I presume," Ethel kicked off.

"Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's the
way he signs it."

"God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift to
Policy Planning," Gazarin added.

"Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot you
as look at you," Mannteufel warned.

"Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want important
posts in the Galactic Empire." Olga again.

"Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even a
few of you understood what it was all about."

"Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands what
it was all about. All too well, you'll find."

A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up the
handphone and whispered into it. A deathly silence filled the room while
she listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.

They were all staring at me.

"Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "This
way, please."

As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of the
desk with his fingers, the slow reiterated rhythm to which a man marches
to a military execution.

"A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"

There were three men in the Secretary of State's private office. Ghopal
Singh, the Secretary, dark-faced, gray-haired, slender and elegant,
meeting me halfway to his desk. Another slender man, in black, with a
silver-threaded, black neck-scarf: Rudolf Klueng, the Secretary of the
Department of Aggression.

And a huge, gross-bodied man with a fat baby-face and opaque black eyes.

When I saw him, I really began to get frightened.

The fat man was Natalenko, the Security Cooerdinator.

"Good morning, Mister Silk," Secretary Ghopal greeted me, his hand
extended. "Gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Silk, about whom we were speaking.
This way, Mr. Silk, if you please."

There was a low coffee-table at the rear of the office, and four easy
chairs around it. On the round brass table-top were cups and saucers, a
coffee urn, cigarettes--and a copy of the current issue of the _Galactic
Statesmen's Journal_, open at an article entitled _Probable Future
Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_, by somebody who had signed himself
Machiavelli, Jr.

I was beginning to wish that the pseudonymous Machiavelli, Jr. had never
been born, or, at least, had stayed on Theta Virgo IV and been a
wineberry planter as his father had wan