I am finding some textual errors but not pointing them out right now.
Nakamura thanks Maclaren, telling him:
"'...do you remember how disorganised and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to use their arts.'" (p. 111)
That is the moral of Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts where the title character is Nicholas van Rijn. Humanity is the same in different futures.
To mine the germanium that they need, the crew must land the Southern Cross on a dead, airless planet of the black star. Pilot Nakamura deliberately lands the ship in a way that saves Maclaren and Ryerson but kills him. He probably knew for days that he was going to do this and has been at peace.
We witness Nakamura's death from Maclaren's viewpoint although we had witnessed Sverdlov's death from his own viewpoint. One of Sverdlov's last thoughts had been:
"'Was I planning to do this to other men?'" (11, p. 89)
Two different men, both dead.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It's good that Sverdlov, in his last moments, was apparently beginning to regret the violence he had been planning to perpetrate.
Ad astra! Sean
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