Joe falsely claims to be extra-Nerthusian.
Pete correctly deduces that Joe is a spy.
Joe hears Pete checking Joe's cover story.
Joe threatens Pete.
Pete's Uncle Gunnar threatens Joe.
Joe escapes.
Gunnar correctly deduces that Joe is Nerthusian.
(Green fur and six limbs are a giveaway.)
Thus, Gunnar completes the detection begun by Pete.
Thus also, later references to Nerthusian natives and to their being detected after colonization.
The Nerthusian setting and the references to an integrate civilization on Earth locate this story in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History whereas the references to Galactic civilization seem to place this and three other stories in a different future history series. Maybe Nerthus, like Earth, exists in more than one timeline?
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That is one way of "saving the appearances," suggestions that the same place or planet might exist in different timelines. But it can still be confusing, as readers try to puzzle out which stories belongs or not in the Psychotechnic series.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The planet Lithia is destroyed in 2050 in Blish's A CASE OF CONSCIENCE yet still exists millennia later in his THE SEEDLING STARS.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Something very analogous happened at least once in the works of Poul Anderson. The original text of "Honorable Enemies" mentions YTHRI in it, a reference Anderson omitted in the revision.
Blish seems to have had two very different "Lithias" in mind if he used the same name for two apparently very different planets.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Lithia, like Earth, is one planet existing in different timelines.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Something I hope I would have noticed if I had ever read THE SEEDLING STARS.
Ad astra! Sean
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