Before his capture, Flandry had been drinking in Catawrayannis. This city was important in Ensign Flandry, in The Day Of Their Return and in Hloch's Earth Book Introduction to "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."
Flandry realizes by subtle clues that he is in a spaceship under hyperdrive and that its crew is non-human but humanoid. When he opens the door of his cabin, he is confronted by a blaster-wielding guard:
"The being was remarkably humanoid." (p. 242)
In Flandry's universe, it is possible to open a door and to be confronted by a completely non-humanoid being, so non-humanoid that it is not immediately recognizable as an organism. Flandry, like Falkayn before him, is trained to deal with such situations and there are so many intelligent species that common features can be found between them but nevertheless it is difficult to comprehend that someone would be able to cope with meeting beings that might have just any unpredictable shape.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But, assuming both FTL tech and many intelligent races in virtually all possible forms and shapes, traveling and interacting in myriad ways over more than a thousand years by Flandry's time, I think most humans would not be so startled seeing a non-human after opening a door. Esp. if they were living on planets where people of many different species were constantly coming and going for reasons of both business and pleasure. We see mention in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS of how many of the people passed in Admiralty Center were not human.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: "...many of the people Flandry passed in Admiralty Center..."
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Actually, Catawrayannis was important in THE REBEL WORLDS, not ENSIGN FLANDRY.
Ad astra! Sean
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