"...We Are On Our Way"

Perhaps the most inspiring - or perhaps a better word is "awesome" - passage in Poul Anderson's Technic History is the concluding paragraph of the introduction to "Hiding Place":

"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.

"-Le Matelot."

Again, this introduction was added in the collection, Trader To The Stars, and is rightly retained in The Van Rijn Method. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of both these volumes. "Hiding Place" is the first of three stories in Trader To The Stars, which was Volume I of the Technic History, but the last of eleven stories in The Van Rijn Method, which is Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga. A whole ten instalments, including a full novel, are set earlier than the story that had been the first to be collected.

Although Le Matelot's generation did not know or care where they were going, we, having read the Technic History, do know and it is not all good.