 What is the most likely reason that Secretary of State Blendwell appointed Malloy for the peace talks?
Illustrated by Martinez In his office apartment, on the top floor of the Terran Embassy Building in Occeq City, Bertrand Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of the four new men who had been assigned to him. Every man in the Diplomatic Corps who developed a twitch or a quirk was shipped to Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the Occeq of Saarkkad. Number two suffered from some sort of emotional block that left him continually on the horns of one dilemma or another. No two men were alike, and yet there sometimes seemed to be an eternal sameness about all men. And, Malloy knew, his own position was not unimportant in that war. For nine years, Bertrand Malloy had been Ambassador to Saarkkad, and for nine years, no Saarkkada had ever seen him. To have shown himself to one of them would have meant instant loss of prestige. To violate the rigid social setup of Saarkkad would mean the instant closing off of the supply of biochemical products that the Saarkkadic laboratories produced from native plants and animals—products that were vitally necessary to Earth's war, and which could be duplicated nowhere else in the known universe. It was Bertrand Malloy's job to keep the production output high and to keep the materiel flowing towards Earth and her allies and outposts. Not the worst ones, of course; there were places in the galaxy that were less important than Saarkkad to the war effort.
 He was the closest diplomat available.
 He had the most recent practice maintaining peace.  He was the closest diplomat available.  He was the most qualified to deal with the situation.  He has a reputation for not compromising.