OUTGOING CORRESPONDENCE.

His first official duty completed, he should have felt exhilarated;
but instead, nagging thoughts of guilt tugged at his brain.

Who were the inhabitants of Altair D, anyway? How did he know that the
police action was just? Shouldn't he get out the whole file and go
over it?

But that would take days ... and there was the matter of the Gnii,
whoever they were.

The three managers entered. President Wong stood up and shook hands
with them. They didn't waste time on other preliminaries, but rushed
straight into business.

"The Gnii," the Manager of Trade, a large, red-faced man said, "demand
that we remove our trading planetoid from their system. They allege
that the planetoid is a security risk, in that it could be used for
remote-control bombing of any of their planets. They threaten that if
we don't remove it voluntarily, they will attack it, and their
Ambassadors are here in person to take our reply to their ultimatum."

There was nothing unusual in that, President Wong knew. Since both
spaceships and any other known means of communication traveled at the
speed of light, it was now more common to send Ambassadors on
important missions than to send messages.

"What do you think we should do?" President Wong asked the Manager of
Trade.

* * * * *

"I think we should tell them to go to hell," the Manager of Trade
replied, his heavy face turning redder. "After all, we have a million
trading planetoids out in the Galaxy--if we retreat here, we set a
dangerous precedent."

"I see," Wong said, frowning. "I don't recall any alien trading
planetoids in _our_ system."

"Of course not, Mr. President," said the Manager Of Foreign Affairs, a
tall, lean, distinguished-looking gentleman with blue eyes and
iron-gray hair. "We don't permit them, for much the same reason that
the Gnii want them removed from their system. Trading planetoids are
usually only tolerated in backward systems. Apparently the Gnii no
longer desire to be considered backward. I, for one, think that we
would be making a mistake not to accede to their request."

"Oh, that's very fine, decent, sporting and all that," the Manager of
Trade said irritatedly. "But I have to worry about feeding this
overpopulated system of ours, which would starve if it weren't for
intersystem trade--a significant part of which is carried on through
the planetoids."

"Can we protect the threatened planetoid?" Pr