The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ambassador, by Samuel Kimball Merwin

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Title: The Ambassador

Author: Samuel Kimball Merwin

Illustrator: Kelly Freas

Release Date: May 29, 2010 [EBook #32587]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE AMBASSADOR

By Sam Merwin, Jr.

Illustrated by Kelly Freas

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but
its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead.
As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat
strained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the
answer to the "sixty-four dollar" question._]

Zalen Lindsay stood on the rostrum in the huge new United Worlds
auditorium on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain and looked out at an ocean
of eye-glasses. Individually they ranged in hue from the rose-tinted
spectacles of the Americans to the dark brown of the Soviet bloc. Their
shapes and adornments were legion: round, harlequin, diamond, rhomboid,
octagonal, square, oval; rimless, gem-studded, horn-rimmed,
floral-rimmed, rimmed in the cases of some of the lady representatives
with immense artificial eyelashes.

The total effect, to Lindsay, was of looking at an immense page of
printed matter composed entirely of punctuation marks. Unspectacled, he
felt like a man from Mars. He _was_ a man from Mars--first Martian
Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Second United Worlds Congress.

He wished he could see some of the eyes behind the protective goggles,
for he knew he was making them blink.

He glanced down at the teleprompter in front of him--purely to add
effect to a pause, for he had memorized his speech and was delivering it
without notes. On it was printed: HEY, BOSS--DON