(i) Conducting some private business while on a routine surveillance flight, Lieutenant Flandry is captured by Mersians and taken to their base on Talwin which has a dual purpose: Intelligence and scientific study of the Talwinians, both hibernating Domrath and estivating Ruadrath.
(ii) Flandry escapes from the Merseians but cannot survive indefinitely in the Talwinian environment.
(iii) He persuades the Ruadrath leader to lie to the Merseians. Rrinn claims to have found a frozen corpse, neither Talwinian nor Merseian, and wants to know what else the Merseians have not disclosed about other extraplanetarians.
(iv) The xenologist, Ydwyr, travels by airbus to the Ruadrath village.
(v) Flandry captures the airbus, uses its radio equipment to simulate Ydwyr's voice and lies to the personnel at the base: Flandry is alive but barely; please fly the captured Terran scoutship, which must contain medical equipment, to the village.
(vi) Flandry captures the scout and escapes from the planet, taking Ydwyr, a VIP, as his hostage.
(vii) Merseian craft pursue but he evades them by orbiting close to a pulsar while launching strapped-together courier torpedoes into hyperspace so that they will be mistaken for his ship.
(viii) Flandry and Ydwyr concoct a deception that not only accounts for the time when the former was missing in action but also transforms Talwin into a joint Terran-Merseian scientific base and a venue for discrete negotiations.
Anyone else would have died on Talwin whereas Flandry, through ingenuity and luck, not only survives but smells of roses.
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