To spy on his enemies, Dominic Flandry allows himself to be captured and taken into a frighteningly alien environment. The lupine Ardazirho, having conquered the human colony planet, Vixen, construct their headquarters just below the arctic circle by blasting artificial tunnels into the hills, fusing rocks with atomics and installing equipment with robots in a layout rougher and less private than men or Merseians would want.
Flandry is surrounded by:
painful blue light;
Ardazirho, sprawling, not sitting, gambling for stakes up to a year's slavery or wrestling with teeth and nails;
a barbaric chapel of pungent leaves and a burning wheel;
a gloomy, straw-strewn office with a stream of water running down one rock wall;
a mess where soldiers eat raw meat and howl "...in chorus with one who danced on a monstrous drumhead."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 242.
Our hero takes all this in his stride. Experienced in outmaneuvering aliens, he is soon able to compare the "wolves" with other species that he has met and knows how to get on friendly terms with his interrogator.
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