The man with wispy hair nodded. Then he said to Lucy, "Don't worry. You brought us something we want to look at. If the Greks overwhelmed you with presents and then asked about it. . . . But I can't figure why their gratitude's so great only after so long an interval. Anyhow, we're your confederates in whatever you've done. We won't tell on you!"
Lucy tried to smile, but she was extremely uneasy.
"Mysterious characters, the Greks," said Clark. "They've got the atomic boys tearing their hair. They have some bombs planted under the ship. Naturally, they made arrangements for testing the firing circuits. And they did, even after the Greks began to act benevolent. That's mysterious, when you think of it! Why are they so kind to us? Anyhow, the firing circuits don't work. The bombs couldn't be set off if somebody wanted to. The Greks have done something to them without bothering to dig them up. The atomic people don't like that."
He turned down the music from the television set. It had seemed to Hackett rather worse than the average noises of that kind. But perhaps this was especially in honor of the Greks, too.,
"I'm not too confident," said Clark, worriedly. "They're smart! They might have garbage-disposal units that will spoil their wastes as a source of information. And it'll be too late to picket the ship with signs saying, 'Greks are Unfair to Garbage Analysts.' "
He smiled and said reassuringly to Lucy, "But don't worry. We're going to look for information the Greks don't want us to have. Which is ingratitude, but very much like us humans. Are you two going to the ball?"
Hackett shook his head. He was deeply uneasy. His pride had been hurt by the Greks' disqualification of him for instruction in their science. He didn't believe in Grek science, yet there was something about it which mystified everybody who tried to grasp it. Now he was baffled and made acutely uneasy by the sudden excessive gratitude of the Greks for an action which—as Lucy verified—had not caused a glance or a gesture of appreciation in the hospital.
Time went on. The television music went off. There was a commercial, especially designed as a tribute to the Greks, about to leave Earth enriched behind them. It promised that when better power receivers were made, so-and-so would make them. Meanwhile it urged listeners to wait until the receivers could be put on the market. There was more sponsored entertainment, adulating the Greks.
An hour after the first special bulletin, the line appeared on the screen again. There was a second announcement of the ardent desire of the Greks to reward Hackett and Lucy for their kindness to an injured crewman. Behind the announcer's voice there were resonant sounds. Voices. Footsteps. A musical instrument hooted briefly. The farewell party for the Greks was about to begin.
"I think," said Hackett, "that if I could get Lucy a couple of thousand miles away tonight, I'd do it. Since I can't, I want to keep her and myself out of sight until the Greks are gone. I don't know why."
"Be our guests," said Clark cheerfully. "We aren't advertising our intentions. The Greks might not like them. We're co-conspirators. Be our guests."
Hackett was disturbed. He couldn't fully account to himself for his point of view about this affair. Now, of course, we can see why he should have thought this way. It wasn't reasonable for a highly advanced race like the Greks to take the trouble they'd done for a backward and practically uncivilized world like ours. There could be no possible way for us to return their kindness. It wasn't even sensible of them to be so generous, so it was foolish for us to believe in their overwhelming benevolence.
But we did. We did! We were the prize imbeciles of the galaxy.
4
There were farewell parties all over Earth that night. The departure time for the Grek ship had been arranged so the maximum number of television receivers could show the spectacle live. That meant, naturally, that it should occur during daylight on the western hemisphere. So it was scheduled for noon by Eastern Standard Time, in the United States. People on the west coast wouldn't have to get up too early to watch the more-than-historical event, and people in western Europe wouldn't have gone to bed. The rest of the world would see the show taped and edited twelve hours later.
But the farewell parties were something else. They varied with the longitude of the place where they occurred.
Not all of them were carried even in part on the satellite-relay news coverage system. In India they tended to be uninhibited. In Africa they were hypnotic, rythmic, and emotional. There was a Greek party which was almost frigidly intellectual, and in Germany it was said that more beer was drunk in less time by more people than ever before joined in a single celebration. The British parties featured a wire-carried address by the prime minister (with political overtones), and the French festivities caused a cabinet crisis on the morning after, though the party itself was a social success. The Russians staged a parade through Red Square, with torches making a magnificent picture. The Scandinavian parties were gargantuan banquets, the Austrialian ones featured athletes of national stature, and in the United States— The parties reflected the national mores. There was no motion picture or television star unoccupied on the night of the farewell for the Greks. There were few outstanding politicians who didn't manage to appear on some broadcast at some time, someplace. There were great wingdings held wherever space could be found for more than a thousand couples to dance. There were overflow parties at smaller dancing places, and the number of private celebrations was never even guessed at.
The party at the departure site, though, was stupendous. Everybody was celebrating in an all-pervading emotional binge the fact that everybody was now a millionaire, or would be as soon as a few formalities wore done with. It was settled; it was certain; it was fixed in the pattern of the future that as soon as things became a little more organized, nobody would work more than one day a week, nobody would work at all after forty, and everybody would have everything that anybody else had.
There was so far no very clear idea of what people would do with their new leisure, and nobody seemed to wonder about the consequences of being deprived of all objects for ambition. Each person seemed to feel as if he'd inherited at least a million dollars, which would be paid him next week or, at the latest, the week after. The prospect required celebration.
So the party at the departure site was a brawl from the beginning.
Down in the small shed under the grandstand, Hackett watched the television screen from beneath frowning brows. The vast plank dance floor was hardly visible because of the people on it. The music for dancing was nearly inaudible, because of the clamor of voices and the scrape of feet upon the wooden floor. The sound was a babbling through which, at intervals, the boom of a bass horn made its way, and rather more often the disconnected and bizarre notes of a trumpet.
The television camera angle changed. It showed a TV star signing autographs. It changed again. There was a drunk—this early in the evening—trying to do a particularly fancy dance. There was a clear space around him. Back to a long shot with a wide-angle lens, showing thousands upon thousands of people moving more or less in rhythm, but certainly not hearing the music, certainly not mingling, yet somehow convinced that they were having a good time.
"I don't think we're missing anything," said Hackett, "by not being there."
Lucy nodded, but she was inattentive. She seemed to be listening to other sounds.
"There," said the sandy-haired Clark, sadly, "there is the basic problem of the human race. We'll adjust to it eventually, and maybe it will be worth the price we pay. But I wonder!"