[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
February 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: _"Come down to Earth--and stay there!" is a humiliating order
for somebody with wings!_]
Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that
was available in the _Times_ morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And all
through the journey she'd studied her _Brief Introduction to Terrestrial
Manners and Mores_ avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in
spots, but it had facts in it, too.
So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take
wing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge of
their winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leaving
the tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked up
instead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raging
groundcar that swerved out onto the field.
She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook.
It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, that
all those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.
But it was only the wind of the car's passage that had thrown her down.
As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, the
door of the taxi flew open. A tall young man--a Fizbian--burst out, the
soft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with fright
until each feather stood out separately.
"Miss Morfatch! Are you all right?"
"Just--just a little shaky," she murmured, brushing dirt from her rosy
leg feathers. _Too young to be Drosmig; too good-looking to be anyone
important, she thought glumly. Must be the office boy._
To her surprise, he didn't help her up. Probably it would violate some
native taboo if he did, she deduced. The handbook hadn't mentioned
anything that seemed to apply, but, after all, a little book like that
couldn't cover everything.
* * * * *
She could see the young man was embarrassed--his emerald crest was
waving to and fro.
"I'm Stet Zarnon," he introduced himself awkwardly.
The Managing Editor! The handsome young employer of her girlish dreams!
But perhaps he had a wife on Fizbus--no, the Grand Editor made a point
of hiring people without families to use as a pretext for expensive
vacations on the Home Planet.
As she opened her mouth to say something brilliantly witty, to show she
was no ordinary female but a creature of spirit and fire and
intelligence, a sudden cacophony of shrill cries and explosions arose,
accompanied by bursts of light. Her feathers stood erect and she clung
to her employer with both feathered legs.
"If these are the friendly diplomatic relations Earth and Fizbus are
supposed to be enjoying," she said, "I'm not enjoying them one bit!"
"They're only taking pictures of you with native equipment," he
explained, pulling away from her. What was the matter with him? "You're
the first Fizbian woman ever to come to Terra, you know."
She certainly did know--and, what was more, she had made the semi-finals
for Miss Fizbus only the year before. Perhaps he had some Terrestrial
malady he didn't want her to catch. Or could it be that in the four
years he had spent in voluntary exile on this planet, he had come to
prefer the native females? Now it was her turn to shrink from him.
He was conversing rapidly in Terran with the chattering natives who
milled about them. Although Tarb had been an honors student in Terran
back at school, she found herself unable to understand more than an
occasional word of what they said. Then she remembered that they were
not at the world capital, Ottawa, but another community, New York.
Undoubtedly they were all speaking some provincial dialect peculiar to
the locality.
And nobody at all booed in appreciation, although, she told herself
sternly, she really couldn't have expected them to. Standards of beauty
were different in different solar systems. At least they were picking up
as souvenirs some of the feathers she'd shed in her tumble, which showed
they took an interest.