Question: What is the plot of the story involving a space captain, a troubled spaceship, and the challenges they face in a hostile environment?

Answer:
Brevet Lieutenant Commander David Farragut Stryakalski III, AKA Strike, is charged with commanding a run-down and faulty vessel, the Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the brain-child of Harlan Hendricks, an engineer who ushered in new technology ten years back. All three of his creations failed spectacularly, resulting in death and a failed career. The Aphrodite was the only ship to survive, and she is now used for hauling mail back and forth between Venus and Mars.
Strike and Cob, the Aphrodite’s only executive to last more than six months, recount Strike’s great failures and how he ended up here. He used to fly the Ganymede, but was removed after he left his position to rescue colonists who didn’t need rescuing. Strike was no longer trustworthy in Admiral Gorman’s eyes, so he banished him to the Aphrodite.
The circuit that caused the initial demise of Aphrodite was sealed off. After meeting some members of his crew, Strike orders a conference for all personnel and calls in an Engineering Officer, one I.V. Hendricks.
After Lieutenant Ivy Hendricks arrives--not I.V.--Strike immediately insults her by degrading the ship’s designer, Harlan Hendricks. As it turns out, Hendricks is his daughter, and she vows to prove him wrong and all those who doubted her father.
Despite their initial conflict, Strike and Hendricks’ relationship soon evolves from resentment to respect. During this time, Strike’s confidence in the Aphrodite plummets as she suffers from mechanical issues.
The Aphrodite starts to heat up as they get closer to the sun. The refrigeration units could not handle the heat, causing discomfort among the crew. As they get closer, a radar contact reveals that two dreadnaughts, the Lachesis and the Atropos, are doing routine patrolling. Nothing to worry about, except the Atropos had Admiral Gorman on board, hated by Strike and Hendricks.
Strike and Hendricks make a joke about Gorman falling into the sun. As the temperature steadily climbs, the crew members overheat and begin fighting, resulting in a black eye. A distress signal came through from the Lachesis: the Atropos, with Gorman on board, was tumbling into the sun. The Lachesis was attempting to rescue them with an unbreakable cord, but they too were being pulled in.
Hendricks had fixed the surge-circuit rheostat, the one her father designed, and claimed it could help them rescue the ships. After some tension, Strike agrees and they race down to the sun to pick up the drifting dreadnaughts.
Strike puts Hendricks in charge, but soon the heat overtakes her, and she is unable to continue. Strike takes over, attaches the Aphrodite to the Lachesis with a cord, and turns on the surge-circuit. They blast themselves out of there, rescuing the two ships and Admiral Gorman at the same time.
Cob and Strike are awarded Spatial Cross awards, while Hendricks is promoted to an engineering position at the Bureau of Ships. The story ends with Cob and Strike flipping through the pages of an address book until they land on Canalopolis, Mars.

Answer:
Strike joins the crew of the Aphrodite after he has made several poor decisions while he was the captain of another spaceship. He is essentially being punished by his boss, Gorman, and put somewhere where he can do little harm. His job is to deliver the mail from Venus to Mars, so it’s pretty straightforward.

When he meets the Officer of the Deck, Celia Graham, he immediately becomes uncomfortable. He does not like to work with women in space, although it’s a pretty common occurrence. He holds a captain’s meeting the first day on the job, and he waits to meet his Engineering Officer, I.V. Hendricks. He makes a rude comment about how the man is late for his first meeting, but actually, the female Ivy has already shown up.

After meeting Ivy formally, he makes a comment about how the ship Aphrodite was built by an imbecile. Ivy immediately tells him that he’s wrong, and she knows this because the designer of the ship was none other than her own father.

His first week as captain on the new ship goes very poorly. Several repairs need to be done to Aphrodite, they run  behind schedule, and the new crew members have a tough time getting a handle on Aphrodite’s intricacies.

The heat index in the ship begins to rise, and the crew members can no longer wear their uniforms without fainting. Suddenly a distress call comes in, and it’s coming from the Atropos, a ship Captained by Gorman, and the Lachesis. The crew members hesitate to take the oldest and most outdated machinery on a rescue trip. Strike has been in trouble for refusing to follow commands before, and he knows it’s a risky move. However, Ivy insists that she knows how to pilot the Aphrodite, and she can save the crew members on the Atropos and the Lachesis from death. They are quickly tumbling towards the sun, and they will perish if someone doesn’t do something quickly.

Ivy takes control of the ship, and the heat on the Aphrodite continues to rise steadily. Eventually, she faints from pure heat exhaustion, and she tells Strike that he must take over. He does, and he manages to essentially lasso the other two ships, and with just the right amount of power, he pulls them back into orbit.

At a bar, after the whole ordeal, Cob pokes fun at Strike for staying on the Aphrodite. He then admits that he actually respects Strike’s loyalty to the ship that saved his reputation. Cob asks about Strike’s relationship with Ivy, but Strike tells him that she has taken her dad’s former job, so she no longer works with him. Strike takes the moment to look up her info, presumably to restart the relationship.

Answer:
The narrative follows commander Strike as he begins his command of the spaceship Aphrodite. Strike comes from a long line of military greats but himself is prone to poor professional decision making.

As he takes command, the mission is a simple mail run. However, in the course of their journey, they receive word of two ships in dire need of rescue. Strike and his engineering officer, Ivy Hendricks, decide to use the ships extremely risky surge-circuit to aid the ships.

The rescue is a success and the crew is hailed for its bravery in saving the doomed vessels.

Answer: The story starts in a muddy swamp on Venus, where Strike, a Brevet Lieutenant Commander, is encountering his new ship, the Aphrodite, for the first time. Here on Venusport Base, he is introduced to the executive officer of the ship, a man who goes by Cob. Strike comes from a line of servicemen who were all well respected, but he himself has more of a reputation for causing trouble by saying the wrong things or deviating from mission plans. His reputation preceded him, as Cob had specific questions about some of these events. The Aphrodite was incredibly impressive when it was designed, but did not live up to its expectations. It had been refitted, and the new mission that Strike was to lead was a mail run between Venus and Mars. As he entered the ship, Strike began to meet his new crew, including Celia Graham, his Radar Officer. Strike is not used to women being on ships and is decidedly uncomfortable with the idea. As he is briefing the officers who were already present, Strike is surprised when he meets his new engineering officer, Ivy Hendricks. Ivy is the daughter of the man who designed the ship, and she is cold to Strike at first, as he is to her. However, her expertise in engineering generally, the ship specifically, and other skills as well as piloting, meant that Strike warmed up to her as their mission went on. As the ship was flying towards Mars on their route, the crew picked up a distress signal from the Lachesis, which was trying to pull the Atropos away from the gravitational pull of the sun after it was damaged in an equipment malfunction. The Admiral who had put Strike in charge of the Aphrodite was on the Atropos, and Ivy dislikes him even more than Strike does, but they know they have to try to save the crews. Strike is hesitant, but Ivy has a plan and insists that they try. She has spent all of her free time tinkering with the circuits, and takes charge. She turned the Aphrodite towards the ships in danger, and sends out a cable to connect the Aphrodite to those ships. After they are all connected, the ships continue to spin towards the sun, which causes Ivy to pass out, leaving Strike in charge. He manages to pull the ships into line and send the Aphrodite in the right direction before passing out himself. The Aphrodite has the power to pull everyone away from the Sun’s gravity, but the acceleration knocks everyone out on all three ships. In the end, it was a successful rescue mission of multiple crews. Strike and Cob find themselves in an officer’s club at the end of the story, discussing Ivy’s new job, and Strike acknowledges that Cob is right about the Aphrodite having grown on him, and plans to stay its captain.


Question: Who is Ivy Hendricks, a key character in a story involving a troubled spaceship and its crew, and what happens to her throughout the narrative?

Answer:
Lieutenant Ivy Hendricks is the daughter of Harlan Hendricks, a formerly respected engineer. He created the surge-circuit, an innovation in interstellar astrogation, and he was awarded a Legion of Merit. He designed three famous ships: the Artemis, the Andromeda, and the Aphrodite, the prototype. Despite being hailed as the latest and greatest in technology, all three ships either exploded or failed.
According to Lieutenant Ivy Hendricks, their failures were due to the lack of education on board. She claimed that her father asked for the crew members to be trained in surge-circuit technology, so they could use it properly and correctly. That wish was not granted and after all three ships failed, his reputation and career were doomed. Admiral Gorman pulled the plug on his career and therefore became the target of all Lieutenant Hendricks’ hate.
With a bone to pick, Lieutenant Hendricks, a knowledgeable engineer herself, comes aboard the Aphrodite to serve as her engineer and occasional pilot. She wants to prove to the world that her father’s creation was genius and deserving of praise.
Although they started off on the wrong foot, Lieutenant Hendricks and Strike, her commander, develop a friendship and appreciation for each other. They bond over their deep hatred of Admiral Gorman and the joy of piloting a ship. She soon proves herself to Strike, and he begins to trust her. Their relationship walks the fine line between friendship and romance.
As the Aphrodite is attempting to rescue the fallen dreadnaughts, Lieutenant Hendricks comes up with the solution. Due to her constant tinkering on the ship, she had fixed the surge-circuit rheostat and made it ready to use. Initially, no one trusts her, seeing as the last time it was used people died. But Strike’s trust in her is strong and true, so he approves the use of the surge-circuit. Hendricks pilots the ship, but soon becomes too overheated and comes close to fainting. Strike takes over piloting and eventually activates the surge-circuit. It works and they are able to rescue the two ships, one of which had Admiral Gorman, her sworn enemy, onboard.
Lieutenant Hendricks receives a major promotion; she is now an engineer at the Bureau of Ships. She proved them wrong, and restored her father’s legacy and good name. The story ends with their romance left in the air, but Hendricks has much to be proud of.

Answer:
Lieutenant Ivy Hendricks is the new Engineering Officer on Aphrodite. Strike and Cob assume that Ivy is a man before she arrives because they are sexist and because her name is listed as I.V. in the orders. Ivy is actually the daughter of the man who designed the award-winning craft.

