The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helpfully Yours, by Evelyn E. Smith

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Title: Helpfully Yours

Author: Evelyn E. Smith

Illustrator: EMSH

Release Date: March 14, 2010 [EBook #31644]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HELPFULLY YOURS

By EVELYN E. SMITH

Illustrated by EMSH

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
February 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: _"Come down to Earth--and stay there!" is a humiliating order
for somebody with wings!_]

Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that
was available in the _Times_ morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And all
through the journey she'd studied her _Brief Introduction to Terrestrial
Manners and Mores_ avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in
spots, but it had facts in it, too.

So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take
wing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge of
their winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leaving
the tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked up
instead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raging
groundcar that swerved out onto the field.

She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook.
It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, that
all those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.

But it was only the wind of the car's passage that had thrown her down.
As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, the
door of the taxi flew open. A tall young man--a Fizbian--burst out, the
soft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with fright
until each feather stood out separately.

"Miss Morfatch! Are you all r