“No. Don’t you remember what you said when you first saw them? Snails! How do you think this country is going to take to the idea of snails—giant snails—who sneer condescendingly at our skyscraper cities, our atomic bombs, our most advanced mathematics? We’re a conceited kind of monkey. Also, we’re afraid of the dark.”
There was a gentle official tap on my shoulder. I said “ Please!” impatiently. I watched the warm little breeze ruffle Professor Trowson’s slept-in clothes and noticed the tiny red streaks in his weary eyes.
“ ‘Mighty Monsters from Outer Space.’ Headlines like that, Prof?”
“Slugs with superiority complexes. Dirty slugs, more likely. We’re lucky they landed in this country, and so close to the Capitol too. In a few days we’ll have to call in the heads of other nations. Then, sometime soon after, the news will be out. We don’t want our visitors attacked by mobs drunk on superstition, planetary isolation, or any other form of tabloid hysteria. We don’t want them carrying stories back to their civilization of being shot at by a suspendered fanatic who screamed, ‘Go back where you come from, you furrin’ seafood!’ We want to give them the impression that we are a fairly amiable, fairly intelligent race, that we can be dealt with reasonably well.”
I nodded. “Yeah. So they’ll set up trading posts on this planet instead of garrisons. But what do I do in all this?”
He punched my chest gently. “You, Dick—you do a job of public relations. You sell these aliens to the American people!”
The official had maneuvered around in front of me. I recognized him. He was the Undersecretary of State.
“Would you step this way, please?” he said. “I’d like to introduce you to our distinguished guests.”
So he stepped, and I stepped, and we scrunched across the field and clanked across the steel plate and stood next to our gastropodic guests.
“Ahem,” said the Undersecretary politely.