She is cold and unfriendly towards Strike after she meets him, and that’s probably because he makes a rude comment about the ship which her father created. After a couple weeks of working together, the two begin to get along very well. Strike admires Ivy’s piloting skills and her depth of knowledge about the Aphrodite.

The two also bond over their shared hatred of Strike’s former boss, Gorman. Strike feels as though he has ruined his career, and Ivy thinks that Gorman torpedoed her father’s career. Ivy wants nothing more than to prove that Gorman is an idiot.

However, when Gorman’s ship is hurtling towards the sun and he and his crew members are about to die, Ivy sees that it’s the perfect opportunity to show Gorman just how wrong he was about the ship her father designed. It’s a very dangerous mission, but Ivy is steadfast in her decision and she’s deeply courageous. She pilots the ship for most of the rescue mission, but eventually faints from the extreme heat. She tells Strike that he needs to take over, and he does a great job.

Ivy is then promoted, and she moves to Canalopolis, Mars. She now outranks her former Captain, Strike.

Answer:
Ivy Hendricks is the engineering officer assigned to the Aphrodite. She is the daughter of Harlan Hendricks, the ship's original designer. She is fiercely protective of her father's legacy and resents Admiral Gorman for the way he treated him.

Hendricks and Strike, form an alliance of sorts after his initial surprise of seeing a woman assigned to this officer's role. When news arrives that two ships are in danger of falling into the sun, Ivy lobbies to use her father's technology to save the ship. Strike agrees to her plan although the risks are high. The Aphrodite eventually saves the ships although Ivy faints in the process from the heat and command has to be taken over by Strike.

The successful mission results in a promotion for Ivy as she works as a designer in the Bureau of Ships like her father.

Answer: Ivy Hendricks is the new engineering officer on the Aphrodite, having been transferred from the Antigone. She is a tall woman with dark hair and contrasting pale blue eyes, who has a very wide range of experience in ship operations and engineering. Her father, Harlan Hendricks, was the man who designed the Aphrodite, so she knows the ship needs a lot of specific training. At first, the captain did not expect her to be a woman, and managed to imply that many people found her father incompetent. Although she seemed cold at first, as she reacted to the situation, she and the captain eventually got along fairly well, as he learned to appreciate her wide skill set that ranged from engineering to piloting. Ivy and Strike also had a common enemy in the higher ranks: Space Admiral Gorman. Once Spike trusted her he appreciated that Ivy spent a lot of spare time working on the old circuits, so she knew the ship like the back of her hand. When the Aphrodite found the Lachesis and the Atropos when following up on a distress signal, Ivy new the ship well enough to be able to formulate a plan to save everyone. She piloted the Aphrodite carefully, using cables shot with a rocket to connect the three ships together, but the spinning of the ships in the heat inside meant that she passed out and had to leave Strike to take over for her. Her plan was successful; she was promoted, and instead of returning to the Aphrodite she started a design job with the Bureau of Ships.


Question: What is the relationship between Strike and the ship known as Aphrodite?

Answer:
Strike is a member of a famous, well-behaved, and well-trained service family. His father and grandfather served in World War II and the Atomic War, respectively. Both earned medals for their heroic service. Strike, however, did not follow in his family’s footsteps.
	With a tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, Strike often offended those around him and garnered a negative reputation. After being put in charge of the Ganymede, he soon lost his position after abandoning his station to rescue colonists who were not in danger. As well, he accused a Martian Ambassador of being a spy at a respectable ball. Admiral Gorman soon demoted him, and he became the commander of the Aphrodite.
	At first, Strike was not a fan. He sees her as ugly, fat, and cantankerous. He misses the Ganymede, a shiny and new rocketship, and views the Aphrodite as less-than.
	Within the first week of flying her, the Aphrodite had a burned steering tube, which made it necessary to go into free-fall as the damage control party made repairs. Strike’s faith in Lover-Girl continued to plummet.
	However, after Lieutenant Hendricks, the resident engineer, got her hands on the Aphrodite, Strike’s opinion started to change. Her knowledge of the ship, engineering, and piloting helped him gain confidence in both her abilities and those of Aphrodite.
Near the end of the story, the Aphrodite is tasked with rescuing two ships that are falling into the sun. Previously Lieutenant Hendricks had fixed up the surge-circuit rheostat, and so she offered it up as the only solution. Strike agrees to try it, which shows his faith and trust in the Aphrodite. Luckily, all things go to plan, and the Aphrodite, with Strike piloting, is able to save the two ships and Admiral Gorman.
After Strike won a medal himself, finally following in the family footsteps, he is offered his old position back on the Ganymede. He refuses, and instead returns to old Lover-Girl. He has grown fond of her over the course of their adventure, and they develop a partnership.

Answer:
Strike is completely unimpressed by the rocket ship Aphrodite. He comments that she looks like a pregnant carp, and he knows that he’s been assigned captain of the ship because he messed up terribly on his other missions.

Aphrodite was built 10 years ago, and now she is completely outdated and a laughing stock compared to the other spaceships in the fleet.  She was designed by Harlan Hendricks, and the engineer received a Legion of Merit award for her design.

Strike’s mission is to fly Aphrodite to take the mail from Venusport to Canalopolis, Mars. It’s boring and straightforward.

When a disaster occurs and two other ships, the Atropos and the Lachesis, are in serious danger of getting too close to the sun, Strike agrees to take the old girl on a rescue mission. He is convinced by Ivy, since she knows the ship better than anyone else and she believes in her.

Although Ivy takes Aphrodite most of the way there, its Strike who finishes the mission and saves his former boss, Gorman, and many other people from certain death. Aphrodite is the entire reason that Strike is able to mend his terrible reputation and he wins back respect from Gorman. Although they got off to a rocky start, Strike finds it impossible to leave his best girl, even when he is offered a job on another ship. He is loyal to the ship that made him a hero.

Answer:
Strike is assigned to be commander of the spaceship Aphrodite. The ship is assigned as a mail carrier for the inner part of the solar system. The Aphrodite is a dilapidated design with an awful reputation. Strike ended up with the Aphrodite as a result of a series of poor professional decisions that resulted in him getting command of the more prestigious ship Ganymede taken away from him.

His initial impression of the Aphrodite softens to a grudging respect after the successful mission to save the Atropos and Lachesis. Although he presumably is in line to command the Ganymede again, another faux pas resulting in Strike continuing to command the Aphrodite.

Answer: At the beginning of the story, Strike is very reluctant to accept Aphrodite, because being in charge of the ship means a demotion for him. His perception of the ship at the beginning of the story is colored by this history, and his first impression of the ship is not a positive one, even from the outside. Besides the actual construction of the ship, the technology that ran it was not something he showed much faith in. The first week that he was in charge after leaving Venus, it seemed things were going drastically wrong. When one important piece of equipment burnt out, the ship went into freefall, requiring a lot of repair work from the engineers, and anyone in charge of navigation was handed more work because of this as well. The ship was really put to the test when the Aphrodite responded to the distress call from the Lachesis, whose crew was trying to keep the Atropos from falling into the sun. Because Ivy knew the Aphrodite so well, and had been working on the circuits, it turned out the Aphrodite was the perfect ship to save the day. She could not see the rescue all the way through to the end, because she passed out early, but Strike was conscious a little bit longer and took over until he also passed out. After this unexpected rescue mission, Cob, the Executive Officer, noted that Strike has a newfound appreciation for the ship, and has no intention of leaving. Strike is dedicated to his new mission, even though at the beginning of the story he wanted nothing more than to pilot something the same rank as his old ship.


Question: Describe the setting of the story, which revolves around a space crew navigating the challenges of their unconventional ship while dealing with personal conflicts and a critical mission.

Answer:
Jinx Ship to the Rescue by Alfred Coppel, Jr. takes place in space, but more specifically in the Aphrodite.
	It starts in the muddy Venusport Base on Venus. Venusport is famous for its warm, slimy, and green rain that falls for 480 hours of every day. A fog rolls in and degrades visibility.
	Despite starting on Venusport Base, the characters actually spend most of their time onboard the Aphrodite, a Tellurian Rocket Ship. The Aphrodite had a surge-circuit monitor of twenty guns built into her frame. She was bulky, fat, and ugly, and occasionally had some technical and mechanical struggles as well.
	Although her frame may not be appealing, she soon becomes victorious as she gains the trust of Strike and other members of his crew and saves two fallen dreadnaughts. With her surge-circuit rheostat rebuilt, the Aphrodite is finally able to accomplish what she was always meant to.

Answer:
The story starts on the planet of Venus. Venus has days that are 720 hours long, and rain is common. The rain is hot, slimy, and green, and it makes the already wet swamplands even more mushy. Fog is common on Venus.

The middle of the story takes place on the old and outdated ship, Aphrodite. She gives the crew members a lot of trouble on their first mission. She is in dire need of repairs, she’s slow, and it’s impossible to control her temperature. The crew members are unable to wear their uniforms because the temperature is over 100 degrees.

Aphrodite’s mission is simple. She needs to take the mail from Venus to Mars, and it’s the only thing she can be trusted to do successfully. So it’s very impressive when she ends up being the hero of the day and manages to rescue two other ships that are headed towards the sun.

Answer:
The narrative is set in the early 21st century primarily aboard the spaceship Aphrodite. The ship's mission is to deliver mail in the inner part of the solar system.

The ships route takes them around the sun and as a result the ambient temperature inside the ship begins to rise to intolerable levels due to proximity to the sun. Because of the heat, the coed crew is allowed to operate with very little clothing. Aphrodite is a ship of an outdated design that gives it a lack of comfort and subjects it to numerous small problems that make its operation frustrating.

