book.

The two notebooks, plus my conversation with Ghopal, Klueng and
Natalenko, completed my briefing for my new post.

I slid off my shoes and pulled on a pair of boots. They fitted
perfectly. Evidently I had been tapped for this job as soon as word of
Silas Cumshaw's death had reached Luna and there must have been some
fantastic hurrying to get my outfit ready.

I didn't like that any too well, and I liked the order to carry the
pistols even less. Not that I had any objection to carrying weapons,
_per se_: I had been born and raised on Theta Virgo IV, where the
children aren't allowed outside the house unattended until they've
learned to shoot.

But I did have strenuous objections to being sent, virtually ignorant of
local customs, on a mission where I was ordered to commit deliberate
provocation of the local government, immediately on the heels of my
predecessor's violent death.

The author of _Probable Future Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_ had
recommended the use of provocation to justify conquest. If the New
Texans murdered two Solar League Ambassadors in a row, nobody would
blame the League for moving in with a space-fleet and an army....

I was beginning to understand how Doctor Guillotin must have felt while
his neck was being shoved into his own invention.

I looked again at the notebooks, each marked in red: _Familiarize
yourself with contents and burn or disintegrate._

I'd have to do that, of course. There were a few non-humans and a lot of
non-League people aboard this ship. I couldn't let any of them find out
what we considered a full briefing for a new Ambassador.

So I wrapped them in the original package and went down to the lower
passenger zone, where I found the ship's third officer. I told him that
I had some secret diplomatic matter to be destroyed and he took me to
the engine room. I shoved the package into one of the mass-energy
convertors and watched it resolve itself into its constituent protons,
neutrons and electrons.

On the way back, I stopped in at the ship's bar.

Hoddy Ringo was there, wrapped up in--and I use the words literally--a
young lady from the Alderbaran system. She was on her way home from one
of the quickie divorce courts on Terra and was celebrating her marital
emancipation. They were so entangled with each other that they didn't
notice me. When they left the bar, I slipped after them until I saw them
enter the lady's stateroom. That, of course, would have H