Glissandos And The Milky Way

Poul Anderson's "Territory" begins with a musical note representing a whistle with glissandos. The viewpoint character, Joyce Davisson, Nicholas van Rijn and several other human beings are visiting yet another inhabited planet with two moons and a humanly unbreathable atmosphere. The whistle signals a blood-and-thunder gun fight but this merely sets the scene for a problem that van Rijn must solve. Why do t'Kelans attack extra-planetaries that have come to help them?

There is a plain with shrubs and:

"Due north rose the sheer black wall of Kusulongo the Mountain, jagged against the Milky Way. The city carved from its top could be seen only as a glimpse of towers like teeth."
-Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-76 AT p. 13.

As on Diomedes, in order to do business, van Rijn has to spend considerable time in a hostile environment - among violent beings breathing a poisonous atmosphere.