In 1999, this novel won the Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel. This tale features a planet of Texans whose dinosaur-sized cattle have to be herded with tanks, and whose system of government derives its character from H.L. Mencken's classic essay "The Malevolent Jobholder". The protagonist is an insubordinate junior diplomat who is appointed as ambassador to this cantankerously independent planet in the hope that he will be assassinated (as the previous ambassador had been), thereby justifying the forcible invasion and conquest of the Texans. The crux of the story is the trial of the previous ambassador's assassins--actually paid killers hired by an alien empire also planning invasion--under a legal system that considers the killing of a practicing politician to be justifiable homicide.