“Why can’t I?”
“It would be undignified.”
“I am aware of it,” said the ambassador, dryly. “Can you suggest an alternative?”
“We can send out a patrol to find someone more co-operative.”
“Someone better informed, too,” Captain Grayder offered. “At best we wouldn’t get much out of one surly hayseed. I doubt whether he knows a quarter of what we require to learn.”
“All right.” His Excellency abandoned the notion of doing his own chores. “Organize a patrol and let’s have some results.”
“A patrol,” said Colonel Shelton to Major Hame. “Nominate one immediately.”
“Call out a patrol,” Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. “At once.”
“Parade a patrol forthwith, sergeant major,” said Deacon.
Bidworthy went to the ship, climbed a ladder, stuck his head in the lock and bawled, “Sergeant Gleed, out with your squad, and make it snappy!” He gave a suspicious sniff and went farther into the lock. His voice gained several more decibels. “Who’s been smoking? By the Black Sack, if I catch—”
Across the fields something quietly went chuff-chuff while balloon tires crawled along.
The patrol formed by the right in two ranks of eight men each, turned at a barked command, marched off noseward. Their boots thumped in unison, their accoutrements clattered and the orange-colored sun made sparkles on their metal.
Sergeant Gleed did not have to take his men far. They had got one hundred yards beyond the battleship’s nose when he noticed a man ambling across the field to his right. Treating the ship with utter indifference, the newcomer was making toward the farmer still plowing far over to the left.
“Patrol, right wheel!” yelled Gleed. Marching them straight past the wayfarer, he gave them a loud about-turn and followed it with the high-sign.
Speeding up its pace, the patrol opened its ranks, became a double file of men tramping at either side of the lone pedestrian. Ignoring his suddenly acquired escort, the latter continued to plod straight ahead like one long convinced that all is illusion.
“Left wheel!” Gleed roared, trying to bend the whole caboodle toward the waiting ambassador.
Swiftly obedient, the double file headed leftward, one, two, three, hup! It was neat, precise execution, beautiful to watch. Only one thing spoiled it: the man in the middle maintained his self-chosen orbit and ambled casually between numbers four and five of the right-hand file.
That upset Gleed, especially since the patrol continued to thump ambassadorwards for lack of a further order. His Excellency was being treated to the unmilitary spectacle of an escort dumbly bootheating one way while its prisoner airily mooched another. Colonel Shelton would have plenty to say about it in due course, and anything he forgot Bidworthy would remember.
“Patrol!” hoarsed Gleed, pointing an outraged finger at the escapee, and momentarily dismissing all regulation commands from his mind. “Get that yimp!”
Breaking ranks, they moved at the double and surrounded the wanderer too closely to permit further progress. Perforce, he stopped.
Gleed came up, said somewhat breathlessly, “Look, the Earth Ambassador wants to speak to you—that’s all.”
The other said nothing, merely gazed at him with mild blue eyes. He was a funny looking bum, long overdue for a shave, with a fringe of ginger whiskers sticking out all around his pan. He resembled a sunflower.
“Are you going to talk with His Excellency?” Gleed persisted.
“Naw.” The other nodded toward the farmer. “Going to talk with Zeke.”
“The ambassador first,” retorted Gleed, toughly. “He’s a big noise.”
“I don’t doubt that,” remarked the sunflower.
“Smartie Artie, eh?” said Gleed, pushing his face close and making it unpleasant. He gave his men a gesture. “All right—shove him along. Well show him!”
Smartie Artie sat down. He did it sort of solidly, giving himself the aspect of a statue anchored for aeons. The ginger whiskers did nothing to lend grace to the situation. But Sergeant Gleed had handled sitters before, the only difference being that this one was cold sober.
“Pick him up,” ordered Gleed, “and carry him.”
They picked him up and carried him, feet first, whiskers last. He hung limp and unresisting in their hands, a dead weight. In this inauspicious manner he arrived in the presence of the Earth Ambassador where the escort plonked him on his feet.
Promptly he set out for Zeke.
“Hold him, darn you!” howled Gleed.
The patrol grabbed and clung tight. His Excellency eyed the whiskers with well-bred concealment of distaste, coughed delicately, and spoke.
“I am truly sorry that you had to come to me in this fashion.”
“In that case,” suggested the prisoner, “you could have saved yourself some mental anguish by not permitting it to happen.”
“There was no other choice. We’ve got to make contact somehow.”
“I don’t see it,” said Ginger Whiskers. “What’s so special about this date?”
“The date?” His Excellency frowned in puzzlement. “Where does that come in?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“The point eludes me.” The ambassador turned to Colonel Shelton. “Do you get what he’s aiming at?”
