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    Helpfully Yours
    Helpfully Yours
    Helpfully Yours
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Helpfully Yours

    By Ed Emshwiller and Evelyn E. Smith

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    Helpfully Yours

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      Book preview

      Helpfully Yours - Ed Emshwiller

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helpfully Yours, by Evelyn E. Smith

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Helpfully Yours

      Author: Evelyn E. Smith

      Illustrator: EMSH

      Release Date: March 14, 2010 [EBook #31644]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELPFULLY YOURS ***

      Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

      HELPFULLY YOURS

      By EVELYN E. SMITH

      Illustrated by EMSH

      [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

      Come down to Earth—and stay there! is a humiliating order for somebody with wings!

      Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that was available in the Times morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And all through the journey she'd studied her Brief Introduction to Terrestrial Manners and Mores avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in spots, but it had facts in it, too.

      So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take wing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge of their winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leaving the tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked up instead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raging groundcar that swerved out onto the field.

      She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook. It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, that all those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.

      But it was only the wind of the car's passage that had thrown her down. As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, the door of the taxi flew open. A tall young man—a Fizbian—burst out, the soft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with fright until each feather stood out separately.

      Miss Morfatch! Are you all right?

      Just—just a little shaky, she murmured, brushing dirt from her rosy leg feathers. Too young to be Drosmig; too good-looking to be anyone important, she thought glumly. Must be the office boy.

      To her surprise, he didn't help her up. Probably it would violate some native taboo if he did, she deduced. The handbook hadn't mentioned anything that seemed to apply, but, after all, a little book like that couldn't cover everything.

      She could see the young man was embarrassed—his emerald crest was waving to and fro.

      I'm Stet Zarnon, he introduced himself awkwardly.

      The Managing Editor! The handsome young employer of her girlish dreams! But perhaps he had a wife on Fizbus—no, the Grand Editor made a point of hiring people without families to use as a pretext for expensive vacations on the Home Planet.

      As she opened her mouth to say something brilliantly witty, to show she was no ordinary female but a creature of spirit and fire and intelligence, a sudden cacophony of shrill cries and explosions arose, accompanied by bursts of light. Her feathers stood erect and she clung to her employer with both feathered legs.

      If these are the friendly diplomatic relations Earth and Fizbus are supposed to be enjoying, she said, I'm not enjoying them one bit!

      They're only taking pictures of you with native equipment, he explained, pulling away from her. What was the matter with him? You're the first Fizbian woman ever to come to Terra, you know.

      She certainly did know—and, what was more, she had made the semi-finals for Miss Fizbus only the year before. Perhaps he had some Terrestrial malady he didn't want her to catch. Or could it be that in the four years he had spent in voluntary exile on this planet, he had come to prefer the native females? Now it was her turn to shrink from him.

      He was conversing rapidly in Terran with the chattering natives who milled about them. Although Tarb had been an honors student in Terran back at school, she found herself unable to understand more than an occasional word of what they said. Then she remembered that they were not at the world capital, Ottawa, but another community, New York. Undoubtedly they were all speaking some provincial dialect peculiar to the locality.

      And nobody at all booed in appreciation, although, she told herself sternly, she really couldn't have expected them to. Standards of beauty were different in different solar systems. At least they were picking up as souvenirs some of the feathers she'd shed in her tumble, which showed they took an interest.

      Stet turned back to her. These are fellow-members of the press.

      She was able to catch enough of

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