Earth was in a very peculiar situation. Only a century ago it had begun really intensive spacing, with freight-exchanges and mining. Venus and Mars and, in a smaller way, the Jovians, had been a space-culture for millennia. Earth did not have the elaborate machineries of Foreign Offices and Consulates, Embassies and Delegates and Envoys that the other planets maintained. Terra had gone into the complicated mess of astropolitics with her eyes serenely closed and the naive conviction that right would prevail.
To the cloistered Bureau of Protocol in Alaska came a message under diplomatic seal from the Ambassador to Venus, right into the office of Code Clerk Weems.
Carefully he scanned the tape and lead that closed the pouch. "At it again," he said finally. "I sometimes wonder if the whole thing wouldn't go smash if we read our own mail before every other Great Power in space."
Dr. Helen Carewe, his highly privileged assistant, opened the pouch with a paper knife and a shrug. "Take it easy, career man," she advised. "Your daddy had the same trouble before they promoted him to Washington State. We get all the dirty work here in Nome—have to explain how and when and why the inviolable mail-sacks arrive opened and read." She scanned the messages heavily typed on official paper. "What," she asked, "does 'Aristotle' mean?"
"Inexcusable outrages on the dignity of a representative of Terra," said Weems after consulting the code book. "Sounds bad."
"It is. Oh, but it is! They took Ambassador Malcolm and painted him bright blue, then drove him naked through the streets of Venusport."
"Whew!" whistled Weems. "That's an 'Aristotle' if I ever heard one! What do we do now?" He was already reaching for the phone.
"Cut that out!" snapped Dr. Carewe. She could speak to him like that—or even more firmly—because she was more than old enough to be his mother. The number of career men she had coached through the Alaska Receiving Station would fill half the consulates in space—and with damned good men. Brow wrinkled, she brooded aloud, "While this isn't definitely spy stuff we ought to know whether they have a line on our phones. Don't get Washington; try Intelligence in Wyoming."