Topological vector spaces, compacta, and unions of subspaces

In the first two sections, we study when a σ-compact space can be covered by a point-finite family of compacta. The main result in this direction concerns topological vector spaces. Theorem 2.4 implies that if such a space L admits a countable point-finite cover by compacta, then L has a countable network. It follows that if f is a continuous mapping of a σ-compact locally compact space X onto a topological vector space L, and fibers of f are compact, then L is a σ-compact space with a countable network (Theorem 2.10). Therefore, certain σ-compact topological vector spaces do not have a stronger σ-compact locally compact topology. last, third section, we establish a result going in the orthogonal direction: if a compact Hausdorff space X is the union of two subspaces which are homeomorphic to topological vector spaces, then X is metrizable (Corollary 3.2).