trange, their casually wiping out
their nominal heritage just for the sake of our convenience--imagine an
O'Toole or a Rockefeller or an Adams arriving on Sirius IV and no sooner
learning the local lingo than insisting on becoming known as
Sslyslasciff-soszl!

But that was the Ollie. Anything to get along and please us. And of
course, addressing them as Johnson, Smith, Jones, etc., did work
something of a semantic protective coloration and reduce some of the
barriers to quick adjustment to the aliens.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

Johnson--_Ollie_ Johnson--appeared at my third under-level office a few
months after the big news of their shipwreck landing off the Maine
coast. He arrived a full fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment, and I
was too curious to stand on the dignity of office routine and make him
wait.

As he stood in the doorway of my office, my first visual impression was
of an emaciated adolescent, seasick green, prematurely balding.

He bowed, and bowed again, and spent thirty seconds reminding me that it
was _he_ who had sought the interview, and it was _he_ who had the big
favors to ask--and it was wonderful, gracious, generous _I_ who flavored
the room with the essence of mystery, importance, godliness and
overpowering sweetness upon whose fragrance little Ollie Johnson had
come to feast his undeserving senses.

"Sit down, sit down," I told him when I had soaked in all the celestial
flattery I could hold. "I love you to pieces, too, but I'm curious about
this proposition you mentioned in your message."

He eased into the chair as if it were much too good for him. He was
strictly humanoid. His four-and-a-half-foot body was dressed in the most
conservative Earth clothing, quiet colors and cheap quality.

While he swallowed slowly a dozen times, getting ready to outrage my
illustrious being with his sordid business proposition, his coloring
varied from a rather insipid gray-green to a rich olive--which is why
the press instantly had dubbed them _Ollies_. When they got excited and
blushed, they came close to the color of a ripe olive; and this was
often.

* * * * *

Ollie Johnson hissed a few times, his equivalent of throat-clearing, and
then lunged into his subject at a 90 degree tangent:

"Can it be that your gracious agreement to this interview connotes a
willingness to traffic with us of the inferior ones?" His voice was
light