Party of the Two Parts
by William Tenn
GALACTOGRAM FROM STELLAR SERGEANT O-DIK-VEH, COMMANDER OF OUTLYING PATROL OFFICE 1001625, TO HEADQUARTERS DESK SERGEANT HOY-VEH-CHALT, GALACTIC PATROL HEADQUARTERS ON VEGA XXI—(PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS TO BE TRANSMITTED AS A PERSONAL, NOT OFFICIAL, MESSAGE AND AS SUCH WILL BE CHARGED USUAL HYPERSPACE RATES)
My dear Hoy:
I am deeply sorry to trouble you again, but, Hoy, am I in a jam! Once more, it’s not something that I did wrong, but something I didn’t do right—what the Old One is sure to wheeze is “a patent dereliction of obvious duty.” And since I’m positive he’ll be just as confused as I, once the prisoners I’m sending on by slow light-transport arrive (when he reads the official report that I drew up and am transmitting with them, I can see him dropping an even dozen of his jaws), I can only hope that this advance message will give you enough time to consult the best legal minds in Vegan Headquarters and get some sort of solution worked out.
If there’s any kind of solution available by the time he reads my report, the Old One won’t be nearly as angry at my dumping the problem on his lap. But I have an uneasy, persistent fear that Headquarters is going to get as snarled up in this one as my own office. If it does, the Old One is likely to remember what happened in Outlying Patrol Office 1001625 the last time—and then, Hoy, you will be short one spore-cousin.
It’s a dirty business all around, a real dirty business. I use the phrase advisedly. In the sense of obscene, if you follow me.
* * *
As you’ve no doubt suspected by now, most of the trouble has to do with that damp and irritating third planet of Sol, the one that many of its inhabitants call Earth. Those damned chittering bipeds cause me more sleeplessness than any other species in my sector. Sufficiently advanced technologically to be almost at Stage 15—self-developed inter-planetary travel—they are still centuries away from the usually concurrent Stage 15A—friendly contact by the galactic civilization.