Answer: The story starts at a spaceport on Venus, where it has been raining for hundreds of hours straight. The rain has stopped by the time the story starts, but it is left a lot of mud in the swampy marshes. It was nearing the end of the day, and the fog was enveloping the surroundings as it grew darker outside. It was hot and sticky at Venusport Base, but after Strike left the service on his mission in the Aphrodite, it would only grow hotter on board. The ship itself, where most of the story takes place, is an older, refitted, bulky type of ship. There were only two others like it, and their designer had been awarded a Legion of Merit for the three. However, this is the only one still in use, as the others were destroyed in a much earlier mission. Strike’s disappointment in the ship seems to mirror the sentiment. Inside the ship, there are many systems of pipes connected the control panels, and the captain had to navigate carefully so that he didn’t hit his head on the bulkhead. While in space, as the ship flew closer and closer to the sun, the interior of the ship grew hotter and hotter. The crew opted to wear as little clothing as possible in an attempt to handle the heat. When the Aphrodite received the distress call from the Lachesis, the ships were close enough to the sun to be affected by its gravitational pull. After the close call near the sun, once everyone regained consciousness, the story ends at an officer’s club on Mars. It was a formal environment, and the Aphrodite’s captain and executive officer planned the rest of their route from there.


Question: Who is Strike and what challenges does he face during his time aboard a troubled spaceship in the story?

Answer:
Strike is a member of an esteemed service family on Venus; seven generations of well-behaved and well-trained operators. Unfortunately, Strike struggles to carry on the family tradition, and is known for misspeaking and offending those around him. By trusting his gut, he wound up failing his higher-ups and crew several times. All this culminated in an eventual mistrust of Strike, which led to him being charged with the Aphrodite.
	His deep hatred of Space Admiral Gordon is passionate, but not without reason. Gordon is the one who demoted him to the Aphrodite. At the start, Strike is checking out his new vessel and notes how ugly the ship is. After examining the ship and it’s crew, it is revealed that Strike is uncomfortable around women and believes they don’t belong on a spaceship.
	In order to start flying, he calls in an expert engineer to come aboard and travel with them. Thinking I.V. Hendricks is a man, he is excited to have them onboard. But when Ivy Hendricks shows up, a female engineer and the daughter of the Aphrodite’s creator, his world is soon turned upside down.
	His initial negative reaction to her is soon displaced by begrudging appreciation and eventually trust and friendship. Hendricks proves his previous theories about women wrong, and Strike is forced to accept that perhaps women do belong on a spaceship. She especially impresses him with her total knowledge of spaceship engineering and the Aphrodite in general. And it helped that she hated Admiral Gorman just as much as Strike, if not more.
	While flying by the sun to deliver mail, the Aphrodite receives a distress call from two ships: the Lachesis and the Atropos, the latter of which carried Admiral Gorman onboard. After the Aphrodite reached orbit, the Lachesis reached out and reported the Atropos was falling into the sun, due to a burst chamber. They couldn’t move those onboard over thanks to all the radiation, so the Lachesis was attempting to pull the Atropos back using an unbreakable cord. But it wasn’t enough.
	Since Ivy Hendricks had fixed the surge-circuit rheostat--the feature that crashed the original Aphrodite--, they were able to save the Lachesis and the Atropos and regain some of their dignity and former glory.
	Strike is awarded the Spatial Cross, as well as Cob, his friend and longtime executive of the Aphrodite. Strike was asked to return to the Ganymede, a beautiful sleek ship, but allegedly said the wrong thing to Gorman, and was instead sent back to the Aphrodite. Cob believes he did it on purpose, as Strike had grown quite fond of Lover-Girl.
	Ivy has gone to the Bureau of Ships to engineer vessels, a great upgrade from her previous job. Cob pressures Strike to reach out to her, but he refuses. However, it ends on a hopeful note, with the potential for romance between Strike and Hendricks, and even more adventures on the clunky Aphrodite.

Answer:
Strike’s real name is Brevet Lieutenant Commander David Farragut Strykalski III. After serving on the Ganymede, he is put in charge of the Aphrodite. He comes from many generations of officers. However, he doesn’t feel like he fits the mold of his grandfather and great-grandfather and so on. His boss, Gorman, disagreed with several decisions he made in the past and sent him to work on the Aphrodite, the unimpressive spaceship.

Strike does not like working with women in space, so he is disappointed when two of his crew members are powerful and successful females. He learns his lesson after working with Ivy Hendricks for a few weeks. She impresses him with her piloting skills and her knowledge of the ship that her father designed.

Strike is skeptical at first when Ivy wants to take Aphrodite to rescue two ships whose crew members are in grave danger. He knows that the mistakes he made before got him on the Aphrodite, and there’s a big chance that he’ll be fired for trying to save the day, or worse, the mission could end in death for him and all of his crew members. He has feelings for Ivy, and her intense passion convinces him that she’s right, Aphrodite can handle the mission and they can save those peoples’ lives.

Ivy pilots the ship almost the entire route, but she is unable to finish the job when she passes out from the intense heat. Captain Strike takes over and saves the crews on the Atropos and the Lachesis. He is hailed as a hero, and he repairs his terrible reputation with the selfless act. He decides not to leave the Aphrodite. He wants to be loyal to the ship that worked so hard for him. He does decide to give Ivy a call. Even though she outranks him, he has to admit that he has a crush on her.

Answer:
Strike is the commander of the Aphrodite. He was originally the commander of the prestigious Ganymede. However a number of decisions made out of bravado as well as some unprofessional comments lost him that command.

Now in command of a dilapidated ship, Strike comes to terms with his job. He commands a crew including a large number of women which makes him somewhat uncomfortable. His engineering officer Ivy Hendricks in particular seems to be of romantic interest to Strike.

Strike ends up teaming with Ivy to save two ships from falling into the sun earning him a small promotion but an ill-advised comment prevents him from leaving the Aphrodite, perhaps to the satisfaction of Strike himself.

Answer: Strike is a highly decorated lieutenant commander in the Navy, who comes from a long line of ship operators. Although he has run many successful missions, he has a reputation of causing trouble—his new Executive Officer, Cob, has heard a number of stories that he asks Strike for details about. Strike has lost command of the ship that he had been captaining, and is sent by Admiral Gorman to captain a mail route on the Aphrodite. He is extremely hesitant to have any positive feelings about the experience, from the ship itself, to the inclusion of women on its crew. Not only is this not the type of ship he is used to, he is never served with women on board. He has to navigate adapting to the new situation while adapting to the new job. Through the first week of his assignment, the ship and its crew grow on him. He comes to trust Ivy Hendricks, the Engineering Officer, and he lets her take charge to try to save the other ships when they respond to a distress call. Eventually, she passes out, and has to leave Strike in charge of getting the ships to safety. Eventually,  Strike passes out just like everyone else, from the ship’s acceleration to break the sun’s gravity. At the end of the story, it is clear that his increased appreciation for the ship means he plans on staying, to the delight of his Executive Officer. Cob alludes to Strike having feelings for Ivy, but he says that although she is nice, he has no interest in being with a woman with a higher ranked title than he has.


Question: What is the plot of the story that involves a man's pursuit of treasure in a mysterious ancient city, where he faces dangers and unexpected challenges?

Answer:
Syme Rector is the most-wanted raider in the Triplanet Patrol system and wants access to the ancient Martian city of Kal-Jmar so that he can steal the priceless objects located there. The city has been abandoned for thousands of years, but no human has been able to enter it. Rector crashed his ship in the Mare Cimmerium and left a false trail for authorities to divert them from following him to Lillis, where he plans to obtain a spaceman’s identity card. This card will enable him to ship out on a freighter flight after he has obtained his stolen goods.

Rector follows a young patrolman until he catches him unaware on the observation deck of the Founders’ Tower. Rector shoots him in the chest, steals his wallet, and throws his body over the parapet. However, a hook on the patrolman’s uniform catches Rector, pulling Rector over the parapet. He manages to unhook himself, and just as he estimates he can hold on one minute longer, a man comes and pulls him up. The man is Harold Tate, and he invites Rector to have a drink with him. As they get drunk, Tate confides to Rector that he needs a guide to take him to Kal-Jmar; he has discovered a way to enter the dome surrounding the city.

The two men set out on their journey and follow a gully they reach. While they are in the lower part, Tate sees something overhead, and a boulder crashes down just to the left of their sand car. A horde of Martians surrounds them and forces the two men to go with them. The leader reveals that the Martians are telepathic and have no need for a spoken language. The Martians want nothing to do with the humans because there is nothing to gain from the humans. The leader tells the men the history of the two species of Martians but says they will kill the men.

When the leader pulls his gun on Tate, Rector launches himself against the leader and wrestles away his gun. He shoots the leader and the other Martians as he dodges their shots. The two men then begin walking toward Kal-Jmar and reach the city. Tate uses his device to create a hole in the dome but realizes it isn’t strong enough. Then he thinks of using it where a door would have been, and it works. Rector shoots Tate, and just before he dies, Tate warns him, “You’ll be--sorry.” Rector takes the device and enters the city, noting all the treasures he can steal. He realizes he is hungry and takes two food tablets, but they don’t satisfy him. Then a lifelike robot that is a feeding machine enters and approaches Rector. Rector is startled and opens his mouth, and the robot shoots a feeding tube into Rector’s throat and pours xopa juice into him. The juice is poisonous to humans, and Rector dies immediately. The doorway to Kal-Jmar closes.

Answer:
Syme Rector is one of the most well-known outlaws in the galaxy. After crashing on Mars, he is desperate for a spaceman’s identity card so he can remain in place just a little while longer. He follows a young man until he can murder him with his energy pistol. But as the body falls, so does Syme, who was hooked onto the man’s clothing. He hangs off the ledge of the building as disattaches himself from the boy. His body falls to the group, just as Harold Tate, physicist, rescues Syme.
With his victim’s wallet in hand, Syme takes Tate to the bar and orders drinks for the both of them. Tate drunkenly reveals his greatest invention and desire to go to Kal-Jmar to test it out. Syme agrees to take him to the city, with the hopes of glory and money in return. On their journey across Mars, they run into the native Martians and are captured. These terrifying creatures take them deep down into the caverns, where some oxygen is present. Since the Martians are going to kill them, they are able to reveal some of their secrest. They tell them the story of the downfall of Kal-Jmar, show off their telepathic abilities, and more. Syme is able to escape and kill all the Martians, rescuing Tate who was of no help.
They continue their journey, now on foot, even though Syme was injured in the fight. Once they reach Kal-Jmar, Tate sets up his equipment. His first try fails, due to the enormity of the force field. His battery power is limited though, and he only has a few more tries left. He figures out that there must be areas where the force field is weaker, doorways in the dome. Tate locates one and they use his invention on it. It works, and the doorway opens. As they move to enter it, Syme reminds Tate to gather his equipment. As he does this, Syme pulls out his gun and shoots Tate in the chest. He steals his equipment and steps through the rapidly closing doorway.
Now in the great city of Kal-Jmar, he takes his time and explores. The architecture was magnificent and decadent, a true treasure. He imagines all the money he can make off of sealing the artifacts and materials here.
He enters a building and discovers oxygen is present. He takes off his spacesuit and breathes in the fresh air. He takes two food tablets to ease his hunger, but it’s not enough. A telepathic Martian robot emerges, still operable thanks to its companions. Its job is to detect hunger and then feed those who need it. After detecting Syme’s hunger, it thrusts a feeding tube down his throat and feeds him poisonous lichen. Syme collapses and dies, leaving Kal-Jmar unexplored and undiscovered.

