Fictions Within The Fiction

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER EIGHT.

"We can imagine Ensign Helen Kittredge on leave - let us say, on Ansa..." (p. 278)

So we do not know that she was on Ansa. This is an unusual way to present a narrative.

"Surely Ensign Kittredge joins in the customary cheers." (p. 280)

Or maybe she doesn't?

"We would like to imagine that Ensign Kittredge is spared [death by thirst or radiation]." (p. 284)

However, the narrator has already told us the little that is known of the fate of the light battleship, Zeta Sagittari, whose crew had included Helen in energy weapons control:

"What we know is simply that she was lost." (p. 283)

Knowing only this, he has nevertheless just, in his own words, postulated the destructive effects of "...a hit astern." (p. 283)

Poul Anderson is summarizing. There could have been a whole sub-series of war stories written and published on Helen's home planet, Vixen.