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natives--" Miss Snowsmiled--"don't have the right kind of power here to run psychicinstallations. All prosifying has to be done directly on prosifyingmachines or--" he paused--"by foot."

  "Catch her!" Miss Snow exclaimed in Terran.

  Everything had gone maroon for Tarb again. As she fell, she could hear asudden thump. It was, she later discovered, Drosmig falling off hisperch again--the result of insecure grip, she was given to understand,rather than excessive empathy.

  * * * * *

  "I didn't mean, of course, to give you the impression that we actuallyproduce the individual copies of the papers ourselves," Stet explainedover the dinner table that night. "We have native printers who do that.They've turned out some really remarkable Fizbian type fonts." "Veryclever of them," Tarb said, knowing that was what she was expected tosay. She glanced around the restaurant. In their low-cut eveninggarments, the Terrestrial females looked much less Fizboid than they hadduring the day. All that naked-looking skin; one would think they'd wantto cover it. Probably they were sick with jealousy of her beautifulrose-colored down--what they could see of it, anyway.

  "Of course, our real problem is getting proofreaders. The proofingmachines won't operate here either, of course, and so we need humanpersonnel. But what Fizbian would do such degrading work? We had thoughtof convict labor, but--"

  "Why mustn't I take off my wrap?" Tarb interrupted. "No one else iswearing one."

  Stet coughed. "You'll feel much less self-conscious about your wings ifyou keep it on. And try not to use your feet so conspicuously. I'm sureeveryone understands you need them to eat with, but--"

  "But I'm not in the least self-conscious about my wings. On Fizbus, theywere considered rather nice-looking, if I do say so myself."

  "It's better," he said firmly, "not to emphasize the differences betweenthe natives and ourselves. You didn't object to wearing a Terrestrialcostume, did you?"

  "No, I realize I must make some concessions to native prudery, but--"

  "Matter of fact, I've been thinking it would be a good idea for you towear a stole or a cape or something in the daytime when you go to andfrom the office. You wouldn't want to make yourself or the _Times_conspicuous, I'm sure.... No, waiter, no coffee. We'll take champagne."

  "I want to try coffee," Tarb said mutinously. "Champagne! You'd think Iwas a fledgling, giving me that bubbly stuff!"

  He looked at her. "Now don't be silly, Miss Morfatch ... Tarb. I can'tlet you indulge in such rash experiments. You realize I am responsiblefor you."

  Tarb muttered darkly into her _coupe maison_.

  Stet raised his eyebrows. "What did you say?"

  "I was only wondering whether you'd remembered to check on whether thatyoung man--Bloxx--ever did get out of jail."

  Stet snapped his toes. "Glad you reminded me. Completely slipped mymind. Let's go and see what happened to him, shall we?"

  * * * * *

  As they rose to leave, a dumpy Earthwoman rushed up to them,enthusiastically babbling in Terran. Seizing Tarb's foot, she clung toit before the Fizbian girl could do anything to prevent her. Tarb had tospread her wings wide to retain her balance. Her cloak flew off and anadjoining table of diners disappeared beneath it.

  Stet and the headwaiter rushed to the rescue with profuse apologies,Stet's crest undulating as if it concealed a nest of snakes. But Tarbwas too much frightened to be calmed.

  "Is this a hostile attack?" she shrieked frantically at Stet. "Becausethe handbook never said shaking feet was an Earth custom!"

  "No, no, she's a friend!" Stet yelled, leaving the diners stillstruggling with the cloak as he sped back to her. "And shaking feetisn't an Earth custom; she thinks it's a Fizbian one. You see.... Oh,hell, never mind--I'll explain the whole thing to you later. But she'sjust greeting you, trying to put you at your ease. It's Belinda Romney,a very important Terrestrial. She owns the Solar Press--you must haveheard of it even on Fizbus--biggest news service on the planet.Absolutely wouldn't do to offend her. Mrs. Romney, may I present MissMorfatch?"

  The woman beamed and continued to gush endlessly.

