The Temple Of Earth And The Ghostly Glory Of The Milky Way

"The Temple of Earth" by Poul Anderson begins with an Andersonian fight scene on the Moon between protagonists in spacesuits although their weapons are bows and arrows, spears and axes. To kill someone is to "send him to Earth." "Go to Mars, you bastard!" is a curse. We infer that the Moon has been colonized but that society and technology have retrogressed and that planets visible from the Moon have come to be identified with regions of a hereafter.

We read yet another description of the Milky Way:

"...the ghostly glory of the Milky Way..."

We will read this 1953 story to the end, not knowing what to expect, but maybe not this evening. So far, we have read to that point in the narrative where the viewpoint character has just been captured by his enemies.

It has become rare to find an as yet unread Anderson story but maybe there are others like this online.