h galleon was built for atmospheric navigation.

And I insist that using the term "carrier" instead of "horse," while
misleading, is not inaccurate. However, I _would_ like to know just what
sort of picture the term conjured up in the reader's mind. In Chapter
Ten, in the battle scene, you'll find the following:

"The combination [of attackers from both sides], plus the fact that the
heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him [the commander]. He
toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the carrier parted
company.

"Without a human hand at its controls, the carrier automatically moved
away from the mass of struggling fighters and came to a halt well away
from the battle."

To be perfectly honest, it's somewhat of a strain on my mind to imagine
anyone building a robot-controlled machine as good as all that, and then
giving the drive such poor protection that he can fall off of it.

One of the great screams from my critics has been occasioned by the
fact that I referred several times to the Spaniards as "Earthmen." I
can't see why. In order not to confuse the reader, I invariably referred
to them as the "_invading_ Earthmen," so as to make a clear distinction
between them and the _native_ Earthmen, or Incas, who were native to
Peru. If this be treachery, then make the most of it.

In other words, I contend that I simply did what any other good
detective story writer tries to do--mislead the reader without lying to
him. Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," for instance, uses
the device of telling the story from the murderer's viewpoint, in the
first person, without revealing that he _is_ the murderer. Likewise,
John Dickson Carr, in his "Nine Wrong Answers" finds himself forced to
deny that he has lied to the reader, although he admits that one of his
characters certainly lied. Both Carr and Christie told the absolute
truth--within the framework of the story--and left it to the reader to
delude himself.

It all depends on the viewpoint. The statement, "We all liked Father
Goodheart very much" means one thing when said by a member of his old
parish in the United States, which he left to become a missionary. It
means something else again when uttered by a member of the tribe of
cannibals which the good Father attempted unsuccessfully to convert.

Similarly, such terms as "the gulf between the worlds," "the new world,"
and "the known universe" have one meaning to a science-fictioneer,