Some Future Historical Details

"The Problem of Pain."

The shipwrecked crew's medical kit contains mostly "...items for human use..." (pp. 38-39) because:

"There hasn't been time to develop a large scientific pharmacopia for [Ythrians]. True, certain materials work on both, as does the surgical and monitoring equipment." (p. 39)

The use of the present tense reinforces the feeling, as in Robert Heinlein's Future History, that the narrator and his audience live in, and are familiar with, that future period. However, when this story is presented in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, it is long in the past.

Two more names are bestowed. First, one of Enherrian's wings is sliced off by a flailing, razor-thin branch of:

"...what has since been named the surgeon tree." (p. 41)

Secondly, Olga is killed by poisonous vapors from a widespread Avalonian bush:

"The analysts named it the hell shrub." (p. 44)

Centuries later, shortly before the Earth Book is published, Avalonians will lure Terran invaders down into an area where they will be killed by hell shrubs and other native organisms.