months later, a shipload of Galactic tourists arrived. For a
while, it looked as though Earth's credit problem might be solved.
Tourism has always been a fine method for getting money from other
countries--especially if one's own country is properly picturesque.
Tourists always had money, didn't they? And they spend it freely,
didn't they?

No.

Not in this case.

Earth had nothing to sell to the tourists.

Ever hear of _baluts_? The Melanesians of the South Pacific consider
it a very fine delicacy. You take a fertilized duck egg and you bury
it in the warm earth. Six months later, when it is nice and overripe,
you dig it up again, knock the top off the shell the way you would a
soft-boiled egg, and eat it. Then you pick the pinfeathers out of your
teeth. _Baluts._

Now you know how the greatest delicacies of Earth's restaurants
affected the Galactics.

Earth was just a little _too_ picturesque. The tourists enjoyed the
sights, but they ate aboard their ship, which was evidently somewhat
like a Caribbean cruise ship. And they bought nothing. They just
looked.

And laughed.

And of course they all wanted to meet Professor John Hamish McLeod.

When the news leaked out and was thoroughly understood by Earth's
population, there was an immediate reaction.

Editorial in _Pravda_:

The stupid book written by the American J. H. McLeod has
made Earth a laughingstock throughout the galaxy. His
inability to comprehend the finer nuances of Galactic
Socialism has made all Earthmen look foolish. It is too bad
that a competent Russian zoologist was not chosen for the
trip that McLeod made; a man properly trained in the
understanding of the historical forces of dialectic
materialism would have realized that any Galactic society
must of necessity be a Communist State, and would have
interpreted it as such. The petty bourgeois mind of McLeod
has made it impossible for any Earthman to hold up his head
in the free Socialist society of the galaxy. Until this
matter is corrected....

News item Manchester _Guardian_:

Professor James H. McLeod, the American zoologist whose book
has apparently aroused a great deal of hilarity in Galactic
circles, admitted today that both Columbia University and
the American Museum of Natural History have accepted his
resignation. The recent statement by a University spokesman
that Professor McLe