Draco Tavern

The #1 New York Times-bestselling author presents twenty-six tales and vignettes from this interplanetary gathering place: "e;A must for Nivenites"e; (Booklist). When a tremendous spacecraft took orbit around the Earth's moon and began sending smaller landers down toward the North Pole, the newly arrived visitors quickly set up a permanent spaceport at Mount Forel in Siberia. Their presence attracted many, and a few people grew conspicuously rich from secrets they learned from talking to the aliens. One of these men, Rick Schumann, opened the Draco Tavern, a public house catering to all species of visiting aliens. In "e;The Subject Is Closed"e;, a priest visits the tavern and goes one-on-one with a chirpsithra alien on the subject of God and life after death. Rick Schumann is invited to hunt with five folk aliens in "e;Table Manners"e;, but he begins to wonder if he will be the hunted. And in the never-before-published tale "e;Losing Mars"e;, a group of Martians arrive at the Tavern only to find that humans have mostly forgotten about their neighboring planet.