insinga%elsie.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (08/21/85)
From: insinga%elsie.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Aron K. Insinga) I think that Brandon Allbery is confusing "the Pak home planet" with "the Earth colony named 'Home' (which is wiped out by a plague)". Remember that Brennan, Truesdale, and other humans are much more advanced than the Pak breeders are and have learned to work together in groups already. The first protectors on Home spent a lot of time (for protectors! 6 days for Truesdale; hours for all 26 of them) discussing the situation and only finally decided that they'd need many more protectors than that to fight off the fleet and save humanity at large. Truesdale would be the only protector on Home who had descendents in Sol's system, but Sol's system had at least 80% (as I remember) of the humans in the universe and they must have decided to make the sacrifice, since Brennan had already led the Pak scouts in their direction. The book did briefly deal with how the protectors dealt with those who tried to keep their families from getting the virus, but why more didn't is explained by only the preceeding (weak?) argument. Anyway, for various reasons, it is one of my favorite books. (No flames, please! I just liked the various explanations in the book explaining why the alternate-anthropology made sense. Or maybe I liked the idea of having protectors look out for me and in turn doing the same someday. I guess becoming a father has something to do with that... I can identify with protectors a lot better now!) Re: Protectors and 'other' aliens: I don't think that they would really have let any other spiecies survive (remember the Martians?) if at all possible. Maybe the war just kept going on, and the protectors are still leading the Pak further from Earth even during Ringworld's time. - Aron Insinga