Another A. E. van Vogt. And - now I've seen a few the pattern is obvious - another fixer-up paste of several short stories into one semi-coherent novel. See wiki for details.I first read this oh so many years ago and have owned this copy, with its lovely cover picture, for many years.
I think there's no need to detain you with any detailed analysis, it won't stand up to any such. The charm, now, if any remains is perhaps more in how things were portrayed in the 1940s.
I like the-lines-that-hold-men's-minds; a nice concept. I like "the sound", that whole chapter has an odd fairy-land touch to it, an aura of unreality far removed from sci-fi, more like growing up as a child in a machine town in the old rust belt perhaps.
And in the end the moral, if there is one, is of the virtues of cooperation.
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