"I'd blush to explain it verbally to a girl unaccustomed to primitive Earth customs, but I'm pretty good at sign language. How about dinner tonight?" "Well ... if you'll let me pay the check. I do so adore this amazing Earth custom of exchanging food for little slips of paper." "The pleasure is all yours, sister. See you at the Ritz main dining room--eight o'clock. Soup and fish. Afterward, we'll look at my photo-murals. Now toddle along, baby, if you want to catch the bus to see those hoboes." Jerry was walking on the Milky Way. Aside from the profits, this job had its esthetic side, he decided. His exuberance was slightly dampened by the grim expression on his secretary's face. "A very important man has been waiting to see you," she said disapprovingly. "I sent him into your office. The least I could do was put him where he wouldn't have to smell all the perfume these brazen tourist women use. It's enough to make a person ill!" In the visitor's chair before Jerry's mother-of-pearl inlaid desk, the Ambassador from Outer Space was waiting, staring morosely at the endlessly repeated welcoming goddess Terra on Jerry's wall stamp collection. "Well, as I live and breathe!" Jerry exclaimed, "a real, live B-29 pilot! Welcome to my humble grass shack! Scotch? Cigar? What can I do for you?" "You can put out your bonfire, cannibal," the Ambassador said, gruffly. "I think I've stewed enough." "Why are you tough, then?" Jerry asked. "At me, I mean. I thought I was your best friend in this here jungle. Didn't I do you a favor once, Mr. Ambassador?" "A _favor_? I paid you well for it! Not only in money, but by getting advertising space for your precious Tourist Bureau on the Federated Planets. I never thought it would lead to this!" "You thought my copy wouldn't pull, eh? Not even after I'd demonstrated I could make Earth opinion do a flip-flop on that Matter Repositor deal?" "Oh, I was quite sure you could manipulate Earthmen. That's your job. But I didn't believe our people would respond in such numbers to an appeal to primitive emotions!" "You weren't alone in that," Jerry said smugly. "Some very prominent members, of our organization wanted to make the campaign more civilized. I showed them where they were wrong. Can't you see that your people are fed up with civilization, right up to their pretty white necks? The very essence of Earth's appeal to them is that a trip here gives them a chance to relax their ethics, to play at going native." "Don't rub it in!" The Ambassador shuddered. "It's nothing new. Tourists have always kicked up their heels. Guess what I saw while I was out to lunch. The cops grabbed a couple of your boys for shoplifting! They thought it was such fun to ride in the paddy-wagon. Back home, of course, they wouldn't think of repositing anything they weren't supposed to, but on Earth it's different."