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On the desert world of Adobe, Vice-Consul J. J. Retief is sent into a simmering border crisis with nothing but a sealed order and an exasperated superior who wants diplomacy without leaving the office. Human settlers and the native Flap-jacks are already trading fire over precious oasis farms, and the official plan is as unrealistic as it is tidy. Retief's arrival is anything but routine: he survives a guided warhead, a crash landing, and hostile fire before being mistaken for an enemy and swept into the settlement's paranoid frontier politics. What follows is a sharp, comic campaign of improvisation. Retief outmaneuvers settlers, captures a Flap-jack by exploiting its anatomy, and negotiates his way into the alien stronghold, where he finds not savages but a cultured, ceremonial society led by the proud Hoshick. Over an elegant meal, sportlike rivalry, and a brutal personal duel, Retief turns war into bargaining and bargaining into a practical peace. By the end, he has arranged a treaty, mutual assistance pact, and trade agreement dividing sands and oases in a way both sides can accept. Back home, his superior applauds the "successful" mission, blissfully unaware of how Retief made bureaucratic order out of chaos. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
On the desert world of Adobe, Vice-Consul J. J. Retief is sent into a simmering border crisis with nothing but a sealed order and an exasperated superior who wants diplomacy without leaving the office. Human settlers and the native Flap-jacks are already trading fire over precious oasis farms, and the official plan is as unrealistic as it is tidy. Retief's arrival is anything but routine: he survives a guided warhead, a crash landing, and hostile fire before being mistaken for an enemy and swept into the settlement's paranoid frontier politics. What follows is a sharp, comic campaign of improvisation. Retief outmaneuvers settlers, captures a Flap-jack by exploiting its anatomy, and negotiates his way into the alien stronghold, where he finds not savages but a cultured, ceremonial society led by the proud Hoshick. Over an elegant meal, sportlike rivalry, and a brutal personal duel, Retief turns war into bargaining and bargaining into a practical peace. By the end, he has arranged a treaty, mutual assistance pact, and trade agreement dividing sands and oases in a way both sides can accept. Back home, his superior applauds the "successful" mission, blissfully unaware of how Retief made bureaucratic order out of chaos. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
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