To travel from Ramnu to Terra, Miriam Abrams must renew her medical certificate. This bureaucratic requirement is an all too plausible detail like several others in A Stone...
She must travel via Hermes, originally introduced as David Falkayn's home planet but long remaining off-stage until it was invaded by the Baburites in Mirkheim. Poul Anderson piles on Hermetian references. In addition to those already mentioned, we find:
Daybreak Bay
Pilgrim Hill
the Palomino River
the keeps
daleflower
a trilling tilirra
blinking glowflies
Riverside Common
millionleaf trees
rainroof trees
the Auroral Ocean
There was both an Old and a New Keep in Starfall but the former was destroyed in the liberation from the Baburite occupation. It crumbled under bombardment until a Merseian emerged from the wreckage waving a white flag. Maybe a newer records keep has since been built.
3 comments:
Note that with so many similar ecologies and humans settlement on thousands of planets, mutations of diseases (and mutations that -produce- diseases) would be a very real problem.
Take things like Dutch Elm Disease, & Chestnut Blight, getting imported to N. America, or a N. American plant disease getting imported to Europe creating problems for the vineyards. Then multiply by thousands.
I suppose having thousands or millions of large scale rotating habitats in the solar system would result in similar issues.
Kaor to All!
Meaning that bureaucratic requirement which so annoyed Miriam Abrams really did make sense.
Ad astra! Sean
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