Answer:
Syme Rector is an outlaw looking for safe passage out of the Martian city of Lillis after the crash landing of his ship. He stalks and kills a boy in order to gain access to his identification and attempt to leave the planet and avoid the authorities.

He meets Harold Tate who is looking for a guide to take him to the ancient city of Kal-Jmar. Syme agrees to take Tate to his proposed location. On the way they meet Martians who they engage and defeat.

Once they reach Kal-Jmar, Tate is able to open a door to the city. Syme betrays Tate, killing him. However Syme is himself killed when a robot inside the city mistakes him for a hungry Martian and forcibly feeds him poisonous food.

Answer:
Syme Rector crashes his spaceship in Mare Cimmerium and gets through the translucent dome. He needs to disguise himself as an authority figure to enter the city, and he will need a spaceman’s identity card to do that.

Rector worries that the Triplanet Patrol will soon realize that he is an intruder. He follows a young patrolman and shoots him with a flame in the chest. He then takes his identification card and throws his body over the balcony. However, he unknowingly attaches the boy’s clothing to his own, and he begins falling over the railing along with the corpse. He lands on a roof and manages to unhook himself from his victim.

Harold Tate comes along and helps Rector get back to safety. The two earth men grab an alcoholic beverage and discuss some secret plans. Tate wants to visit Kal-Jmar, an ancient Martian city. He believes he has discovered a way to penetrate a dome there that houses the Martians’ incredible machinery, equipment, and records. Rector agrees to go with him.

The men travel in a sand car and are quickly attacked by a horde of Martians who throw a boulder at them and wreck their car. They surround the vehicle, armed with spears and guns. Syme and Rector go with the Martians underground into a cavern.

There, they learn that the Martians speak English, and they are also telepathic. The leader informs them that he has to murder them. First, however, he will tell them anything they want to know. The leader reveals that he and the other Martians are not a separate species from the ancients as a popular theory stated. However, they are also not the ancestors of the ancients. The two groups of Martians lived alongside each other for many years, but when Mars’ atmosphere changed quickly, the other group was unable to adapt.

Rector’s rage suddenly bubbles up, and he attacks the lead Martian before the thought even crosses his mind. He is able to pull the Martian’s gun out of his hand and he hits him over the head with it. In an incredible rage, Rector takes down every last enemy.

Without their car, the two men trudge through the sand towards the famous dome. Tate takes out his invention, and after a few tries, it begins working. A hole in the dome opens, and Rector takes out his gun and kills Tate. Rector grabs the machine and goes into the dome. He immediately sets his eyes on platinum, ornaments, machines, books, and records. In his mind, he makes big plans to steal as much as he can carry and sell it immediately. He will come back for bigger items later.

He sees a robot rolling silently around the room, and Rector realizes that the robot is there to feed the Martians. Before he can even process the realization, the robot approaches Rector and shoves a liquid poisonous fungus down his throat. The dome’s door closes, and Rector dies.


Question: Describe the setting of the story that involves a man on the run who seeks entry into a mysterious ancient city filled with extraordinary wonders and dangers.

Answer:
The setting of the story is on Mars. It begins in the city of Lillis, which is covered with a translucent steelite dome and is guarded by the Triplanet Patrol. One outstanding feature of the city is its Founders’ Tower, which is the tallest building in Lillis. On the top level, there is an observation deck that looks out over the city. Outside the city is an area called the Mare Cimmerium. The planet has red dust and supports some life, specifically lichens and tumble-grass. It has mountains, canyons, gullies, and deserts.

The ancient city of Kal-Jmar features prominently in the story. It is an ancient city of the Martian race that was very advanced but is now abandoned. There are machines, records, and other objects left behind, and all are perfectly preserved inside a bubble-like dome that is formed by a force field. Humans have tried to enter the dome using explosives, diamond drills, and even tunnels under the city, but nothing they have tried has penetrated the dome. When Mars was first being conquered, humans tried to get into the city, but their efforts resulted in bloody battles with the current Martians, so eventually, the Mars Protectorate forbade any Earthmen from going near Kal-Jmar. The city has elaborate architecture and features a pair of twin towers. When Rector enters the city, he notices there is no dust, and the air is breathable. Doors open and close automatically. The room Rector enters has platinum ornaments set in the walls and the furniture.

As Tate and Rector travel toward Kal-Jmar in their sand car outside of Lillis, they note that Mars has a deceptively low horizon. The surface contains a series of dunes, channels, and gullies that they have to cross. The gully they follow is extremely deep and steep, and from the bottom, they can only see a small section of the sky.

When the Martians take Tate and Rector to their cavern, it is approximately nine kilometers below the gully they were in. There is a sense of moisture in the tunnel they take to the Martians’ cavern. In the cavern, the walls are covered with a phosphorescent glowing fungus, and there is air, although not enough for the humans to use. Some of the Martians eat the fungus.

Answer:
Although the beginning of the story takes place on Venus, it quickly transitions to Mars. Specifically, the long-lost city of Kal-Jmar.
With a protective sphere, Kal-Jmar is impenetrable and the myth and folklore surrounding it are grandiose. Kal-Jmar is only one city on Mars (the last ancient city), where the rest of the Martians live. Many Terrestrials tried to access the city, to view the historic artifacts and glorious treasures, but each attempt only lead to infighting on Mars. Soon, the Mars Protectorate forbade Earthmen to travel on Mars, as well as perform any experiments on Kal-Jmar.
This city is rich with well-preserved artifacts and snippets of history that many vyed to get their hands on. This story surrounds the mysteries of this city as well as the desire and need to plunder it.

Answer:
The story takes place on Mars in the future. The planet has been colonized by humans to the extent that cities such as Lillis are covered with immense domes to protect from the harsh Martian environment.

The characters in the story head to the ancient Martian domed city of Kal-Jmar. They head across the parched Martian landscape and eventually head down a gully which is filled with moisture and even a phosphorescent type of fungus. Kal-Jmar is filled with treasures but otherwise abandoned.

Answer:
The story takes place on Mars. There are parts of Mars that have been colonized by earth men, like the city of Lillis, and parts that the current-day Martians still control. One of those areas is Kal-Jmar, an ancient city that earth men know very little about. When Tate and Rector first come across the city, they immediately notice its fantastic architecture. Although it’s in a state of decay, it’s obvious that the ancient city was once beautiful.

The dome at Kal-Jmar is particularly fantastic. For many years, earth men have tried to figure out how to break through its forcefield. However, the dome is impervious to bombs, and even diamonds cannot break its shell. Inside the dome are all of the relics of the ancient Martian civilization. Records, machines, books, and precious metals are all hidden away behind its walls.

Several thousand years before the story starts, the environment on Mars changed. The ancient Martians were unable to adapt and survive, but the current-day Martians understood the changes they needed to make to survive in the new climate. The Martians survive on elements that are plentiful in the area in which they live, like fungus, sand, and lichens.


Question: Who is Harold Tate, and what happens to him in the story about a man's quest for wealth and power in a mysterious ancient city?

Answer:
Harold Tate is a physicist who has developed a way to create an opening in the force field dome covering the ancient city of Kal-Jmar. Other humans have tried to enter, but none have succeeded. They have not been able to breach the force field, and efforts to do so led to bloody uprisings of current Martians, so the Mars Protectorate has forbidden any Earthmen to go there. Tate happens to be on the observation deck of the Founders’ Tower when Syme Rector is trying to pull himself back over the parapet after getting pulled over it by the patrolman’s body that he threw over the side. Tate invites Rector to have a drink with him, and when he is drunk, he tells Rector he trusts him because he has an honest face. Tate asks Rector to be his guide to Kal-Jmar and tells him about the device he invented. Tate sees the boulder that the Martians lob toward their sand car when they are in the gully and saves their lives by using a steering level to flip the car around and out of the main path of the boulder.

When the Martians take the two men to their subterranean cavern and reveal that they can speak Terrestrial, Tate asks the leader many questions about the Martians. When the leader of the Martians starts to shoot him, Rector saves Tate by hitting the Martian, wrestling his gun away, and shooting the rest of the Martians while Tate cowers against the wall. When they reach Kal-Jmar, Tate uses his device to open the force field, but then Rector shoots him. As he is dying, Tate warns Rector that he will be sorry.

Answer:
Harold Tate is an incredibly smart physicist who discovered the Kal-Jmar solution. More specifically, how to break through the impenetrable forcefield surrounding it.
A relatively shy man, he is first introduced in the story by saving Syme’s life. He pulls him up off the ledge, and then they run off and get the drink together. There, roused by culcha, he reveals his huge secret to the man he just saved.
After showing him his invention, Syme agrees to guide him to Kal-Jmar. Tate had never been to Mars before, so he desperately needed someone to take him around.
His knowledge of the Martian race, when it comes to the scientific side, rivals that of Syme’s, who’d possibly run into them before. However, he is scared of the Martians and their unpredictability.
After they are captured by the Martians, the leader announces their imminent death. While Syme orchestrates their escape by killing all the Martians with an energy gun, Tate stays glued to the wall. His cowardice annoys Syme, who was injured in the fight.
In the end, after they reach Kal-Jmar, Tate can open a door in the force field using his ingenus invention. The first time failed, but after careful consideration, he was able to succeed the second time. Once he had opened the field, Syme betrayed him and shot him in the chest with his energy gun.

