A Rushed Narrative And Kheraskov's Office

Sometimes, for reasons of word limit, a narrative is shorter than we would have liked. In Poul Anderson's A Circus of Hells, we would have liked a chapter on the conversation between Dominic Flandry and the main computer on Wayland.

In The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER TWO ends as Flandry is about to leave Kheraskov's office and CHAPTER THREE begins with the Asieneuve's tthird stop en route to Llynathawr. That third stop is at Shalmu whereas the first and second had been at humanly colonised planets so would maybe have been less interesting.

However, I feel that the entire narrative is rushed. I would like to have lingered in Kheraskov's office:

on the 90th floor of Intelligence headquarters;

scanner, talkbox and computer for reception;

large;

high-ceilinged;

lushly carpeted;

an infotriever;

an outsize vidphone;

a small refreshment unit;

pictures;

shelves for mementos of victories;

a vivid wall-size animation of Jupiter filmed from an approaching ship;

an expanse of desktop;

Kheraskov in plain uniform without decorations but the jewel of knighthood and the nebula and star of admiralty;

cigar and coffee, tea or jaine offered.

Kheraskov is:

"...the master of perhaps a million agents through the Empire and beyond." (p. 383)