  "Tell her to let go my foot!" Tarb demanded. "It's getting so it feelscarbonated."

  He smiled deprecatingly. "Now, Tarb, we mustn't be rude--"

  For the first time in her life, Tarb spoke Terran to a Terrestrial. Sheformed the words slowly and carefully: "Sorry we must leave, but we haveto go to jail."

  She looked to Stet for approval ... and didn't get it. He started toexplain something quickly to the woman. Every time she'd heard him speakTerran, Tarb thought, he seemed to be introducing, explaining orapologizing.

  It turned out that, through some oversight, the usually thoughtfulTerran police department had neglected to inform the Fizbian consul thatone of his people had been incarcerated, for the young man had alreadybeen tried, found guilty of assault plus contempt of court, andsentenced to pay a large fine. However, after Stet had given his versionof the circumstances to a sympathetic judge, the sum was reduced to anominal one, which the _Times_ paid.

  "But I don't see why you should have paid anything at all," Bloxxprotested ungratefully. "I didn't do anything wrong. You should havemade an issue of it."

  "According to Earth laws, you did do wrong," Stet said wearily, "andthis is Earth. What's more, if we take the matter up, it will naturallyget into print. You don't want your employers to hear about it, doyou--even if you don't care about making Fizbians look ridiculous toTerrestrials?"

  "I suppose I wouldn't like FizbEarth to find out," Bloxx conceded. "Asit is, I'll have to do some fast explaining to account for my not havingshown up for nearly a week. I'll say I caught some horrible Earthdisease--that'll scare them so much, they'll probably beg me to takeanother week off. Though I do wish you fellows over at the _Times_ wouldanswer your mail sooner. I'm a regular subscriber, you know."

  * * * * *

  "But the same kind of thing's going to happen over and over again, isn'tit, Stet?" Tarb asked as a taxi took them back to the hotel in whichmost of the _Times_ staff was domiciled. "If privacy doesn't exist onEarth, it's bound to keep occurring."

  "Eh?" Stet took his attention away from her toes with some difficulty."Some Earth people like privacy, too, but they have to fight for it.Violations aren't legally punishable--that's the only difference."

  "Then surely the Terrestrials would understand about us, wouldn't they?"she asked eagerly. "If they knew how strongly we felt about privacy,maybe they wouldn't violate it--not as much, anyway. I'm sure they'renot vicious, just ignorant. And you can't just keep on getting Fizbiansout of jail each time they run up against the problem. It would be tooexpensive, for one thing."

  "Don't worry," he said, pressing her toes. "I'll take care of the wholething."

  "An article in the paper wouldn't really help much," she persistedthoughtfully, "and I suppose you must have run at least one already. Itwould explain to the Fizbians that Terrestrials don't regard invasion ofprivacy as a crime, but it wouldn't tell the Terrestrials that Fizbiansdo. We'll have to think of--"

  "You're surely not going to tell me how to run my paper on your firstday here, are you?"

  He tried to take the sting out of his words by twining his toes aroundhers, but she felt guilty. She had been presumptuous. Probably therewere lots of things she couldn't understand yet--like why she shouldn'tpolish her eyeballs in public. Stet had finally explained to her that,while Terrestrial women did make up in public, they didn't scour theiririses, ever, and would be startled and horrified to see someone elsedoing so.

  "But I was horrified to see them raking their feathers in public!" Tarbhad contended.

  "Combing their hair, my dear. And why not? This is their planet."

  That was always his answer. _I wonder_, she speculated, _whether hewould expect a Terrestrial visitor to Fizbus to fly ... because, afterall, Fizbus is our planet._ But she didn't dare broach the question.

  However, if it was presumptuous of her to make helpful suggestions thefirst day, it was more than presumptuous of Stet to ask her up to hisrooms to see his collection of rare early twentieth-century Terrestrialmilk bottles and other antiques. So she just told him courteously thatshe was tired and wanted to go to roost. And, since the hotel had awhole section fitted up to suit Fizbian requirements, she spent a morecomfortable night than she had