Answer: Harold Tate meets Syme Rector and joins him for a drink in Lillis. He is in need of a guide to the ancient Martian city of Kal-Jmar. Traveling with Syme, he encounters a Martian resistance to his journey which they are able to overcome. Using technology of his own design, Tate is able to open a door in the outer door to Kal-Jmar. Immediately after this he is  shot and killed by Syme. He warns Syme that he is walking into a dangerous situation but he is ignored.

Answer:
Harold Tate comes to Rector’s rescue when he desperately needs help. Rector kills a patrolman and throws his body over a bannister. When Rector finds himself injured and unable to climb over the bar, Tate lends him a hand and asks very few questions. The two men get a drink together at a cafe nearby. Tate confesses that he trusts Rector right away due to his honest face, and he asks Rector to be his guide on Mars.

More specifically, Tate tells Rector that he wants to go to Kal-Jmar, an ancient Martian city that earth men are forbidden from visiting. Tate is a physicist, and he believes he has solved the riddle of the city’s dome. It is an incredible force field that can withstand explosives and diamond drills. Tate believes he invented a machine that will force open the wall of the dome.

When the two men are attacked by many Martians on their voyage to Kal-Jmar, Tate does nothing to help Rector defend them. He slumps in the corner and hopes to stay alive without attacking a single alien. Although he is very intelligent, he is not brave when he needs to be.

The men finally make it to Kal-Jmar, and Tate gets his incredible invention to work after a few tries. He creates an opening in the mysterious dome. Rector quickly kills him before he can even enter the magnificent space, and his only warning is “you'll be sorry.”


Question: What are the items that Syme Rector uses that help him survive in the midst of his dangerous and adventurous quest in an ancient city filled with secrets?

Answer: Rector carries a pistol that, when shot, is silent. This enables him to shoot the young patrolman without drawing attention to himself or making people aware that there has been a shooting. In the sand car, Rector relies on the car’s metal arm and thick wire cable to travel down into the gully. He has harpoon guns that he and Tate can use later if they need to climb back out of the gully. After Rector battles with the Martians and shoots them, he uses a tube of sealing liquid that he carries in his emergency kit to seal the tear in his suit so that he stops losing oxygen. He also uses the sealant to close the wound in his leg from the graze of one of the Benson guns the Martians fired at him. Rector and Tate use oxygen tanks and space suits in their journey to Kal-Jmar because there is not enough air for them to breathe without these items. When he is hungry, Rector takes two food tablets that he carries in his helmet.

Answer:
Syme Rector is an outlaw, a man that relies on his wits and his tools to survive. His grand experiences and adventures have taught him several lifetime’s worth of wisdom. His most trusted tool is his handy energy pistol, which he uses many times throughout the story. This gun is powerful and quick and can be found holstered on his hip.
He also steals a spaceman’s identity card, someone named Jones, in order to not be caught on Mars.
He uses a sand car to travel across Mars and transport Tate to Kal-Jmar. This car is equipped with an anchor, as well as a pulley, so one can safely descend and ascend.

Answer: At one point Syme using a tube of sealing agent to make an airtight seal of a tear in his spacesuit. Syme also carries a gun which he uses to shoot and kill the boy early in the story in order to steal his identification. He also uses the gun on Tate after he gains access to Kal-Jmar. Syme also uses a sand car to navigate the Martian Terrain and guide Tate to the location of Kal-Jmar.

Answer:
Rector would be immediately caught and punished if he were captured in the city of Lillis without identification. That’s why the patrolman’s identity card is so important. In order to get it, Rector has to stalk a young and innocent patrolman and murder him in broad daylight. He steals his wallet so that he can use his ID card, and he starts going by the name Jones.

The sand car is also an important item for Rector because its technology allows Rector and Tate to make their way through the sand and over the gullies of the difficult terrain on Mars. The car actually has metal arms that can go deep into the sand and lift the car up and over obstacles. Unfortunately, the car does not get the duo very far before a group of Martians attacks them and destroys the car.

Rector also has to steal the lead alien’s gun in order to defend himself and his partner. He and Tate would perish if he did not have the courage to grab the gun out of the Martian’s grasp and hit him over the head with it. He uses the weapon to murder the rest of the Martians and save Tate’s life and his own.

Finally, the entire mission to Kal-Jmar would be pointless without Tate’s invention. As soon as Tate tells Rector about his work, Rector sees dollar signs. He wants to take advantage of Tate’s knowledge and steal as many goods as possible from the impenetrable dome. As soon as Tate gets the machine to work and Rector knows he can go inside, he murders Tate so he can take everything for himself.


Question: Describe the Martians in the story, which revolves around a man's quest for treasure in an ancient city filled with secrets and danger.

Answer:
From the humans' perspective, the Martians are strange, unpredictable beings. They eat sand to get their oxygen, and lichens, fungi, and tumble-grass from the deserts, all of which contain substances like arsenic that are deadly poisons to humans. The humans believe the Martians cannot or will not learn their language, Terrestrial, and that they have their own language. In it, every word can have multiple meanings depending on the inflection used by the speaker. In truth, the Martians have been telepathic for several thousand years because the planet is practically airless. They are clever and only pretend not to understand Terrestrial, and they make up their complicated language to deceive the humans.

Martians want no contact with humans because the Martians have nothing to gain from contact with them. They see the humans as imperialistic. They plan to kill Rector and Tate as part of their concept of justice. The Martians know that Kal-Jmar holds the secret that would make Mars have an Earthlike atmosphere within fifty years. The ancient Kal-Jmar Martians were the contemporaries of the current Martians' ancestors. When the atmosphere of Mars began thinning several thousand years earlier, the Kal-Jmar Martians sealed themselves in their dome where they died of plague and other causes, while the other Martians adapted to the change.

The Martians look like they have six legs but really have four legs and two arms. Their torsos bulge because they have a huge air bladder. They look a bit like dogs but have high foreheads and lips that are not split. They are covered with patches of black and white fur; with their muscles, they can control the patches so that they are primarily black or white, depending on the temperature. They can use weapons and are armed with spears and Benson guns when they confront Rector and Tate.

Answer:
The ancient Martians, as is revealed later in the story, faced an urgent dilemma when the atmosphere surrounding Mars changed. They could either hide and make scientific changes to survive. Or they could stay where they were and adapt. One group hid in the city of Kal-Jmar, constructing an impenetrable dome around themselves. They remained the same for many years until a plague wiped out the entire population.
The other group was able to survive the atmospheric collapse by changing with it. Their dependence on oxygen lessened. They eat sand to get oxygen, as well as breathing it in the deep caverns below. They can eat poisonous lichens and mushrooms, fungi that would kill any other creature.
And their bodies changed too. Now, they resemble dogs, with fur that changes color depending on the weather. With four legs and two arms, they are incredibly quick creatures. Their stomachs bulged out from their body, due to their evolutionary changes. The Martians are also telepathic, with no current language of their own. They are an incredibly advanced race. They developed air bladders that pumped oxygen from the stomach (sand) directly to the bloodstream. These are the native Martians, and, though energy guns were forbidden on Mars, some of them were armed with them. Others carry spears and other missiles.

Answer: The Martians have 4 legs and 2 arms. They are telepathic which aids in their communication on a planet with very little atmosphere. It is thought that they speak an immensely complex language and cannot speak to humans. This, however, is a deception on the part of the Martians who can speak to humans perfectly well. The Martians who currently live on the planet have adapted to live on the planet with no atmosphere. Their species' ancient contemporaries sealed themselves in cities like Kal-Jmar instead of adapting.

Answer:
The ancient Martians and a prolific species. They have thousands of machines and artifacts that they have created, and they preserved all of their equipment and accomplishments inside an impenetrable dome. Now, the current-day Martians protect the dome. The current-day Martians lived alongside the ancient Martians until the atmosphere on Mars changed rapidly and the ancients could not evolve quickly enough.

The current-day Martians are very different from earth men. Although they breathe oxygen, they also eat sand, fungi, and lichens. They do not come to cities where earth men preside, and they refuse to speak their tongue. The creatures have four legs and two arms, and they move incredibly fast. Their faces resemble dogs, except that they have large foreheads. Thick black fur covers their faces, and using their muscles sometimes turns the fur white. The Martians are also telepathic, but only Tate and Rector learn this fact. The rest of the earth men do not consider it a possibility. The species is very deceitful. They made up a fake language so that the earth men would not know their true tongue, and they pretend they cannot speak terrestrial although they truly can.


Question: What is the plot of the story involving a bureaucrat navigating complex interspecies relations and conflict?

Answer: The story begins with Consul Passwyn giving an assignment in a sealed envelope to Vice-Consul Retief, who is a diplomat with the Embassy. His mission is to visit the planet of Adobe and broker a land treaty between the Terrestrial settlers and an invading species, the Jaq. Before Retief leaves, Passwyn stresses the importance of following his orders exactly as written and acknowledges that no one from the Embassy has visited Adobe before, nor do they know the characteristics of the Jaq. Retief gets a ride to Adobe on a mail carrier with the help of a veteran pilot. When the pilot discovers they are entering the planet in the midst of war, he decides to leave on a lifeboat and gives control of the skiff to Retief. Then, Retief crash lands the skiff in order to avoid being blown up by a fission missile that was tracking him on his course. He lands in the middle of an Adoban oasis and immediately encounters a Terrestrial man named Potter, who confuses him for the cousin of one of his associates, Lemuel. Potter tells Retief about his group's history with the Jaqs, whom he refers to as "Flap-jacks" due to their wide, flat, tentacled bodies. Along with a team of settlers including Swazey, Lemuel, and Bert, Potter has been spending his days protecting his farms against attacks by the Jaqs after they mistakenly killed one three months prior, having mistaken it for one of the native species. Potter and his team do not trust the Embassy, having heard they are sending a representative to tell them to ceded control of the oases to the Jaqs. When they discover Retief is not Lemuel's cousin, Lemuel confronts Retief, who swiftly establishes his authority by knocking him out cold. When the group senses a Jaq nearby, Retief insists on dealing with the issue by himself. He hunts down the Jaq, they wrestle, and he assumes control by pressing his thumb against the Jaq’s eye hole. The captive Jaq leads Retief to the Jaq headquarters, where he is introduced to their leader, Hoshick. Retief discovers the affability of the species and particularly their penchant for proper sportsmanship. He uses this knowledge to his advantage, and convinces Hoshick that it would be more sportsmanlike to abandon the war efforts and solve their differences through a simple wrestling match. Once again, he wins the match by squeezing his thumb against Hoshick’s eye hole, and he convinces Hoshick to agree to cede control of the entirety of the oases to the Terrestrials and his people would be gifted all of the planets’ desert areas. Upon returning to the Embassy, Retief tells Consul Passwyn the good news and then burns the envelope Passwyn had given him at the beginning of the story.

