Guarding The Pact

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Technic History, six stories and two novels were published as the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy which was followed by one Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind. Then, eight further League instalments and four Ythrian stories were collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate but this time an extra layer of commentary was contributed by the twelve introductions and one afterward fictitiously written by the Ythrian, Hloch. 

Something similar although on a much smaller scale happened in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. "Gypsy" and The Peregrine are two instalments about the Nomads. The latter also features Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service. "The Pirate" is a later written story about Trevelyan set between "Gypsy" and The Peregrine but it also contains an extra layer of commentary contributed by its first person narrator who remains off-stage and speaks from one generation later than the events involving:

"...Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 211.

We are partially prepared for the narrative by the enunciation of the names of its main protagonists. The tone is reflective and elegiac. The narrator, a Coordinator (Cordy) begins:

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (ibid.)

- and ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

These sentences match Hloch's commentaries. It is as if the unnamed narrator mourns in advance for the end of the Stellar Union which we know will come later in this future history series.