Terrestrials don't regard invasion of
privacy as a crime, but it wouldn't tell the Terrestrials that Fizbians
do. We'll have to think of--"

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

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

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

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

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

However, if it was presumptuous of her to make helpful suggestions the
first day, it was more than presumptuous of Stet to ask her up to his
rooms to see his collection of rare early twentieth-century Terrestrial
milk bottles and other antiques. So she just told him courteously that
she was tired and wanted to go to roost. And, since the hotel had a
whole section fitted up to suit Fizbian requirements, she spent a more
comfortable night than she had expected.

She awoke the next day full of enthusiasm and ready to start in on the
great work at once. Although she might have been a little too forward
the previous night, she knew, as she took a reassuring glance in the
mirror, that Stet would forgive her.

* * * * *

In the office, she was, at first, somewhat self-conscious about Drosmig,
who hung insecurely from his perch muttering to himself, but she soon
forgot him in her preoccupation with duty. The first letter she picked
up--although again oddly unlike the ones she'd read in the paper on
Fizbus--seemed so simple that she felt she would have no difficulty in
answering it all by herself:

_Heidelberg_

_Dear Senbot Drosmig:_

_I am a professor of Fizbian History at a local university. Since
my salary is a small one, owing to the small esteem in which the
natives hold culture, I must economize wherever I can in order to
make both en