Answer:
Consul Passwyn sends Vice-Consul Retief to Adobe to negotiate a peace deal between the native Jaqs and the human settlers who have moved there. Retief travels to Adobe on the mail ship, but as they near the planet, the pilot points out that there is fighting going on that he can see from fifty miles out; he refuses to land there to deliver Retief but offers Retief the use of the skiff.

As Retief begins heading toward the planet, he is tracked by a fission weapon. He outmaneuvers the bomb and lands on the planet where he soon encounters one of the settlers. They fight until the man realizes Retief is a human, introduces himself as Potter, and takes Retief to his camp where other men are. The men explain the history of their conflict with the Flap-jacks, saying that one of their men saw one and shot it thinking it was some sort of native game. After that, the Flap-jacks showed up at a farm and killed two cows. Since then, the two sides have been attacking each other back and forth.

Lemuel arrives and asks Retief who he is spying for as he pulls a weapon on him. Retief tells him to put the weapon up and then punches Lemuel quickly when he doesn’t. Suddenly, they hear a noise; Retief throws a bucket of water on their fire, and they all dive for cover. Retief then announces he will go out by himself.

Away from the camp, Retief sits and waits until a Flap-jack attacks him. He fights back and struggles but then manages to put his thumb in the creature’s eye, which subdues it. Then he has the creature take him to its leader. In the Flap-jack’s camp, Retief offers himself as a prisoner and is taken to the leader, who introduces himself as Hoshick of the Mosaic of the Two Dawns. Retief introduces himself as Retief of the Mountain of Red Tape. The two have dinner as Hoshick explains the Flap-jacks' history with the settlers. They think the settlers are sportsmen who enjoy skirmishes, so every time the setters attack them, the Flap-jacks attack back. The Flap-jacks plan to bring in more equipment and skirmishers to match the settlers. Hoshick says he personally prefers a more limited skirmish without nuclear or radiation-effect weapons.

Retief suggests eliminating the weapons and explains that the settlers only use them when they think they are fighting against lower life forms. In further discussion, he learns that the Flap-jacks are worried that the settlers want to take over the deserts they need to grow the lichens they use for their food and wine. The Flap-jacks have no use for the oases. Retief brokers a deal where the Flap-jacks get all the deserts, and the settlers get all the oases.

Retief briefs Passwyn when he returns to Ivory but does not reveal that he never opened the envelope containing his orders.

Answer:
A Vice-Consul named Retief is sent to the planet Adobe to settle a dispute between the human settlers there and an indigenous species called the Jaq. He is given a thick envelope of instructions by his superior, Consul Passwyn, who tells him to follow them to the letter with no improvisation. Passwyn makes it clear that he thinks it will take a miracle to pull this mission off, but still tells Retief that he expects results.

Retief lands on Adobe under arduous circumstances, during which his pilot bails out of the plane, he narrowly misses an atomic fission weapon, and he is immediately shot at upon landing. The shooter turns out to be Potter, a human who mistook Retief for a Jaq (or, as the human settlers refer to them, a “flap-jack”). He now assumes that Retief is the cousin of someone called “Lemuel”, and brings him back to the other humans without letting Retief clarify his real identity.

The other humans are glad to see him, thinking he’s a reinforcement. They tell him that they’ve been engaged in back-and-forth raids with the Flap-jacks, and also that they’ve heard that a bureaucrat is coming to talk them out of the dispute. Lemuel enters and reveals that Retief is not his cousin. He asks Retief who he is spying for and threatens him, at which time Retief easily subdues him in 1-2 punches, much to the awe of the other humans.

Retief senses something outside and insists on looking into it alone. He hides and waits for a Jaq to attack him, and he subdues it by gouging its eye. He asks to see its leader, and is brought to the Jaq headquarters to dine and meet with Hoshick of the Mosaic of the Two Dawns.

Retief and Hoshick eat and discuss how best to conduct next steps in the ongoing battle between the Jaq and the human settlers, of whom Hoshick seems to assume Retief is the leader. They discuss banning certain weapons, until Retief eventually gets Hoshick to agree to combat between the two of them. After discussing a few rules,  they commence to fight. Hoshick does well until Retief manages to gouge him until he goes limp.

Afterward, Retief asks Hoshick if he would consider giving the human settlers the oases and vegetables on the planet if the humans would let the Jaq have all the desert areas. Hoshick likes the idea.

Retief goes back to the human camp, gives them some wine and offers the same deal. They are equally happy to take the oases and give up the desert.

We then find Retief back with Consul Passwyn, who is shocked at the success of the mission. Passwyn, who never seems to give praise where it is actually due, says it’s a good lesson about how things go when you follow instructions exactly. After Retief leaves the office, he tosses the envelope of instructions into the trash, still unopened.

Answer:
Consul Passwyn meets with Vice-Consul Retief. Passwyn explains that Terrestrial settlers came to Adobe thinking it was uninhabited, but they started a war with the indigenous life form, the Flap-jacks. Passwyn hands Retief an envelope and tells him that he must handle the situation without any impromptu actions.

The mail pilot that is supposed to take Retief to Adobe refuses to do his job after he sees that there is a war going on. Retief pilots the skiff himself and crash lands on the planet. He gets out, enters a jungle-like habitat, and immediately looks for cover. A stocky man shoots at Retief, and Retief tackles him to the ground. The man, Potter, tells him that they’ve been waiting for help from Ivory to come and battle the Flap-jacks.

Potter takes Retief to meet with his comrades, and the men explain that the Flap-jacks have recently started using superior weaponry, and more Terrestrials have been killed. Lemuel walks up, butts in the men’s conversation, points a gun at Retief, and accuses him of being a spy. Retief responds by punching Lemuel in the face and knocking him unconscious. The men hear a noise and get down on the ground. Retief tells the others that he’s going to check it out by himself.

Retief enters the desert of Flap-jack country. A Flap-jack attacks him, and in response he is able to wrap his arms around the alien and put his thumb into the creature’s eye. The Flap-jack agrees to take Retief to his leader.

After a short walk, Retief crawls on the ground to enter a cave. The leader, Hoshick of the Mosaic of the Two Dawns, congratulates Retief on being a worthy adversary. Hoshick uses a translating device to speak to Retief, and he offers the Terrestrial delicious food and several servings of tasty yellow wine.

Retief asks Hoshick to consider getting rid of all weapons, and he suggests that this is the modern and polite way to fight. Weapons are reserved for vermin. He then goes one step further and asks Hoshick to keep the fight between the two of them.

Retief and Hoshick go outside, remove their weapons, and engage in one-on-one combat. Retief remembers his trick and gouges Hoshick’s eye. Retief wins, and Hoshick agrees to give the Terrestrials the sand that the Flap-jacks desperately want to harvest lichen for their wine. Retief offers to allow the Flap-jacks to keep the desert as long as the Terrestrials can have all of the oases and vegetable farming land.

Retief returns to Potter, Lemuel, Swazey, and Bert. He has the men try the wine that Hoshick gifted to him and tells them about the deal he made. He hands the Treaty and the other important paperwork to Passwyn. Passwyn congratulates him on a job well done and by the book. Retief takes his original envelope of instructions and throws it in the incinerator.


Question: What is the relationship between the Jaqs and the Terrestrials throughout the story of diplomatic challenges and conflicts on a distant planet?

Answer: The Jaq are a flat, wide-bodied species with tentacles and a tender orifice at the center of their bodies where a human chest would normally be. They are led by Hoshick, who has a strong interest in mining the deserts of Adobe for a special lichen used to craft their yellow wine. This wine would then be sold to planets across the universe. The Jaq make their headquarters in the desert. In the scattered oases of Adobe, the Terrestrial settlers have built farms in the rich soil of the planet's surface. The Terrestrials refer to the Jaq as "Flap-jacks" due to their unique physicality. One day, a Terrestrial man mistakes a Jaq for one of Adobe's native species, and he shoots and kills it. This ignites a war between the two groups. The central Terrestrials featured in the story--Potter, Lemuel, Bert, and Swazey--require assistance from their allies on Ivory because they only have three hundred men and are unsure they can defeat the Jaq. When the Embassy sends Retief to serve as an intermediary, he discovers that the two groups have similar interests--they each only want control of their separate areas. By craftily suggesting the use of weapons is no longer fashionable, Retief neutralizes the Jaq artillery and is able to convince both groups to reach a peace treaty. And, as it turns out, the Terrestrial settlements no longer have wine, so the adjacent existence of Jaq wine fields would have a mutual benefit.

Answer: The Jaqs and the Terrestrials fight each other throughout the story. It started when a human saw a Jaq and thought it was some type of native game and shot it. From that incident, the Jaqs concluded that the humans were sportsmen like themselves and responded by going to one of the farms and killing two cows. Since then, the two sides have been attacking back and forth, and the humans think the Jaqs are fighting against them. Hoshick explains that he actually prefers the skirmishes to be without weapons. Until Retief meets with the Jaqs and talks with Hoshick, none of the humans had interacted with the Jaqs peacefully. The humans think the Jaqs want to take over all the oases, and the Jaqs think the humans want to take over all the deserts.

Answer: The Jaqs and Terrestrials are at odds with each other over territorial rights on Adobe, but they clearly know nothing about each other, nor what the other group actually wants. A Terrestrial set off the disagreement by shooting at a Jaq, and the Jaqs have apparently killed several cows thinking they are humans. The Jaqs also believe that they are giving the Terrestrials what they want because they consider them fellow “sportsmen”, while the Terrestrials are actually dwindling in number and living in fear. While they continue raiding each other without talking, they fail to understand that different parts of the planet interest them, and they need not fight at all. By the end of the story, Retief has settled the dispute and both parties have been given the lands they desire; they now all happily reside on the planet together under the new agreement.

