Firejammer

Having dropped an alien-contact anthropologist on a newly discovered inhabited planet to establish a relationship with the aliens, starship Richard M. Nixon and its crew returns two years later on a trade mission. The corporations of the Tripartisan Economic Combine are eager to buy the aliens' epoxy glue, which is among the best ever seen in known space. Vincent Icehall, the starship's young shuttle pilot, has little to do during the mission but hang out with what he assumes is the alien community's jester and village idiot. Icehall can't pronounce the alien's name and dubs him Turkey, but slowly begins to realize that Turkey is anything but. Ignoring all of Turkey's warnings for the crew to leave the planet immediately, Icehall stumbles on a plot by the anthropologist and the aliens' chieftain to steal the Nixon's shuttle for use as a weapon of war.