"War of the Wing-Men was the second van Rijn story (after "Margin of Profit"). Nicholas van Rijn is a somewhat Falstaffian character - fat, noisy, slobish - who is owner of Solar Spice and Liquors, one of the powerful firms in the Polesotechnic League, the commercial organization which dominates Technic civilization. Van Rijn, an engineer who works for him, and a woman are crashed on a little-explored planet where humans can live, but not eat the...