Answer:
The Terrestrials show up on Adobe thinking the land is uninhabited, but they quickly learn that the Flap-jacks are also there. One of the men shoots at an Adoban, and for three months, the Terrestrials engage in battle with the aliens. The Flap-jacks attack Swayzey’s farm and kill two of his cows. The next time they showed up, Potter and Swazey shot at them. The men describe the aliens as dirty blankets.

The Flap-jacks begin using more advanced weaponry, like airships and automatic rifles. With their new technology, they are able to kill more Terrestrials. The men are very concerned about protecting their farmlands, and they believe the aliens want to take them.

Retief is put in charge of mending the relationship between the Terrestrials and the Flap-jacks, so he goes to meet with their leader. He learns how to appropriately attack a Flap-jack when one of them charges at him when he enters their territory. The aliens are muscular and heavy with fringe-tentacles, and Retief is able to subdue the Flap-jack by gouging its eye with his thumb.

The Flap-jack’s leader, Hoshick, is immediately cordial towards Retief. Hoshick must use a translating device to speak to him, but he is open to all kinds of suggestions from Retief. He has his waiter serve food and wine during their meeting, and he explains that once they figured out the Terrestrials were sportsmen, they wanted to up the ante and show them a good time with their advanced weaponry. In fact, Hoshick called in an additional hundred Adobans to make the fight more interesting.

Hoshick is quickly convinced that fighting with weapons is a lowly thing to do, and he agrees to fight Retief one-on-one. Hoshick loses the fight when Retief sticks his thumb in the alien’s eye. Hoshick is willing to give the Terrestrials all of their land, but he admits that he’s disappointed that he won’t be able to continue farming lichens in the desert in order to make their delicious and profitable wine.

Retief agrees that the Flap-jacks can keep the sand hills they need for harvesting lichens as long as the Terrestrials can have the oases and the farmlands. Essentially, the entire war was a miscommunication. Neither side wanted what the other had, but without a discussion about why each party was on Adobe, it was completely unclear to everyone that their motivations were dissimilar.


Question: Where does the story, which involves a diplomatic mission to resolve a conflict between settlers and an indigenous species, take place?

Answer: The story begins on the planet of Ivory, where Retief meets with his superior, Consul Passwyn. This seems to be the headquarters of the CDT, a kind of intergalactic governing body concerned with diplomatic efforts. The majority of the story's action takes place on the planet of Adobe. The planet is covered with vast deserts and spotted with several oases. The oases are like jungles with hot air, dense foliage, and dwarf trees along with a variety of wildlife from lizards to insects. They used to be sea-beds and therefore have rich soil for planting. The Terrestrials settlers live and built farms there. The Jaq built their headquarters in the midst of the deserts, where they prefer to stay for their rich resource of lichen used to produce wine. When Retief crash-lands on Adobe, he meets the Terrestrials in an oasis and eventually crosses over into the desert when he goes to consult with the leader of the Jaq, Hoshick. The Jaq headquarters is a comfort-dome with red lights, granite tables, fine silverware and glassware, pink walls, and a low-lying ceiling. Retief meets with Hoshick here and convinces him to engage in a skirmish. He then fights and defeats the leader outside the headquarters in the bright sand. After securing the deal, Retief returns to Ivory to report on the success of his mission.

Answer: The story begins and ends on a planet called Ivory. It is the location of the CDT and the Embassy where Retief works. The rest of the story takes place on a planet called Adobe, which has a native life form that the Terrestrial settlers call Flap-jacks. Adobe has deserts and oases. The human settlers have farms on the oases where they raise crops and cattle to help feed the space system. The Flap-jacks live in the desert where they can grow the lichens that they use for food and wine. The temperature during the daytime is warm, and the oases support trees, animals, insects, and the humans living there. The oases are old sea-beds and have good, deep topsoil. The Flap-jacks live in a comfort-dome that has a low ceiling about five feet high. The walls are a pink-colored nacre, and the floor looks like burgundy glass and is covered with silk rugs.

Answer: The majority of the story takes place on the planet Adobe, which has multiple topographical and climate features including a humid jungle, temperate oases, and rolling deserts. Retief reaches the planet via an aircrafts, and once there he visits several locations. He visits the camp of the Terrestrials, outdoors around a fire, as well as the low-to-the-ground but comparatively lavish dwellings of the Jaqs. These are surrounded by thorned branches for protection, but the inside of the Jaq headquarters is adorned with fine textures and surfaces like granite, silk, silver, and rose-crystal. Retief also spends the beginning and end of the story back at his unspecified posting with his superior, which is apparently quite rural and rugged.

Answer:
The story takes place on Adobe. The Terrestrials have recently started farming there, and the Flap-jacks are also farming, but they are using the sand hills to grow lichens to make wine. The Flap-jack’s side is desert, and the Terrestrial’s side is more of a jungle. There are dwarf trees, song lizards, and insects, as wells as foliage and bushes.

The Terrestrials are using the land to keep their cattle, and they also value the dozens of oases. The ponds are a mile deep with excellent topsoil.

In the desert portion of the land, the leader of the Flap-jacks holds court in a cave surrounded by thorn branches. The cave’s ceiling is not very tall, and it is decorated with silk rugs, polished red granite, silver dishes, and rose-crystal drinking glasses.

Adobe is a place that both Flap-jacks and Terrestrials can use to their advantage, and they have nothing to fight over because the resources they desire to not overlap at all.


Question: What is the significance of wine in the context of a story involving diplomatic tensions and unexpected alliances between settlers and an indigenous species?

Answer: Wine is the essential reason the Jaq came to Adobe in the first place. Their leader, Hoshick, envisioned sourcing its vast deserts for lichen. This lichen would then be used to produce a yellow wine that could be sold to planets all around the universe. When Retief first meets Hoshick, the Jaq leader provides him with a rose-crystal drinking-tube, from which they are able to sample this wine. Retief notes that the wine tastes delicious and smells good and reminds him of Chateau d'Yquem. This detail reveals the Jaq's interest in the finer things in life, in appearing distinguished. This interest is reflected in all of the Jaq's interactions with Retief, including his ability to be coerced into hand-to-hand combat because he deems it a more modern, sportsmanlike way of resolving issues. Wine again becomes important after Retief wins the fight and gets Hoshick to agree to the terms of his proposed land treaty with the Terrestrials. After Hoshick agrees, Retief attempts to convince the Terrestrials to agree as well. After learning of the lack of wine within their settlements, Retief lets the Terrestrials sample the wine provided to him by the Jaq. Eventually, the Terrestrials agree to the arrangement as well. Therefore, the wine is also a symbol of the newfound peace between the two previously warring groups.

Answer: The Jaqs make their own wine out of the lichens that they grow in the desert. The lichens will only grow in the desert, so the desert is extremely important to them. Their wine is of very high quality; in fact, Retief compares it to the wine from Chateau d’Yquem. The wine helps Retief arrange the deal to divide the land between the settlers and Jaqs in a way that is favorable to both sides. The human settlers have not been able to produce wine; they believe that the bacteria required to make it won’t grow on Yaq, so they have only been drinking stump water. Retief lets them try the Jaqs' wine, and they like it. This, along with the offer to give all of the deserts to the Jaqs and keep all of the oases for the humans, helps Retief work out the peace deal for the Jaqs and the settlers.

Answer: Wine is significant in the story because it symbolizes how little the Jaqs and the Terrestrials know about one another, and how they can live harmoniously. The Terrestrials believe that Adobe is lethal to the process of making alcohol and that wine can’t be made. The Jaqs enjoy a sweet yellow wine made from lichens that they get from the desert. Retief settles the dispute with the Jaqs over wine, and then brings some with him to settle it with the Terrestrials, and both parties agree. The wine is a symbol of how their differing aims can complement each other and they can produce and trade different crops to benefit everyone.

Answer:
Wine is an important part of the story because the Flap-jacks have only come to Adobe to make their wine. The leader of the Flap-jacks, Hoshick, explains that he brought his people to the planet to build his own Mosaic and till the sands to grow paradise-lichen. He hoped to make delicious and expensive wine with the crop and sell it all over the universe.

Retief tries the wine during his conversation with Hoshick, and he compares the beverage to Chateau d'Yquem. When he takes some back to his men, they also find the wine to be wonderful.

If the Terrestrials had known in the beginning that the Flap-jacks were interested in harvesting the lichens in the sand, they never would have tried to engage in battle with them.


Question: What is the significance of the fission weapon in the story involving a bureaucrat navigating a complex conflict between settlers and an indigenous life form?

Answer: After Retief takes command of the mail skiff, he narrowly misses colliding with a warhead that tracks his trajectory. Thanks to a swift maneuver, Retief is able to dodge its impact and crash-lands on Adobe. However, due to the red blip on his radar screen, Retief is now aware that one of the warring groups on the planet is using illegal fission weapons in battle. Initially, he believes the Terrestrials were responsible for this, but after meeting Potter, he realizes his mistake. Potter informs him the Terrestrials do not have weapons of that kind, so it has to be Jaq weaponry. This information becomes important later when Retief meets Hoshick for the first time. As the leader of the Jaq, Hoshick informs Retief that the skirmishes were a result of a desire to engage in more sportsmanlike conduct on the battlefield. Retief realizes he can use this desire to his advantage and pushes Hoshick to question whether or not weapons are required at all in resolving conflict. He pushes this idea further by suggesting his own kind would never solve problems with weapons, despite one of the Jaqs having been previously shot down by them. Retief excuses this by again playing into Hoshick's desire to appear more dignified and saying the shooting was a failure to recognize the Jaq as sportsmen. This tactic works, and he is able to use it to convince Hoshick to engage in hand-to-hand combat, which eventually leads to the resolution of the war.

