ing myself a New Texas stereotype from Hoddy
Ringo and the Ranger officer who had chased us to the Embassy. But this
frightened little rabbit of a fellow simply didn't fit it. An alien
would be justified in assigning him to an entirely different species.

Thrombley introduced me. I introduced Hoddy as my confidential secretary
and advisor. We all shook hands, and Thrombley dug my credentials out of
his briefcase and handed them to me, and I handed them to the Secretary
of State, Mr. William A. Palme. He barely glanced at them, then shook my
hand again fervently and mumbled something about "inexpressible
pleasure" and "entirely acceptable to my government."

That made me the accredited and accepted Ambassador to New Texas.

Mr. Palme hoped, or said he hoped, that my stay in New Texas would be
long and pleasant. He seemed rather less than convinced that it would
be. His eyes kept returning in horrified fascination to my belt. Each
time they would focus on the butts of my Krupp-Tattas, he would pull
them resolutely away again.

"And now, we must take you to President Hutchinson; he is most anxious
to meet you, Mr. Silk. If you will please come with me ..."

Four or five Rangers who had been loitering the hall outside moved to
follow us as we went toward the elevator. Although we had come into the
building onto a floor only a few feet above street-level, we went down
three floors from the hallway outside the Secretary of State's office,
into a huge room, the concrete floor of which was oil-stained, as
though vehicles were continually being driven in and out. It was about a
hundred feet wide, and two or three hundred in length. Daylight was
visible through open doors at the end. As we approached them, the
Rangers fanning out on either side and in front of us, I could hear a
perfect bedlam of noise outside--shouting, singing, dance-band music,
interspersed with the banging of shots.

When we reached the doors at the end, we emerged into one end of a big
rectangular plaza, at least five hundred yards in length. Most of the
uproar was centered at the opposite end, where several thousand people,
in costumes colored through the whole spectrum, were milling about.
There seemed to be at least two square-dances going on, to the music of
competing bands. At the distant end of the plaza, over the heads of the
crowd, I could see the piles and tracks of an overhead crane, towering
above what looked like an open-hearth furnace. Betw