXII, p. 304.
In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, Dominic Flandry confronts his son, Dominic Hazeltine, who has been working for the Merseians. In "Inconstant Star," Chapter XXII, Robert Saxtorph confronts Peter Nordbro's son, Ib, who has been working for the kzinti. We knew that the kzinti had an intelligence source and that Ib had been friendly with Markham who had spied for the kzinti so we should have guessed Ib's guilt.
Hazeltine's mind is destroyed by the hypnoprobe. Ib shoots himself. Is suicide ever right? If I had jumped off a roof when I was still at school, then I would have prevented many things both good and bad from happening. Life is laughter and grief, as Anderson's Alori say.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While the Saxtorphs seem to kill these Kzinti with implausible ease, remember what Stirling said about organized, skillfully used violence in combat, on how a result depends partly on one side or the other getting ever so slightly the jump on their opponents. And then of how quickly the violence stops.
Also, despite the "series plot" necessity for it, I thought it a very neat touch by Anderson to show the dying Weoch-Captain frustrating the Saxtorphs by snatching away the artifact/mini black hole from them. The monkeys might have won again, but they were not going to get a COMPLETE victory.
Ad astra! Sean
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