A Wisp Of The Milky Way

"The battle in space was, to the naked eye, hardly visible - brief flashes of radiation among the swarming stars, occasionally the dark form of a ship slipping by and occulting a wisp of the Milky Way. But Admiral Walton smiled with cold satisfaction at the totality of reports given him by the semantic integrator."

-Poul Anderson, "Tiger By The Tail" IN Anderson, Agent Of The Terran Empire (London, 1977), V, p. 31.

 

Two points of interest:

 

yet another set of objects seen against the Milky Way; 

the data-processing machine called an "integrator" recalls Anderson's use of that term in his Psychotechnic History. See here. (Scroll down.)

I had to find that paragraph in the original version of this story because it is entirely rewritten in the revised version:

 

"The unaided eye could never really see a battle in space. Nothing but flashes between the stars betokened rays, warheads, incandescent vapor clouds, astronomically nearby. Further off, across distances measured in planetary orbits, the deaths of ships were invisible.

"Instruments sensed more fully, and computers integrated their data to give a running history of the combat. Admiral Thomas Walton, Imerial Terran Navy, laid down the latest printout and smiled in stark satisfaction."

-"Tiger By The Tail," p. 271.

 

Terminology has been updated. The "semantic integrator" has become computers integrating data.