Details In "The Pirate"

"The Pirate."

Trevelyan Micah explains:

"'The [Stellar] Union is not a government, although many governments support it...'" (p. 141)

I thought that the Stellar Union was a government like the Solar Union and the UN world government before it. The Stellar Union makes laws which its Coordination Service enforces. That is what Murdoch Juan and Faustina are complaining about. Trevelyan says that to use modern weapons against primitives who are no threat is universally illegal. On Vanaheim, Trevelyan persuaded the locals to change their laws to illegalize Murdoch's ecological disruption. 

In a later period of Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Commonalty is not a government. It provides services but does not enforce laws.

Spaceships travel faster than light on "tachyon mode" (p. 143) which is mentioned nowhere else in the Psychotechnic History. The future history changes before our eyes and could have become very different if it had been extended further.

Because Murdoch and Faustina were named on the opening page, we are interested when they appear. He sounds like someone from the Renaissance:

"His clothes were too colorful to be stylish on Earth, but he wore them with such panache that you didn't notice." (p. 139)

Again the obvious point that styles of dress can hardly be uniform between diverse planetary systems.

Faustina lives up to her description, "red," (p. 137) and is from New Mars which, as its name implies, is marginally habitable and implies "...scarring poverty in her background..." (p. 140)

Anderson's text is rich in economically presented details.