An Adventure

"The Chapter Ends."

"...half a dozen children watched [Jorun] with large eyes. The younger Terrans were the only ones who seemed to find this removal an adventure." (p. 204)

Just so. In my childhood, when my younger sister was told that we would be moving house, she regarded it as an adventure, not as a cause for regret.

This could be the cue for a series of juvenile narratives about extra-terrestrial colonization: a well-established literary tradition. Earlier in the Psychotechnic History, eleven year old Wilson Pete joined his uncle and aunt on Nerthus during the early colonization of that extra-solar planet. Later, we saw the planet when it had been fully settled. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, David Falkayn's twelve year old grandson is involved in the early colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon. Later, we see that planet when it has been fully settled. 

Imagine colonizing a planet with non-human inhabitants. On Nerthus, there were non-humans because it was not known that there were natives when the first human colonists arrived. On Avalon, there are non-humans because human beings and Ythrians jointly colonized the planet. In "The Chapter Ends," the Galactics find an uninhabited Earthlike planet for the evacuated Terrans. Slightly less adventure, maybe.

Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles feature extra-terrestrial colonization, e.g.: Red Planet; Farmer In The Sky; Time For The Stars. These three novels and two others, Space Cadet and The Rolling Stones, share a background with the first interplanetary period of Heinlein's Future History. (Of course, Time For The Stars diverges by presenting an alternative account of early interstellar travel.)