Differences Between Ythrian And Terran Spaceships
(i) In an Ythrian warship, the air is scented with blood odor to stimulate the crew during combat although not before because constant stimulation would wear them out.
(ii) Ferune's wife, Wharr, has accompanied him on naval expeditions, has borne and raised children in a homeship attached to the fleet and has drilled and led gun crews.
(iii) Ythrian ships are larger because the crew need room to stretch their wings.
(iv) Ythrians would not remain sane wearing spacesuits and therefore are vulnerable to a breach in the hull.
(v) Ythrians put personal symbols on lesser craft, e.g., the three stars on Vodan's torpedo launcher. In addition, Ferune has had Hell Rock painted in Anglic on the sides of his super-dreadnaught.
In "Lodestar," we are told that an Ythrian ship has:
a large, otherwise unnecessary, viewport because the crew need an ample outlook;
a hold spacious enough to allow the crew to fly.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Here we see Anderson carefully working out the problems a flying intelligent race might have in space, the special limitations affecting them. I have no doubts experiments were made with Ythrians wearing space suits, which is how it was found out how badly it affects them. All these problems you listed goes someway to explaining the difficulties Ythrians had learning and adjusting to space flight. To say nothing of the special problems they had adapting to colonizing other planets!
I suspect some of these problems would be the same for Diomedeans, esp. the difficulties with space suits. But that species seemed better able to tolerate crowding. But we never see Diomedeans in space!
Ad astra! Sean
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