Jerry was walking on the Milky Way. Aside from the profits, this job had its esthetic side, he decided. His exuberance was slightly dampened by the grim expression on his secretary's face.
"A very important man has been waiting to see you," she said disapprovingly. "I sent him into your office. The least I could do was put him where he wouldn't have to smell all the perfume these brazen tourist women use. It's enough to make a person ill!"
In the visitor's chair before Jerry's mother-of-pearl inlaid desk, the Ambassador from Outer Space was waiting, staring morosely at the endlessly repeated welcoming goddess Terra on Jerry's wall stamp collection.
"Well, as I live and breathe!" Jerry exclaimed, "a real, live B-29 pilot! Welcome to my humble grass shack! Scotch? Cigar? What can I do for you?"
"You can put out your bonfire, cannibal," the Ambassador said, gruffly. "I think I've stewed enough."
"Why are you tough, then?" Jerry asked. "At me, I mean. I thought I was your best friend in this here jungle. Didn't I do you a favor once, Mr. Ambassador?"
"A favor? I paid you well for it! Not only in money, but by getting advertising space for your precious Tourist Bureau on the Federated Planets. I never thought it would lead to this!"
"You thought my copy wouldn't pull, eh? Not even after I'd demonstrated I could make Earth opinion do a flip-flop on that Matter Repositor deal?"
"Oh, I was quite sure you could manipulate Earthmen. That's your job. But I didn't believe our people would respond in such numbers to an appeal to primitive emotions!"
"You weren't alone in that," Jerry said smugly. "Some very prominent members, of our organization wanted to make the campaign more civilized. I showed them where they were wrong. Can't you see that your people are fed up with civilization, right up to their pretty white necks? The very essence of Earth's appeal to them is that a trip here gives them a chance to relax their ethics, to play at going native."