“Oh, that was the simplest thing of all. Consider the odds! What else could it be, with the Aldebaran Lottery fresh in every mind and the whole ship reeking of contraband sphyghi? If no one else had suggested it I was prepared to bring it up myself and-what’s this? Go away! Get out!”
He was addressing himself to the two comedians, who had worked their way around to Macduff’s table. Captain Ramsay glanced up in time to see them commence a new act.
The laugh-getting technique of insult has never basically changed all through the ages, and Galactic expansion has merely broadened and deepened its variety. Derision has naturally expanded to include species as well as races.
The comedians, chattering insanely, began a fairly deft imitation of two apes searching each other for fleas. There was an outburst of laughter, not joined by those customers who had sprung from simian stock.
“Tush!” Ramsay said irately, pushing back his chair. “Ye dom impudent—”
Macduff lifted a placating palm. “Tut, tut, Captain. Strive for the objective viewpoint. Merely a matter of semantics, after all.” He chuckled tolerantly. “Rise above such insularity, as I do, and enjoy the skill of these mummers in the abstract art of impersonation. I was about to explain why I had to keep Ess Pu distracted. I feared he might notice how fast the sphyghi were ripening.”
“Pah,” Ramsay said, but relapsed into his chair as the comedians moved on and began a new skit.
“Weel, continue.”
“Misdirection,” Macduff said cheerfully. “Have you ever had a more incompetent crew member than I?”
“No,” Ramsay said, considering. “Never in my—”
“Quite so. I was tossed like spindrift from task to task until I finally reached Atmospheric Controls, which was exactly where I wanted to be. Crawling down ventilating pipes has certain advantages. For example, it was the work of a moment to empty a phial of two-f our-fivetrichlorophenoxyacetic acid”-
he rolled the syllables lushly—“trichlorophenoxyacetic acid into Ess Pu’s ventilator. The stuff must have got into everything, including the sphyghi.”
“Trichloro-what? Ye mean ye gimmicked the sphyghi before the pool?”
“Certainly. I told you the pool was a later by-product. My goal at first was simply to get Ess Pu in trouble on Xeria to save my own valuable person. Luckily I had a fair supply of various hormones with me. This particular one, as the merest child should know, bypasses the need for cross-pollination.
Through a law of biology the results will always be seedless fruit. Ask any horticulturist. It’s done all the time.”
“Seedless fruit—” Ramsay said blankly. “Cross-pollin-och, aye! Veel, I’ll be dommed.”
A modest disclaimer was no doubt on Macduff’s lips, but his eye was caught by the two comedians and he paused, cigar lifted, regarding them. The shorter of the two was now strutting in a wide circle, gesturing like one who smokes a cigar with great self-importance. His companion whooped wildly and beat him over the head.
“Tell me this, brother!” he cried in a shrill falsetto. “Who was that penguin I seen you with last night?”
“That wasn’t no penguin,” the strutter giggled happily. “That was a Venusian!” Simultaneously he gestured, and a spotlight sprang like a tent over Macduff’s shrinking head.
“What! What? How dare you!” screamed the outraged Macduff, recovering his voice at last amid ripples of laughter. “Libellous defamation of-of-I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” A repressed snort came from the Captain. The ruffled Macduff glared around furiously, rose to his full height and seized Ao’s hand.
“Ignore them,” Ramsay suggested in an unsteady voice. “After all, ye canna deny ye’re Venusian by species, Macduff, even though ye insist ye were hatched in Glasga’-Borrn, I mean. Aye, ye’re Scots by birth and humanoid by classification, are ye na? And no more a penguin than I’m a monkey.”
But Macduff was already marching toward the door. Ao trailed obediently after, casting back angelic looks at the Lesser Vegan male.
“Outrageous!” said Macduff.
“Come back, man,” Ramsay called, suppressing a wild .whoop. “Remember the abstract art of impairsonation. ‘Tis a mere matter of semantics—”
His voice went unheard. Macduff’s back was an indignant ramrod. Towing Ao, his bottle-shaped figure stiff with dignity, Terence Lao-T’se Macduff vanished irrevocably into the Lesser Vegan night, muttering low.
For Macduff, as should be evident by now to the meanest intellect,‘was not all he claimed to be.
“Tush,” said Captain Ramsay, his face split by a grin, “that I should ha’ seen the day! Waiter! A whusky-and-soda-no more of this nosty champagne. I am celebrating a red-letter occasion, a phenomenon of nature. D’ye ken this is probably the first time in Macduff’s life that the unprincipled scoundrel has taken his departure withoot leaving some puir swindled sucker behind?
“D’ye-eh? What’s that? What bill, ye daft loon? Pah, it was Macduff who insisted I be his guest tonight. Och, I-ah-eh- “Dom!”
By which we mean the reader who skipped all the science, elementary as it was, in this chronicle.
EXIT THE PROFESSOR
We Hogbens are right exclusive. That Perfesser feller from the city might have known that, but he come busting in without an invite, and I don’t figger he had call to complain afterward. In Kaintuck the polite thing is to stick to your own bill of beans and not come nosing around where you’re not wanted.
Time we ran off the Haley boys with that shotgun gadget we rigged up-only we never could make out how it worked, somehow-that time, it all started because Rafe Haley come peeking and prying at the shed winder, trying to get a look at Little Sam. Then Rafe went round saying Little Sam had three haids or something.
Can’t believe a word them Haley boys say. Three haids! It ain’t natcheral, is it? Anyhow, Little Sam’s only got two haids, and never had no more since the day he was born.
So Maw and I rigged up that shotgun thing and peppered the Haley boys good. Like I said, we couldn’t figger out afterward how it worked. We’d tacked on some dry cells and a lot of coils and wires and stuff and it punched holes in Rafe as neat as anything.
Coroner’s verdict was that the Haley boys died real sudden, and Sheriff Abernathy come up and had a drink of corn with us and said for two cents he’d whale the tar outa me. I didn’t pay no mind. Only some damyankee reporter musta got wind of it, because a while later a big, fat, serious-looking man come around and begun to ask questions.
Uncle Les was sitting on the porch, with his hat over his face. “You better get the heck back to your circus, mister,” he just said. “We had offers from old Barnum hisseif and turned ’em down. Ain’t that right, Saunk?”
“Sure is,” I said. “I never trusted Phineas. Called Little Sam a freak, he did.”
The big solemn-looking man, whose name was Perfesser Thomas Galbraith, looked at me. “How old are you, son?” he said.
“I ain’t your son,” I said. “And I don’t know, nohow.”
“You don’t look over eighteen,” he said, “big as you are. You couldn’t have known Barnum.”
“Sure I did. Don’t go giving me the lie. I’ll wham you.”
“I’m not connected with any circus,” Galbraith said. “I’m a biogeneticist.”
We sure laughed at that. He got kinda mad and wanted to know what the joke was.
“There ain’t no such word,” Maw said. And at that point Little Sam started yelling, and Gaibraith turned white as a goose wing and shivered all over. He sort of fell down. When we picked him up, he wanted to know what had happened.
“That was Little Sam,” I said. “Maw’s gone in to comfort him. He’s stopped now.”