Then they selected from the nearly two thousand stored embryos the twenty-eight that tests indicated would be strongest, most agile and adaptable. Four were male. Twenty-four were female; and, with some ceremony, each of the twenty-eight female crew members retired, one after another, to place her feet in the familiar stirrups. This time nothing was taken from her. Something was added.
Nine months later, twenty-five of the twenty-eight delivered healthy babies. Thereafter the collection and the processing and the freezing resumed, and it was nest-building, diaper-changing, child-rearing time on the ark.
The result of this was that when Intrepid slowed in orbit around Van Maanen's star it carried, besides its original crew, more than twelve thousand frozen eight-day embryos and twenty-five robust young adults, and those were the ones the erks greeted.
Erks and Yankees met... and talked... and each found in the other something badly needed.
What the Yanks found was an unexpected ally.
What the erks found was a cause to join.
And back on Earth, the survivors of the nuclear mutual suicide were trying to put together the scorched and shattered pieces of their world and knew nothing of what was being planned far out among the stars.
"Well," cried Big Polly, hoarse from so much uninterrupted oration, "have you had enough to eat? More java? A drop of berry wine?" The visitors looked at their almost untouched plates and faintly shook their heads. "Then we'd better get to the welcoming parade and reception!"
When the auditorium was at last ready, Jupiter's proud uniform was sweated limp and there were stains on the trouser legs. Jupe examined himself in one of the gold-glass frieze mirrors that decorated the entrance to the auditorium—the scene traced on the glass was Valley Forge, he thought, or maybe that other holy place called Okinawa. He swore angrily. But there was no time to do anything about cleaning himself up, for just then came erk squeals and human yells. "They're ready! The parade's going to start! Fall in, everybody, and pass in review!"
Hundreds of erks and scores of Yankees scurried around to find their places. Not all the human beings would be in the parade, of course. Someone had to watch it go by. So Senators and Congressones didn't march. Neither did the Governor and her staff; they were all up on the platform with the three new semidivinities that everyone craned a neck to see.
What's more, there hadn't been time for all the nests to get representatives to Space City. While the State Congress had been in session almost uninterruptedly since the erk transporter ship had reached station in the solar system and the first signals began coming in.
So the reviewers outnumbered the reviewed—or would have, if it hadn't been for Space City's three companies of smart erk volunteer militia.
The human squads sandwiched the companies of erks. By the luck of the draw, Jupiter's squad led the parade.
If Jupe could have seen the review through Tsoong Delilah's eyes, he would have found a lot of comedy in the spectacle. (Up on the reviewing stage, Delilah morosely did.) World's light gravity was wrong for thirty-steps-a-minute march time. The feet did not naturally fall to earth that fast. Muscles had to kick them down. So on World the American army, for the first time in its history, had to do a sort of Prussian goose step. Even funnier were the erk militia. They didn't have the right sort of legs to march or the bodies to wear real uniforms. They had spray-painted their bodies in olive drab and black, and they bounced along to John Philip Sousa tempi. Jupe didn't think it funny. He thought it was grand. When he got the eyes-right command his heart thumped hugely as he first beheld his President.
So young!
And so tiny; and the two sisters with the President were tinier still, with skins so sallow and features so— well—strange that Jupiter wondered if they were ill. Even the President had a haunted, absent air as the colors trooped past and he returned the salute.
And then it was all past, and the Yankee military might, all two hundred and twenty of it, counting erks, column-righted around the edge of the reviewing stand, and halted by squads and were dismissed.
Ike scurried over, chirping with joy. "Oh, Jupiter, that was marvelous! What do we do now?"
Jupe looked at him in a superior way. "What you do," he said, "I don't know, but I have been invited to the reception."
"Oh, sure, the reception, we're all going," bubbled Ike, taking the wind out of Jupiter's sails. "Did you see him? Tell me, Jupe, isn't he small? Somebody told me Real-American males only ran a hundred seventy centimeters or so—is it something to do with the gravity?"
"Everybody knows that much," said Jupiter severely. "Are you just finding that out, Ike?" He observed that the dismissed squads were melting away and was galvanized. "Come on, if you're going to the reception and banquet—if we don't get a move on all the good places will be gone!"
The places weren't gone, because there weren't any places. Everybody milled around in a large room off the dining hall, and to Jupe's surprise there were tables and trays and buffets of inky-meat pates and tree-cheeses and crisp sour-pears and all sorts of good things. Yet tables were set in the hall behind the wide doors; were they going to have two meals?
That didn't matter. What mattered was that all three of the Real-Americans were lined up by the doorway, and one by one all the people at the reception were lining in their turn to pass by and shake their hands. Shake their hands! Jupiter grinned with joy; that was one of the Real-American customs he had learned as a child and never seen practiced on World.
He took his place in line, disappointingly far back, just after an erk whose name was Jutch. They had met before—Jutch was high up in erk council. Jutch was an old erk, with discolored skin and half his nails missing, but his chirp was as lively as Ike's.
Something occurred to Jupiter. "This handshaking," he said. "How are you going to do it?"
The erk's vibrissae wriggled. "Weren't you briefed? They gave us all instructions. We erks get up on our hind members like this"—he raised the first set of limbs off the floor—"and then they'll all stroke our foreknuckles. Then we say, 'Hello, welcome to World; we are all united in the cause of freedom.' Then they go on to the next one in line. Didn't you get these instructions?"
"I was very busy," Jupiter snarled.
"I see," said the erk politely. "Then maybe you don't know what humans are supposed to do—"
"I am a human! Of course I know!"
The erk's vibrissae drooped consideringly as he gazed at Jupiter. "Of course," he agreed, making an effort toward tact. "Then you know that you're supposed to bow before you hold your hand out."
"Certainly I do," said Jupiter, listening intently. "Were there any other instructions for humans?"
"I thought you said you knew what you were supposed to do."
"I do! I was only wondering if they got the instructions right—for people from nests that don't have the same advantages I do, you know."
"I see," said the erk, waving his vibrissae to stimulate thought. Then, "No, nothing about the ceremony, I think. There wasn't much explanation, either."
"What needs explaining?" demanded Jupiter. "Seems simple enough to me. The handshake is a Real-American custom when you greet somebody. Bowing is an expression of respect—of course, you bow to your President!"
"I didn't mean the ceremony itself," the erk explained. "I was thinking of how funny it is that we should be eating out here, and then in a little while we're going into the other hall and eat again."