The End Of An Era

Mirkheim, XX.

While attacking Abdallah Enterprises of the Seven in Space on the planet, Hopewell, David Falkayn thinks:

"This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it." (p. 266)

Falkayn knows that he is at the end of an era as do his readers especially if they are reading Mirkheim not as the opening instalment in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, but, in the earlier publication order, as the culmination of the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy. Volume I of that Tetralogy, Trader To The Stars, opens:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Technic Civilization, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT p. 555.

That great age is explicitly ending when Falkayn reflects that "This was a grand era..." The introductory passage that opens with "The world's great age begins anew..." closes by claiming that Polesotechnic Leaguers neither know nor care where they are going:

"For us it is enough that we are on our way." (ibid., p. 556)

They were on their way towards the breakdown of the League and its replacement by the Terran Empire just as the Imperials, in their turn, will be on their way towards the Long Night and to vaster civilizations beyond that. 

Although Mirkheim completes a Tetralogy, it also refers to crucial events that are not recounted in that Tetralogy but that are fully accounted for in the later collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate:

how a Solar Spice & Liquors factor outwitted the Baburites;

how the League made enemies of the Merseians;

how van Rijn came to Mirkheim.

The Technic History is comprehensive but has alternative reading orders.