A Tragedy of Errors

In the Long Night after the Terran Empire's fall, the star rover Roan Tom and his wives arrive at Nike, a human colony where oak and birch still grow but the old language has quietly drifted. Words like friend and business, last spoken by raiders who came to plunder, now mean threat, so every attempt Tom makes to ask for help lands as a declaration of war. Poul Anderson spins a first-contact story out of pure semantics.