"Ten of their years before, we had seen that being come through the transporter into our ship and die." (p. 117)
We realize that:
this story is a sequel to Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars;
it is narrated by the alien who had carried David Ryerson's body back through the mattercaster near the end of that novel;
this alien uses the Star Trek term for a teleporter/mattercaster, "transporter."
We also learn that his transporter transmits not a gravitic beam, as in The Enemy Stars, but a "...modulated tachyon beam..." (p. 118)
Is this a technological, terminological or theoretical difference?
We remember that tachyons made a similar unexpected appearance in a later-written Psychotechnic History instalment. See also:
2 comments:
Perhaps between writing "The Enemy Stars" and "The Ways of Love", Poul had found that the idea of gravity having infinite speed (or at least much greater speed than c) was disproven. Meanwhile the idea of tachyons isn't definitively shown to be impossible.
Kaor, Jim!
I checked a bibliography of the works of Anderson to find out when "The Ways of Love" was first pub., in James Baen's anthology DESTINIES, in 1979. Iow, over 20 years after THE ENEMY STARS was pub. in 1958. So what PA did in "Ways" was to make use of advances and speculations in physics unknown int 1958.
Ad astra! Sean
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