At one hundred and thirty, life was indeed gratifying for Titus McWorther. But for one missing detail, it would have been perfect. With his wife, Edna, he had planned well for retirement. His idyllic estate consisted of a second-hand planetoid, thirty miles in circumference, which was the only habitable piece of matter in its system. Complete with supplementary gravity generator, a compact atmosphere, a mantle of lush topsoil and a carefully selected biota, McWorther's World was both his delight and his pride.
Its principal asset was, of course, its isolation.
Well away from the mainstream of galactic civilization, McWorther's Star was smugly hidden behind a dark nebula, through which he and Edna plunged twice a year to the fringe of the cluster—just to observe and mock convention, if for nothing else.
It was an ideal setup.
But, after two sedentary years, Titus realized he still needed one item to make his retirement complete. So he dispatched this tight-beamed message to the packet order department of Rear-Sobucks and Company in the West Cluster Federation's Hub City:
Dear Sir:
Please send one automatic bather with back-scrubbing attachment and toy boat docks, as listed in your videolog under order No. 4678-25C. Charge same to credit account No. W414754-B24D.
Sincerely yours,
Titus McWorther, Potentate
McWorther's World
 
He listed the coordinates of the star and the orbital factor of his planetoid.
Unfortunately, the hyper-spatial line between McWorther's World and the nearest relay center was partly coincident with the link to the politically noncommitted world of Gauyuth-VI.
This condition, together with the fact that components of a communication are sent by separate pulse, sometimes leads to the embarrassing phenomenon known as "message interfusion," which is retransmission of the right text with the wrong signature.
And it so happened that as Titus McWorther's order was en route, the system was also being burdened with this intelligence to the Ganymede Extension of the Western Cluster's State Department:
Dear Sir:
This will verify our agreement and authorize implementation of interstellar aid arrangements as set forth in conferences with your ambassador. If such arrangements produce mutual satisfaction, we will quite readily declare concurrence, in principle at least, with the political aims of the Western Cluster.
Respectfully yours,
Ogarm Netath,
Prime Minister
Gauyuth-VI
 
Appended to the signature were the coordinates of Gauyuth and the orbital factor of its Number Six planet.
Wharton Hoverly, undersecretary of cosmic aid for the Western Cluster, plucked at his thick, gray mustache as he reread the space-o-gram.
He punched the videobox stud. "Mallston!"
The younger and more composed face of his assistant stared from the screen. "Yes, sir?"
"Anything yet?"
"Not a thing. We have no record of a—McWorther's World."
"What do you suppose?"
"Well, it seems authentic enough. We do know Ambassador Summerson has been working in that general area."
"And you think Summerson signed an aid agreement with this potentate?"
"I'd say the message speaks for itself."
Again, Hoverly worried his mustache. "Did you check with Summerson?"
"He's on extended leave."
"What do you think we ought to do?"
"McWorther's World must be a critical area. And evidently we're going to get what we want out of the deal, since the Potentate speaks of concurrence with Western Cluster aims."
Impatiently, the undersecretary glanced out the window. Ganymede was well out of the Jovian umbra now. If he didn't leave soon, he'd be late for his conference with the commerce department on Farside Luna.
"All right, Mallston," he said. "Put McWorther's World on a Class A aid schedule. That ought to hold the Potentate until Summerson gets back."
In the commercial section of Hub City, Rear-Sobucks and Company occupied a monstrous building whose emblematic tip pierced the clouds.
On the two hundredth floor, the twenty-seventh vice-president strode through the rail gate, tossed the secretary a "don't-bother-to-announce-me" glance and went on into the inner office of the twenty-sixth vice-president.
"Got something I thought you'd be interested in, V.R.," he told the limp-faced man behind the desk. "There may be a promotion angle."
"What is it?" V.R. asked, not exactly gripping his chair with anticipation.
The other placed the space-o-gram on the desk. "It's from an Ogarm Netath, prime minister of a place called Gauyuth-Six. He wants an automatic bather."
V.R. extended a "so what?" glare.
"Don't you see? Big shots like that don't place personal orders. But here's one who thinks so much of a Rear-Sobucks item that he forgets all about convention."
"And so, Wheeler, you want to capitalize on his good name in some sort of promotion gimmick," V.R. said through taut lips.
Wheeler shrank. "But I thought—"
"Never mind what you thought. Fill his order. Send it compliments of—let's see, Gauyuth-Six is uncommitted—compliments of the Western Cluster."
It was a fine morning on McWorther's World. Cotton-candy clouds floated over the fields. Dreaming herons, balanced on slender legs, gave the shallows of the lake a tufted appearance. A delightful breeze, artificially generated at the equator, wafted flowering stalks and rocked the air car and spaceabout at their moorings.
Titus snorted on the veranda and reached for his julep. He was a chunky little man, with the ruddiness of good health tinting his face and overflowing onto his partly bald pate.
"Where are you, Titus?" an anxiou............