Lulling Wind And Graceful Bounds

"To Promote the General Welfare."

When Coffin has lectured Stein:

"Stein rode, sunk in thought. Wind lulled, leaves whispered." (p. 133)

Lulling and whispering help deep thought. Wind underlines conversational silence and by now feels like Poul Anderson's punctuation. There is a second sentence in this short paragraph:

"Two kilometers off, a herd of cerothere left a wood and started across the sward in graceful bounds." (ibid.)

What a contrast between a species that must ponder its collective future and another that need only bound gracefully.

Radio contact has been established with Earth albeit at a distance of twenty light-years. That is another change. 

When in Anchor, Coffin stays with the de Smets who had fostered one of his sons who, however, will be long into adulthood by now.

The series continues to develop even in this, its concluding episode. Next, Anderson will take us to another colonized extra-solar planet centuries later in the same timeline.