Having come to this realization, Hinrik Fonshliezen found himself looking for either a good deed to do or a good press agent—or both.
Let's leave him looking for the moment, and skip up above the border into the country of Nordapfahl. In the city of Grosstat, we will find the Museum of Cultural History, and within that museum, seated in a comfortable, book-lined office, we find the museum's director, Dr. Rudolf Mier.
Physically, Dr. Mier was easily distinguishable from Fonshliezen. To parallel the previous trope, Mier was porcine in build, bovine in manner, and lupine in business matters.
Mier liked the good things of life—food, liquor, women, fine art, good music, and well-tailored clothes. He overindulged in all of them except liquor and women. He was moderate in his use of the former because he found drunkenness repulsive, and of the latter because women found him repulsive.
The Museum of Cultural History was his great love, however; as long as he had it and his work, he could dispense with many of life's little luxuries—if it became absolutely necessary to dispense with them. The Museum wasn't much by galactic standards. It had only been in existence for a couple of centuries, and, in a scanty civilization such as that of Apfahl, two hundred years isn't much time to pick up a museum full of really valuable and worthwhile exhibits. The faded uniform of Field Marshal So-and-so might excite the beating, patriotic heart of an Apfahlian, but it was of very little worth as a cultural relic.
But to Dr. Mier, the Museum was one of the great landmarks of human history. He envisaged a day, not too far distant, when his small collection would be known as the Apfahlian Division of the Interstellar Museum of Natural and Cultural History. According to the records of the Interstellar Museum, Dr. Rudolf Mier actually made tactful, cautious reaches toward such a goal. He was tactfully reminded that it would be necessary to "improve the general standards" of the Apfahlian museum before any such recognition could be granted.
Dr. Mier did not actually think that such recognition would come in his own lifetime; he was somewhat of an idealist, and we must give him credit for that. But one day certain papers—very old-looking and yellowed papers—came to his attention, and he sent off a hurried spacegram to the Board of the Interstellar Museum.
In view of the fact that the Interstellar Museum's directors did not get around to considering the spacegram for nearly two months, it is unusual that Mier got an immediate reply to his communication. But Mier didn't know that, and he was very pleased to hear that an art expert, Dr. Allen H. Dale, was being dispatched immediately to appraise the situation.
The eminent Dr. Dale had some trouble in reaching the planet; big space liners did not—and still do not—make regular stops at Apfahl. Dr. Dale did, however, manage to get the captain of the I.S.S. Belvedere to veer aside from his predetermined course and drop his passenger to Apfahl in a small flitter. It cost Dr. Dale a goodly sum, but it was worth it.
When they were near the planet, the Belvedere stopped, and Dr. Dale went aboard the flitter with the pilot.