Breakfast post before real world activities.
There is a technical problem in the not-yet-launched interstellar spaceship, Astra.
While his friend is in mid-sentence, the first person narrator, Winston Sanders, starts:
"The drink leaped from my hand and splashed across my lap." (p. 244)
Sanders' first moment of realization: the problem might be not technical but human, indeed criminal.
Second moment:
"An answer hit me, hard as the original solution had done. I sat straight in my chair and barked a delighted oath.
"'What now?' Furlow's calm was the least bit rattled.
"It had cause to be." (pp. 248-249)
The corrupt engineer, Furlow, is boasting that he can get away with his not-yet-admitted crimes but Sanders has suddenly realized how he can nail the guy.
As ever, a problem followed by a neat solution. End of story, followed by Epilogue.
What next? First, finish drinking a second mug of coffee.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Andersonian obsessives should immediately recall that "Winston Sanders" or "Winston P. Sanders" was one of the pseudonyms Anderson used for some of his stories. I've enjoyed how Anderson was, kind of, personally inserting himself into "Recruiting Nation."
That corrupt engineer was also a very able man, despite his lack of ethics. It amused me that a deal was offered him: instead of doing hard labor in one of the prisons of the Asteroid Republic, he too would go on that colonizing journey. Furlow could be trusted not to endanger his hide as an engineer!
One of the themes of "Recruiting Nation" is how various kinds of disreputable, unsatisfactory types, or malcontents of one kind or another tend to be the first to leave stable, settled societies for new horizons.
Ad astra! Sean
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