Tarb tried to smile. "Sorry to have been so much trouble." She stuck out her tongue at both Stet and the native.
The woman drew in her breath.
"Miss Morfatch," Stet reminded Tarb, "sticking out the tongue is not an apology on Terra; it is an insult. Fortunately, Miss Snow happens to be perhaps the only Terran who would not be offended. She has become thoroughly acquainted with us and our odd little customs. She even—" he beamed at the Terran female—"has learned to speak our language."
"Hail to thee, O visitor from the stars," Miss Snow said in Fizbian. "May thy sojourn upon Earth be an incessant delight and may peace and plenty shower their gifts in abundance upon thee."
Tarb put her hand to her aching head. "I'm very glad to meet you," she said, glad she did not have to get up to make the ritual entrechats.
"Miss Snow is my right foot," Stet said, "but I'm going to be noble and let her act as your secretary until you can learn to operate a typewriter."
"Secretary? Typewriter?"
"Well, you see, there are no scriptos or superscriptos on Earth and we can't import any from Home because the natives—" Miss Snow smiled—"don't have the right kind of power here to run psychic installations. All prosifying has to be done directly on prosifying machines or—" he paused—"by foot."
"Catch her!" Miss Snow exclaimed in Terran.
Everything had gone maroon for Tarb again. As she fell, she could hear a sudden thump. It was, she later discovered, Drosmig falling off his perch again—the result of insecure grip, she was given to understand, rather than excessive empathy.