Hackett said deliberately, "You're very careful not to express any suspicion of the Greks. I've tried not to feel any, but I do. It occurs to me that they're making a very timely flit. They've been aground for six months. They've done marvelous things for us, yes. But- the side effects of those marvelous things are beginning to show up. If the Greks stayed on, they'd be blamed for them. If they go away, their departure will seem the cause of any troubles we may have."
The sandy-haired man nodded. "You mean unemployment?"
Hackett said angrily, "Worldwide, it's now twenty per cent, and getting worse. Factories have to shut down to retool for the products we want because we couldn't make them before. But nobody's making the products we need right along. Only one car in eight is a Grek designed broadcast-power job, but no more gasoline cars are being turned out. That's raising the number of people on unemployment. The bottom has dropped out of all fuel industries, though there aren't enough broadcast-power receivers to keep things going. The crops look as if they'll be so big—"
He stopped. People came along the walkway outside, having descended the stairs from the grandstands. They came in, several men and two women. One of the women was Clark's wife. The other was a young girl. They already looked exhausted. Clark's wife exclaimed at the sight of Hackett, and her husband said, "I know! I know! He's been paged. But it's all taken care of. Only he doesn't want reporters hounding him for a human-interest story on how it feels to rescue an Aldarian. How's the party?"
"Horrible!"
The opinion was unanimous. The newcomers sat down and described the party. It could be seen better on television, and anything was preferable to actually being there. Hackett hardly listened. He watched Lucy. She seemed panic-stricken.
He told her, "You're supposedly wanted for praise and presents, so nobody'll tell on you. If the Greks called you a criminal, it might be another matter; but nobody'll turn you in to be praised."
It was true. Gradually her apprehension lessened. The television showed scenes from the Rio de Janeiro farewell' party. From Amsterdam. The Pacific Coast party. That broadcast fairly dripped publicity plugs for motion pictures or television series, mentioned by the picture people who crowded common citizens off the camera.
Hackett heard somebody saying, "It's really weird! I saw one of the texts. Of course the Greks' idea of grammar is out of this world, but the book starts off lucidly, and gradually it begins to get fuzzy, and then tricky, and all of a sudden you're reading pure gibberish. And in your own line, too!"
It was one of the men who'd come down from the party, talking about a Grek scientific treatise. Hackett reflected that other people had the same trouble understanding the Greks.
Minutes later someone else was saying, "It's fantastic! The worst unemployment situation in history, and people who do have jobs are staying home, because soon they won't have to work more than eight hours a week."
The television announced a speech by a frequent Presidential candidate. Its climax was the introduction of the commander of the Grek ship. He was larger than a man, and he sat in a chair that was very intricately worked. His skin was a moderately light gray and singularly inflexible, as if composed of smooth plates. He bent his head in recognition of the literally deafening applause and cheering his appearance evoked.
He waited it out without expression. Then, when miniature human figures appeared before his image, waving and gesticulating for silence, he touched a small button on the side of his chair.
"He's on the ship!" said someone in astonishment. "They're rebroadcasting a projection, and he's on the ship!"
Someone else said, "He's at a good many thousands of parties. Listen!"
A human voice spoke. It changed. Another voice spoke. The effect was bewildering. But the way the Greks communicated with humans had been explained often enough. Their original breakthrough to human speech had been the rebroadcast of six human words from all the tens of thousands that had been beamed at the ship when it was alongside the moon. Then the Greks had required no more than two days to acquire a vocabulary of recorded human voices speaking individual words. They combined those words into phrases and sentences. The speech of the Grek commander to the people of Earth was an aggregation of some thousands of words spoken at different times by hundreds of human voices. It was not recorded in any ordinary sense. It was assembled from recordings.
The effect was without inflection or expression. It sounded inhuman. It even sounded creepy.
The gray-skinned, impassive figure of the Grek commander—if it were the Grek commander—sat motionless while his message to the people of Earth was delivered in their voices for them to hear.
The speech ended. The screen in the tarpaper shack went blank, as did the giant projection screens at the departure site party and all the other screens of all sizes and sorts all over the Earth. Then ardently enthusiastic figures leaped up to act as cheerleaders of the screaming uproar arising in honor of the Grek.
The parties, after that, were essentially anticlimatic. The television screens stayed alight and professionally interesting commentators poured out thousands of words of description and background. But the life had gone out of the parties after the Grek commander vanished.
Clark's wife announced firmly that she was not going back to that outrageous cubbyhole to sleep. There was no ventilation! She would sleep here, in a chair. The young girl agreed with her. It seemed perfectly reasonable for Lucy to make the same decision.
Hackett went outside with the other men, to smoke. Long narrow stripes of moonlight came down between the seat planks of the grandstand. Braces and beams and stiffening struts formed a peculiar ceiling to the space below them.
A figure in uniform came over from the bulldozer shed. It was the Army officer in charge of the earth-moving machinery. Clark told him of the underground noise indicating that a Grek garbage pit had been filled and tamped down. The officer nodded. He wasn't surprised.
There was nothing in particular to be done. They talked desultorily, waiting for sunrise. When that came, they'd wait for lift-off time. After that, they'd wait for the crowds to leave. Then the bulldozers would dig up the atom bombs and try to find out what had happened to their firing mechanisms so that on test they reported dead. The bombs couldn't be exploded.
But Hackett found himself very much inclined to jitter. He wanted the Greks gone from Earth. So did the Army officer. So did the unofficial Rogers University archaeological expedition. The Greks had given humanity the equivalent of centuries of painstaking research and development. They were leaving Earth while human gratitude was at its peak. Everybody expected that from now on—or as soon as things were organized—nobody would have to do anything to justify his existence. It seemed an infinitely alluring prospect to most people. Hackett said so, sourly.
"But personally," he added with distaste, "what bothers me is that I apparently won't be allowed to justify my existence."
The Army officer made a scornful noise. "For real frustration," he said bitterly, "you might try how it feels to know that all you've trained for and built your fife on is about as useful as a hole in the head."
He spoke savagely of the Greks' having made the military capable of nothing but the production of disaster, instead of the defense of their country, or even their race.
"It looks to me," said Hackett, "as if a lot of us are ungrateful for what most of our fellow humans most desire."