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“You’ve only eaten at public places. Even the better restaurants don’t put themselves out for Earthmen, say they have no—palates, I guess the word would be. But you ought to taste my landlady’s cooking!”

“All this is being taped, you know. They’ll have to listen to every word on Earth.”

“If only I could convey the true picture through words. Her ragouts are rhapsodies, her soufflés symphonies—I’m using rough Terrestrial equivalents, of course—”

“The cuisine comes later, please. Over-all impressions first.”

“Well,” Clarey began again, “at first I was a bit surprised that you’d stuck me in a quarter-credit place like Katund. Naturally in a village the people’d be more backward than in the cities, so you’d have a poorer idea of how they were developing. Then I realized that you couldn’t help putting me there, that you probably couldn’t write a letter good enough to get me a job in any of the big centers. Embelsira said she was surprised to find me so much more literate than she would have expected from the letter.”