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sags like wet cardboard!"
     
                "A most sensitive
assessment I'm sure, of a remarkable subtlety of line," Stan dismissed the
remark.
     
                "And we're supposed to
be assigned apartments in one of these collapsing structures!" Magnan
blurted. But he made no further protest when the vehicle halted and a surly cop
thrust his head and forequarters inside and told him bluntly that he "and
the trouble-maker" were to enter a particularly shabby structure, where,
on the second floor, he showed them to a suite featuring an uneven floor and
walls covered in scabrous lichen-
     
                like encrustations in shades
of puce, magenta, and cyrhotic yellow.
     
                "My word, Retief,"
Magnan muttered indignantly when they were alone. "This is appalling! But
after that boisterous reception at the port, I suppose I should have expected
that we would be spared nothing."
     
                "Still, the A/C
works," Retief pointed out. He sat on the bed. "And the mattress
isn't bad."
     
                "Retief." Magnan
protested. "Don't go being cheerful about this disaster! And after we were
promised the Imperial Suite, too," he carped.
     
                "Maybe the emperor was
the one they hanged; drew, and quartered," Retief suggested.
     
     

Chapter One
     
    1
     
                An hour later,
Retief and Magnan had settled into their spartan quarters, and adjusted to the
lack of anything resembling a bathroom, or even a chair.
     
                "We must remember to
call it Zanny-du, like the indiginees,'' Magnan remarked, adjusting the lie of
his Top Three Grader lapels. "Now, we'd best hurry along to Staff Meeting.
His Ex no doubt has some choice bits of gossip—useful tips from the Classified
Report—that is."
     
    2
     
                It was a
greenish dusk when the two newly-arrived diplomats emerged from the building
via the irregularly-shaped pedestrian exit, pointed out earlier by their local
guide/guard, to emerge on the city's main avenue. Main or otherwise, it was the
only route to the lofty, shedding, wattle-and-daub structure across the way
bearing the newly-installed brass plate lettered 'Embassy of Terra.'
     
                "B-but Retief—"
Magnan stammered, eyeing their proposed route, a springy plank of goomwood some
twenty-seven inches wide and three inches thick, "it's nothing but an
oversized two-by-four!"
     
                "It's quite broad by
local standards, sir," Retief reassured him, as he stepped out on the
narrow bridge. It bounced alarmingly as the two Terrans proceeded along it,
fifty feet above the ground, which was invisible in the black shadows below.
     
                "Great heavens,
Retief!" Magnan blurted when he reached the intersection with Embassy
Drive, an unplaned two-by-six. He froze in place, his arms windmilling, unable
to advance the first step. "Why in the worlds," he demanded of an
unheeding cosmos, "did Ambassador Shortfall select this Acrobat's
nightmare as the address for his Mission? No mere human could be expected to
cross this thing, without even a handrail." He peered anxiously down past
his feet and shuddered. "At least the gnats aren't so bad here," he
offered.
     
                "There wasn't much
choice," Retief reminded his supervisor. "All the other main streets
are narrower."
     
                "Doubtless all sorts of
dreadful creatures lurk down in those lightless depths," Magnan told
Retief. "What if one should lose one's footing and fall amongst
them?"
     
                "Don't worry,"
Retief comforted his supervisor. "You'd no doubt be killed by the fall.
But we only have this short stretch to cross to make it to Staff Meeting on
time." He preceeded his chief out onto the final narrow stretch of timber,
well-worn, presumably by the multiple feet of generations of