How It Looks To Fenn

The Fleet Of Stars.

We have read about:

the colonization of the Alpha Centaurian system;

the exploration of 82 Eridani, Beta Hydri and HD44594;

the colony at Beta Hydri IV;

download Guthrie's journey from Beta Hydri to Alpha Centauri, then to Proserpina in the outer Solar System.

Now we learn how news of these interstellar events filters through to Fenn in the inner Solar System:

"...few people ever came to space any more. Those inside Luna or the Habitat, even those on Mars, they didn't count, not really. The Lunarians at Proserpina and Alpha Centauri - and now fugitive stories of Terrans at three new suns, whole new worlds, and the galaxy open to them -" (4, p. 44)

Fenn wants to be out there and has to choke back his craving.

Most Lunarians in the outer System are not on Proserpina but:

"...in lesser colonies on smaller bodies and in mining bases on comets, thinly spread across immensities that dwarfed the inner Solar System, but growing, venturing, driving their frontiers ever outward, starward." (17, p. 213)

These Lunarians have far more solitude than among the crowded asteroids at Alpha Centauri. One Selenarch, Luaine of Phyle Janou, Wardress of Zamok Gora, represents the Captains of the Outer Comets. There is more activity in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud than among the inner planets and there seems to be none among the outer planets.