the outside.

The official who answered him was sleepy and harassed, a difficult
expression. He yawned and took his feet off the desk to acknowledge the
call and then a robot removed the desk. He had no place to put his feet
so he kept them firmly on the floor as if he expected that, too, to
vanish.

Marcus stated the request clearly, spreading the chart for the man to
see. "Here is the original from which the photo-tape was made and sent
to Earth with his comments. I don't know what happened here. Perhaps the
tape was fuzzy or it may have been fogged in transit by radiation. Or it
may have been faulty interpretation on the part of a robot."

The official peered out of the view plate. "Messy Row. Mezzerow. Ha,
ha." He laughed perfunctorily and got up to pace. A robot came near the
chair and he sat down hastily.

"Here, you can see that in his own hand he spelled it Mezzerow," said
Marcus. "He named it after himself as every explorer is entitled to do
once in his career. I ask that in simple justice the mistake be
corrected. I have a petition signed by everyone on the planet."

The official waved the documents back. "It doesn't matter who signed,"
he said. "We don't allow these things to influence our decision." He put
his head in his hand though he had no desk for his elbow. His lips moved
soundlessly as he framed the reply.

"I want to give you an insight to our problems," he said. "First,
consider pilots. There are all sorts of beautiful names for planets.
Plum Branch, Coarsegold, Waves End, but there's only one Messy Row. It's
a bright spot on their voyage. They look at the charts and see it--Messy
Row. They laugh. Laughter is a therapeutic force against the loneliness
of space. The name of your planet is distinctive."

"We don't care for the distinction," said Marcus. "It's got so bad, we
call it Messy Row ourselves, when we're not thinking. Who's going to
settle on a planet they laugh at?" The official didn't seem to hear.
Marcus adjusted the volume control, but there didn't seem to be anything
wrong with the sound or the volume.

"This is only a small part of it," continued the man. "Do you have any
idea how many charts we print? You would have us make them obsolete.
Think of the ships roaming through space, many never touching Earth. How
can we reach them with corrected charts?"

"I'm glad you said corrected charts," said Marcus. "But corrected charts
shouldn't be any harder to deliver than new ones--wh