I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martianon the morning I was found acceptable. The intercom had buzzedbriefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a singlemotion.

"Mister G," piped Morton's youthful contralto, "the old man says Ishould `get hold of that damned conceited rhymer` right away, and sendhim to his cabin. Since there's only one damned conceited rhymer..."

"Let not ambition mock thy useful toil." I cut him off.

So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked aninch and a half of ash from a smoldering butt, and took my first dragsince I had lit it. The entire month's anticipation tried hard tocrowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I wasfrightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words Ialready knew he would say; and that feeling elbowed the other one intothe background.

So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.

It took only a moment to reach Emory's door. I knocked twice andopened it, just as he growled, "Come in."

"You wanted to see me?" I sat down quickly to save him thetrouble of offering me a seat.

"That was fast. What did you do, run?"

I regarded his paternal discontent:

Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and anIrish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else's.....

Hamlet to Claudius: "I was working."

"Hah!" he snorted. "Come off it. No one's ever seen you do anyof that stuff."

I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

"If that's what you called me down here--"

"Sit down!"

He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me andglared down. (A hard trick, even when I'm in a low chair.)

"You are undoubtably the most antagonistic bastard I've ever hadto work with!" he bellowed, like a belly-stung buffalo. "Why the helldon't you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I'mwilling to admit you're smart, maybe even a genius, but--oh, hell!" Hemade a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.

"Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in." His voicewas normal again. "They'll receive you this afternoon. Draw one ofthe jeepsters after lunch, and get down there."

"Okay," I said.

"That's all, then."

I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the doorknob when hesaid:

"I don't have to tell you how important this is. Don't treat themthe way you treat us."

I closed the door behind me.

I don't remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, but I knewinstinctively that I wouldn't muff it. My Boston publishers expecteda Martian Idyll, or at least a Saint-Exupery job on space flight. TheNational Science Association wanted a complete report on the Rise andFall of the Martian Empire.

They would both be pleased. I knew.

That's the reason everyone is jealous--why they hate me. I alwayscome through, and I can come through better than anyone else.

I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way to our carbarn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward Tirellian.

Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the buggy.They swarmed over the open top and bit through my scarf; they set towork pitting my goggles.

The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey I once rodethrough the Himalayas, kept kicking me in the seat of the pants. TheMountains of Tirellian shuffled their feet and moved toward me at acockeyed angle.

Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I shifted gears to accommodatethe engine's braying. Not like Gobi, not like the Great SouthwesternDesert, I mused. Just red, just dead...without even a cactus.

I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too much dust tosee what was ahead. It didn't matter, though; I have a head full ofmaps. I bore to the left and downhill, adjusting the throttle. Acrosswind and solid ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulyssesin Malebolge--with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye out forDante.

I rounded a rock pagoda and arrived.

Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.

"Hi," I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and ahalf of grit. "Like, where do I go and who do I see?"

She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle--more at my startinga sentence with "like" than at my discomfort--then she started talking.(She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still ticklesher!)

I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that.I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last atleast the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes andperfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (Ihate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.

"Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside for you to beintroduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for yourstudy." She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did mygaze make her nervous?

"They are religious documents, as well as their only history," shecontinued, "sort of like the Mahabharata. She expects you to observecertain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words whenyou turn pages--she will teach you the system."

I nodded quickly, several times.

"Fine, let's go in."

"Uh--" She paused. "Do not forget their Eleven Forms ofPoliteness and Degree. They take matters of form quite seriously--anddo not get into any discussions over the equality of the sexes--"

"I know all about their taboos," I broke in. "Don't worry. I'velived in the Orient, remember?"

She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost jerked it away.

"It will look better if I enter leading you."

I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like Samson in Gaza.

Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspondence. TheMatriarch's quarters were a rather abstract version of what I mightimagine the tents of the tribes of Israel to have been like.Abstract, I say, because it was all frescoed brick, peaked like a hugetent, with animal-skin representations like gray-blue scars, thatlooked as if they had been laid on the walls with a palette knife.

The Matriarch, M'Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-ish, anddressed like a queen. With her rainbow of voluminous skirts shelooked like an inverted punch bowl set atop a cushion.

Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl might a rabbit.The lids of those blank, black eyes jumped upwards as she discoveredmy perfect accent. --The tape recorder Betty had carried on herinterviews had done its part, and I knew the language reports from thefirst two expeditions, verbatim. I'm all hell when it comes topicking up accents.

"You are the poet?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Recite one of your poems, please."

"I'm sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating job woulddo justice to your language and my poetry, and I don't know enough ofyour language yet."

"Oh?"

"But I've been making such translations for my own amusement, asan exercise in grammar," I continued. "I'd be honored to bring a fewof them along one of the times that I come here."

"Yes. Do so."

Score one for me!

She turned to Betty.

"You may go now."

Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a strange sidewayslook, and was gone. She apparently had expected to stay and "assist"me. She wanted a piece of the glory, like everyone else. But I wasthe Schliemann at this Troy, and there would be only one name on theAssociation report!

M'Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little height bystanding. But then I'm six-six and look like a poplar in October;thin, bright red on top, and towering above everyone else.