A City On Zatlokopa

After Doomsday, 8.

There are many towers with:

"...corkscrew ramps and twisted buttresses...typical Eyzka architecture." (p. 64)

The Europa crew, operating as Terran Traders, Inc., has leased the high tower called "...aro-Kito, One Who Awaits..." but Sigrid Holmen and Alexandra Vukovik, preferring to live away from their work, lodge in "...i-Chula - the Clouded..." (ibid.)

The number system is based on eight.

A winged snake cruises above the city which is too quiet for human taste. There are no:

air vehicles overhead;

pedestrians or ground vehicles in the grassy lanes;

boats on the canal. 

Instead:

subways;

looping elevated tunnels;

dropshafts;

public or private gravsleds;

a large spaceship silently rising on paragravity.

People are at work or at home but not moving about.

Terran Traders has introduced:

profit sharing;

systems analysis;

"...motivational research among outworld cultures." (p. 67)

These innovations are acceptable to the sha-Eyzka but not to the extra-planetary Forsi, some of whom use body-waldos to kidnap Sigrid but they are apprehended.

The sha-Eyzka had:

welcomed the sha-Terra;

given them the freedom of the city;

taught them Eyska and local customs;

heard what they had to relate;

left them to survive in this capitalist cluster.

After visiting two clusters, the Earthwomen had heard rumours of this one which suited their needs.

What a galaxy Poul Anderson imagines! If you want a war or a free enterprise economy in a pioneering and expanding phase or anything else, then you only have to look for it.