Es Percipi

Channing shook his head. "Even if I agreed with you, I couldn't do that. Wouldn't that be perfect grist for the propaganda mills on Sirius and Centauri, not to mention Deneb? Big Brother Earth goes around using all the little planets. Humans break off diplomatic relations with cultures which don't adhere to Earth standards—unless, of course, we could milk something out of them."

Half an hour later, Channing had wilted his whiskers with depilatory, staring all the while at his moody face with the slightly sagging jowls in a desk mirror and wishing he were in some other line of work. The achesonian epithet, it seemed, applied to State Department officials above the level of clerk who had the misfortune of dealing with touchy issues. If Health and P. W.'s Girl Friday had her way, Channing suspected, he would be an ogre by morning.