d out that, through some oversight, the usually thoughtful
Terran police department had neglected to inform the Fizbian consul that
one of his people had been incarcerated, for the young man had already
been tried, found guilty of assault plus contempt of court, and
sentenced to pay a large fine. However, after Stet had given his version
of the circumstances to a sympathetic judge, the sum was reduced to a
nominal one, which the _Times_ paid.

"But I don't see why you should have paid anything at all," Bloxx
protested ungratefully. "I didn't do anything wrong. You should have
made an issue of it."

"According to Earth laws, you did do wrong," Stet said wearily, "and
this is Earth. What's more, if we take the matter up, it will naturally
get into print. You don't want your employers to hear about it, do
you--even if you don't care about making Fizbians look ridiculous to
Terrestrials?"

"I suppose I wouldn't like FizbEarth to find out," Bloxx conceded. "As
it is, I'll have to do some fast explaining to account for my not having
shown up for nearly a week. I'll say I caught some horrible Earth
disease--that'll scare them so much, they'll probably beg me to take
another week off. Though I do wish you fellows over at the _Times_ would
answer your mail sooner. I'm a regular subscriber, you know."

* * * * *

"But the same kind of thing's going to happen over and over again, isn't
it, Stet?" Tarb asked as a taxi took them back to the hotel in which
most of the _Times_ staff was domiciled. "If privacy doesn't exist on
Earth, it's bound to keep occurring."

"Eh?" Stet took his attention away from her toes with some difficulty.
"Some Earth people like privacy, too, but they have to fight for it.
Violations aren't legally punishable--that's the only difference."

"Then surely the Terrestrials would understand about us, wouldn't they?"
she asked eagerly. "If they knew how strongly we felt about privacy,
maybe they wouldn't violate it--not as much, anyway. I'm sure they're
not vicious, just ignorant. And you can't just keep on getting Fizbians
out of jail each time they run up against the problem. It would be too
expensive, for one thing."

"Don't worry," he said, pressing her toes. "I'll take care of the whole
thing."

"An article in the paper wouldn't really help much," she persisted
thoughtfully, "and I suppose you must have run at least one already. It
would explain to the Fizbians that