Answer: The fission weapon is an indication of the intelligence and resources of the Jaqs, although at first, Retief doesn’t know whose weapon it is. The fission weapon tracks the object it seeks and follows it. Retief is only able to avoid colliding with it by flying straight toward it at the last minute and passing it before it explodes. The leader of the Jaqs, Hoshick, says that he would prefer a contest without nuclear or radiation-effect weapons because it is such a bore having to screen the spawn for deviations afterward. Retief readily agrees that the humans will not use atomic weapons either for the same reason and because it wastes troops. This agreement is the first concession by the Jaqs and the humans about the fighting and is followed by other concessions that are advantageous to both sides.

Answer: The fission weapon is significant in the story for a few reasons. It nearly takes down the aircraft that Retief is flying to Adobe. He later finds out that the Jaqs have been using them in order to give the Terrestrials a good show of strength, and that their nuclear/radiation effect has spawned more creatures, such as the one that Retief briefly takes captive. The Terrestrials tell Retief that they don’t have access to such weapons and that the Jaqs have been leveling up their weaponry; unbeknownst to them, the Jaqs have done so to try to compete with them.

Answer:
The fission weapon is important because it almost kills Retief.

Retief encounters the fission weapon when he is piloting the skiff alone towards Adobe. His original pilot refuses to transport him to the planet because he can see that there are missiles and other weapons in use. The pilot does not want to get killed, and he insists that Retief can die if that’s what he wants to do.

While Retief is flying towards Adobe, he sees a red blip show up on the screen of the skiff. Retief feels nervous and panicky because the red dot means that someone has deployed a warhead that emits heavy radiation, also known as a fission weapon. The fission weapon has been outlawed. He hopes that his skiff has not been spotted, and he changes course to avoid the warhead. When the missile comes within five miles of his vehicle, Retief decides to accelerate as fast as possible. He just makes it past the missile, and it explodes mid-air. The fission weapon makes Retief crash land on the planet. His skiff fills with smoke and his screen breaks.


Question: What is the plot of the story involving a diplomatic mission that encounters a powerful and warlike alien race?

Answer: Ambassador Nitworth, the local head of the government for the Terrestrials, has received an ultimatum from a species called the Qornt. The Qornt want to take over the planet that the Terrestrials currently occupy. This is surprising because the whereabouts of the Qornt have been unknown for the past two centuries. The Ambassador orders Second Secretary Magnan to travel to Roolit I, the planet where the Qornt are now, to investigate the situation in person. Retief is sent to go with Magnan, with orders from the Ambassador to avoid Magnan from doing anything impulsive. When they arrive, Retief wants to investigate the situation on the surface, whereas Magnan would have been happy to take one look and return to his office. As Retief is insisting on taking a look, the two men are spotted by two eight-foot-tall creatures and a skirmish starts. After Retief pulls Magnan from the fight, and some bickering takes place, the men learn that these two creatures are Verpp, not Qornt. They ask if they know about the Ultimatum sent to the Ambassador—the men call the outer planet Smorbrod, but those on Roolit I call it Guzzum. Zubb and Slun (the Verpp) say that they aren’t caught up on political matters, so they don’t have anything to say about the upcoming invasion, but they do give the men information about where they are. Tarroon is the town they are closest to, where there are 15-20 Qornt, and Zubb and Slun say that the Qornt would mostly ignore Terrestrials, which makes Retief think they should walk right in. Magnan is afraid of a trap, but they head into the underground Qornt village. Once they make it to Qornt Hall, the group walks through a tunnel into a huge room with high ceilings, where the walls are plastered with weapons and other spoils of battle. It was a trap: the Verpp walk the men into the dining hall where the Qornt are having a feast, hoping that the Qornt would be mad at the men for interfering with the Verpp. It turns out the Qornt are even larger than the Verpp (twelve feet tall), and Qorn (the lead Qornt) is insistent that there will be no peace, because he is hungry for battle, so he ties up the men. Retief threatens them saying the Terrestrials intended to use Roolit I to test a bomb, and breaks out of his chains in the chaos—the differences in gravity between the planets means that the men are very strong, even if they are much smaller than the Verpp and Qornt. Retief ties up Qorn and declares himself the new leader. The Qornt explain that Verpp molt into Qornt after a few other stages of metamorphosis, and that the Qornt are very driven by a need for battle. Upon return to the outer planet, we learn that Retief has supposedly recruited the Qornt for the Peace Enforcement Corps, and sends them out to battle, circumventing Nitworth’s authority.

Answer:
	Ambassador Nitworth of the Terrestrials receives an undetectable message from the Qornt. This communication states that they will soon invade the CDT and pillage the surrounding area in 30 days time. The Qornt are known for their warlike tendencies and battle-hardy population, but they disappeared without a trace around 200 years ago. Despite their sudden reappearance on Terrestrial territory, the Terrestrials caught no sight of them on their Navigational Monitor Service.
	The Ambassador and his military decide to evacuate their land, an incredible feat thanks to their 15 million Terrestrials. They give themselves one day to plan their move, before announcing it to the general population.
	Magnan, one of the Ambassador's men, is ordered to explore Roolit and find the Qorn. Magnan, though hesitant, is forced to accept and take Retief with him. As they explore, they come across two Verpp, Zubb and Slun. After a quick battle, Magnan and Retief win and speak to the Verpp as their captives. Their race is a peaceful one, focused on exploring nature and other species.
	Zubb and Slun escort them to the Qornt den, where they are feasting. Slun leaves them outside of Qornt Hall, located in Tarroon.  Zubb guides them into the grand chamber, where the Qornt are in the midst of their weeks-long feast. The bejeweled hall features Qornt of different sizes and statuses. Qorn, the chief, is seated above them all in a headdress and plumage. Zubb explains that each Qornt has their own fully-automated dreadnought, AKA warship.
	After hearing about their weaponry and seeing the Qornt in all their beastly glory, Magnan decides to retreat. Zubb, however, betrays them and pulls out two guns. He announces their arrival after forcing the Terrestrials in. Qorn belches in response. The Qornt chain the two Terrestrials.
	The chief boasts about what the Qornt will do to the Terrestrials and squanders Magnan’s hopes for surrender or peace. However, the other Qornt are not in agreement. They seem fairly nonchalant about the matter. They understand that this is their duty as Qornt, but they also would rather feast and boast than fight.
	Retief claims that the Terrestrials will use Tarroon as a target for their new hell bomb. He delivers his own ultimatum to the Qornt, breaking the chains around his wrists. Taroon’s gravity and atmosphere lighten the weight, hence Retief’s ability to break the chains. Retief challenges Qorn to a battle, despite Qorn’s greater size and stature.
	Retief wins, ties Qorn up, and names himself their new leader. The Qornt still plan on invading the Terrestrials, however, and Retief must find a solution. It’s revealed that the Verpp transforms into the Qornt like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. They reach a solution, however. The Qornt become the new task force for the Peace Enforcement Corps. The Verpp establish their own Consul in the city. Ambassador Nitworth is pleased with this turn of events, and the Qornt are sent on a mission right away.

Answer:
A diplomatic corps of humans (Terrestrials) receives an ultimatum from the Qornt warlike alien race telling them to evacuate a planet or be destroyed. The alien race appeared suddenly and undetected by the humans. Two men, Mangan and Retief, are dispatched to the alien planet to investigate while an evacuation plan can be developed.

Mangan and Retief come upon two aliens who they mistake for Qornt but are actually Verpp. They are able to capture them and they lead the men to the Qornt community. Once their their captives turn on them and capture the men, binding them in chains.

The Qornt leader is uninterested in diplomatic discussions and is intent on invading the human planet. At this point Retief breaks his bonds which are only weak aluminum and defeats the Qornt leader in physical combat. Retief convinces the remaining Qornt to abandon the invasion plan and elect himself as their leader.

When the human ambassador returns to discuss the evacuation, Mangan and Retief inform him that the Qornt have remarkably been folded into the Terrestrial Peace Corps and have been sent out on mission. Retief and Mangan will now be in charge of recruitment of Alien races into the human community.

Answer:
Ambassador Nitworth appears in front of his staff to announce that the Qornt, a race that disappeared 200 years ago, has suddenly reappeared and is making demands. One of the most alarming facts about this assault is that the Qornt were able to appear on the planet without detection by any of the equipment the earth men use.

When Magnan tries to sneak out of the meeting without an assignment, Nitworth sends him and Ratief to check out the Qornt in person. Within moments of their arrival at the site, a Qornt steps out of the bushes. Magnan immediately tries to escape, but another alien appears and the two Qornts stop him from running away. He is able to defend himself and knocks them both to the ground.

The aliens agree to take Magnan and Ratief to Qornt Hall to speak with Qorn, the leader. Once they reach the hall, the Qornt escorts pull out a couple of weapons and point them at Magnan. They want to tell Qorn that the two men have assaulted them and tried to kidnap them. Inside the meeting place, the wild-looking leader tells Ratief and Magnan that he has zero intention of negotiating a peace deal between the Qornts and the humans. Instead, he wants adventure and action.

It becomes clear that Qorn is forcing his men to go to war although some of them are not interested in the battle. Qorn argues that he is the ultimate leader, and it makes no difference if his subordinates agree with his decisions or not.

Ratief and Magnan were sent to the Qornts to negotiate the earth men's surrender, but Ratief completely changes the plan. He tells the leader that they want to deliver an ultimatum of their own. They will bomb the planet in a few days’ time, regardless of whether the Qornts have left it or not.

Qorn insists that his troops are ready for war, but one of his subordinates cuts in to tell him that many of the other Qornts would prefer to feast and enjoy themselves without going to battle for no good reason. Ratief challenges Qorn to a fight, and he eventually gets the alien in a stranglehold. After Ratief wins, he claims himself leader of the Qornts.

Several of the Qornts declare that they must go to war regardless of who their leader is. They were made for fighting even though they didn’t like their past leader’s decision to attack the earthmen. Magnan suggests that the group goes elsewhere to invade, and Ratief agrees.

Ambassador Nitworth shows up to save Ratief and Magnan, completely unaware that they have taken over the Qornts. The men explain to their boss that they have established the Foreign Brigade, and the Qornts will now work for them. They have been sent off on a far away mission. Ratief and Magnan also tell Nitworth that the Qornts never left the planet. They were hibernating underground for 200 years.