If Val Nira is helped to depart in his Sky Ship, then his people will return and will immediately reincorporate this long isolated planet into interstellar civilization. In order to prevent that outcome, Captain Rovic stuffs the Ship with gunpowder and blows it up. He does not, as I had misremembered, deliberately kill Val Nira although the latter is in fact killed when he runs toward the Ship as it is about to explode.
Rovic's reason:
"'Someday Froad's successors will solve the riddles of the universe,' he said. 'Someday our descendants will build their own Ship, and go forth to whatever destiny they wish.'
"Spume blew up and around us, until our hair was wet. I tasted the salt on my lips.
"'Meanwhile,' said Rovic. 'we'll sail the seas of this earth, and walk its mountains, and chart and subdue and come to understand it. Do you see, Zhean? That is what the Ship would have taken from us.'
"Then I was also made able to weep. He laid his hand on my uninjured shoulder and stood with me while the Golden Leaper, all sail set, proceeded westward." (p. 149)
Is Rovic right?
The spume and salt of his "earth" punctuate his speech. The name of their ship seems to indicate that they are moving in the right direction. They continue their westward journey, circumnavigating their globe, like their remote ancestors on the original Earth.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I sympathize with Rovic's views. What he was trying to say, whether or not the interstellar civilization of "The Longest Voyage" was as idyllic as Val Nira claimed, it would have inevitably overwhelmed and destroyed the new civilizations and cultures arising on that long isolated world.
Ad astra! Sean
It's a form of romanticism.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I also had in mind what happened in our real, actual history as Western civilization expanded worldwide in its steadily increasing power and reach after about 1500. Other civilizations, such as the Chinese and Muslim, were shaken to their roots and then devastated by the power and strength of the West. Albeit China has recovered enough to become a rival. Others, like the more primitive tribes of the Americas and Africa, were swept away or reduced to impotence.
Ad astra! Sean
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