ted him to be.

As I sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, I avoided looking at the
periodical. They were probably going to hang it around my neck before
they shoved me out of the airlock.

"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was saying
to the others. "Back on Luna on rotation, doing something in Mr.
Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job for
us on Assha--Gamma Norma III.

"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the
_Statesman's Journal_ on the Benares-work table, "he is a student both
of the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our present
policies."

"A bit frank," Klueng commented dubiously.

"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice that
came so incongruously from his bulk. "He aired his singularly accurate
predictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more than
a thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think the
public's semantic reactions to the terminology of imperialism is as bad
as you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change in the
title of your department, from Defense to Aggression."

"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the article
really makes trouble for us, we can always disavow it. There's no
censorship of the _Journal_. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fire
on us."

_Here it comes_, I thought.

"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko tittered
happily, like a ten-year-old who has just found a new beetle to pull the
legs out of.

"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened to
reassure me. "We are going to have to banish you for a while, but I
daresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probably
begun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."

"Capella IV," I repeated, trying to remember something about it. Capella
was a GO-type, like Sol; that wouldn't be so bad.

"New Texas," Klueng helped me out.

_Oh, God, no!_ I thought.

"It happens that we need somebody of your sort on that planet, Mr.
Silk," Ghopal said. "Some of the trouble is in my department and some of
it is in Mr. Klueng's; for that reason, perhaps it would be better if
Cooerdinator Natalenko explained it to you."

"You know, I assume, our chief interest in New Texas?" Natalenko asked.

"I had some of it for breakfast, sir," I replied. "Supercow."

Natalenko tittered aga