"You're nothing but a flaming trouble-maker, Duffield, that's your trouble," the sergeant said angrily.
He pushed through the men, heading for C Deck. Mocking cheers followed him into the corridor.
Two watches later, Quilter, armed with hose and brush, entered the cage containing the two ETA's.
They sprouted their limbs and moved to the far end of the confined space, watching him hopefully.
"This is the last clean-out you guys are going to get from me," Quilter told them. "At the end of this watch, I'm joining the walk-out, just to demonstrate my solidarity with the Space Corps. After this, as far as I'm concerned, you can sleep in crap as deep as the Pacific.”
With the fun-loving ebullience of youth, he turned the hose on to them.
CHAPTER FOUR
The news editor of the Windsor Circuit struck the pedal bar of his technivision and scowled at the representation of his chief reporter's face as it appeared on the screen.
"Where the hell are you, Adrian? Get down to the bloody spaceport as you were told. The Mariestopes is due within half an hour.”
The left half of Adrian Bucker's countenance screwed itself into a wince. He leant nearer to his screen until his nose opaqued and the vision misted and said, "Don't be like that, Ralph. I've got a local angle on the trip that you'll fairly lap up.”
"I don't want a local angle, I want you down at that ruddy spaceport right away, my lad.”
Bucker winced the right side of his face and began talking fast.
"Listen, Ralph. I'm in "The Angel's Head' - the pub right on the Thames. I've got an old girl here called Florence Walthamstone. She's lived in Windsor all her life, remembers when the Great Park was a park, all that sort of stuff. She's got a nephew called Rodney Walthamstone who's a rating on the Mariestopes.
She's just been showing me a letter from him in which he describes these alien animals they're bringing home, and I thought that if we ran a picture of her, with a quote from the letter - you know, Local Lad Helps Capture Those Monsters - it would look -”
"That's enough, I've heard enough. This thing's the biggest news of the decade and you imagine we need a local angle to put it over? Give the old girl her letter back, thank her very much for the offer, pay for her drink, pat her dear wrinkled cheeks, and then get down to that bloody spaceport and interview Bargerone or I'll have your skin for flypaper.”
"Okay, okay, Ralph, have it the way you want it. There was a time when you were open to suggestions." Having cut the circuit, Bucker added, "And I've got one I could make right now.”
He pushed out of the booth, and jostled his way through a heavy-bodied, heavy-drinking mass of men and women to a tall old woman crushed into the corner of the bar. She was lifting a glass of dark brown to her lips, her little finger genteelly cocked at an angle.
"Was your editor excited?" she asked, splashing slightly.
"Stood on his head. Look, Miss Walthamstone, I'm sorry about this, but I've got to get down to the spaceport. Perhaps we can do a special interview with you later. Now I've got your number; don't bother to ring us, we'll ring you, right, eh? Very nice to meet you.”
As he gulped the last of his drink down, she said, "Oh, but you ought to let me pay for that one, Mr. -”
"Very kind of you, if you insist, very kind, Miss Walthamstone. 'Bye then.”
He flung himself among the filling stomachs. She called his name. He looked back furiously from the middle of the fray.
"Have a word with Rodney if you see him. He'd be ever so glad to tell you anything. He's a very nice boy.”
He fought his way to the door, muttering, "Excuse me, excuse me," over and over, like a curse.
The reception bays at the spaceport were crowded. Ordinary and extraordinary citizens packed every roof and window. In a roped-off section of the tarmac stood representatives of various governments, including the Minister for Martian Affairs, and of various services, including the Director of the London Exozoo. Beyond the enclosure, the band of a well-known regiment, uniformed in anachronistically bright colors, marched about playing Suppers Light Cavalry Overture and selections of Irish melodies. Ice cream was hawked, newspapers were sold, pockets were picked. The Mariestopes slid through a layer of nimbostratus and settled on its haunches in a distant part of the field.
It began to rain.
The band embarked on a lively rendering of the twentieth-century air "Sentimental Journey" without adding much luster to the proceedings. As such occasions usually are, this occasion was dull, its interest diffused. The spraying of the entire hull of the ship with germicidal sprays took some while. A hatch opened, a little overalled figure appeared in the opening, was cheered, and disappeared again. A thousand children asked if that was Captain Bargerone and were told not to be silly.
At length a ramp came out like a reluctant tongue and lolled against the ground. Transport - three small buses, two trucks, an ambulance, various luggage tenders, a private car. and several military vehicles - converged on to the great ship from different parts of the port. And finally a line of human beings began to move hastily down the ramp with bowed heads and dived into the shelter of the vehicles. The crowd cheered; it had come to cheer.
In a reception hall, the gentlemen of the press had made the air blue with the smoke of their mescahales before Captain Bargerone was thrust in upon them. Flashes sizzled and danced as he smiled defensively at them.
With some of his officers standing behind him, he stood and spoke quietly and unsensationally in a very English way (Bargerone was French) about how much space there was out there and how many worlds there were and how devoted his crew had been except for an unfortunate strike on the way home for which someone, he hoped, was going to get it hot; and he finished by saying that on a very pleasant planet which the USGN had graciously decided should be known as Clementina they had captured or killed some large animals with interesting characteristics. Some of these characteristics he described. The animals had two heads, each of which held a brain. The two brains together weighed 2,000 grammes - a quarter more than man's. These animals, ETA's or rhinomen, as the crew called them, had six limbs which ended in undoubted equivalents of hands. Unfortunately the strike had hindered the study of the remarkable creatures, but there seemed a fair reason to suppose that they had a language of their own and must therefore, despite their ugliness and dirty habits, be regarded as more or less - but of course nobody could be certain as yet, and it might take many months of patient research before we could be certain - as an intelligent form of life on a par with man and capable of having a civilization of their own, on a planet as yet unknown to man. Two of them were preserved in captivity and would go to the Exozoo for study.
When the speech was over, reporters closed round Bargerone.
"You're saying these rhinos don't live on Clementina?”
"We have reason to suppose not.”
"What reason?”
("Smile for the Subud Times, please, Captain.") "We think they were on a visit there, just as we were.”
"You mean they travelled in a spaceship?”
"In a sense, yes. But they may just have been taken along on the trip as experimental animals - or dumped there, like Captain Cook's pigs dumped on Tahiti or wherever it was.”
("More profile, Captain, if you please.") "Well, did you see their spaceship?”
"Er well, we think we actually have ... er, their space-ship in our hold.”