When the human race spread out among the stars, they took the profit motivewith them, and none exemplified that fact better than Nicholas Van Rijn,interstellar trader and capitalist extraordinaire. He might look like Falstaffand talk in a steady stream of malapropisms, but anybody who might take him fora bumbling buffoon would quickly find themselves taken-to the cleaners! InNick Van Rijn, Poul Anderson created one of the most memorable and popularcharacters in science fiction, and now, for the first time, all the stories ofVan Rijn and the Polesotechnic League will be published in chronological orderin three volumes. This first volume includes the classic novel, The Man WhoCounts, in which Van Rijn and two associates are stranded on a planet inhabitedby a winged race, two factions of which happen to be at war with each other. Theplanet has no food that is not poisonous to humans, and the three humans haveonly a small supply of food in their wrecked ship. Somehow the humans must getto another continent, where a human outpost is, before they starve, in spite ofthe planet's inhabitants being too busy fighting a war to bother with thetroubles of these three odd-looking wingless aliens. An impossible problem? Notfor Nick Van Rijn.