said to Mr. Armstrong.
'I'm Mr. Satyrus' valley,' Ape Bates said. Mr. Armstrong stared at them. 'This is very funny, I know,' he said. 'It may cease to be so at any moment. Kindly remember that you are enlisted men to the armed forces, and subject to court-martial.' 'I don't see no officers present,' Ape Bates said. Mr. Armstrong had the grace to blush. 'Now, Mem,' he said. 'Or Satyrus if you prefer. Playtime is over. You did something to the controls of that spaceship, the Mem-sahib. All right, all right, I don't care for the name, either. What you did was not an accident. We — the government of your country—'
'No,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Not my country. Do primates, other than Homo sapiens, have a vote? Can a gorilla be President, a macaque governor, a rhesus Secretary of State?'
'My God,' Mr. Armstrong said, 'you're demanding votes for monkeys.'
The man on his right had been busily cleaning a pipe. Now he laid it on the table. 'Okay. Any monkeys or apes that get to be twenty-one and can pass 3 literacy test, they vote.' 'Very funny,' Pan Satyrus said. The man took up his pipe and another cleaner. 'But that is what we are here for,' Mr. Armstrong said. 'To find out your price for disclosing this very important secret to us, and to get it for you, if it is within reason.' 'Chimpanzees are not subject to human desires.'
'Then we are prepared to fill some chimpanzee desires. A cage full of luscious young females? A daily carload of bananas? Name it.'
Pan Satyrus laughed his alarming laugh.
'You may also — since you seem quite intelligent-have sensed that the atmosphere in this room is not quite like that of some other places where you have been. We are neither security guards nor politicians here. If it is clear, in our opinion, that you are not, at any price, going to cooperate, we are prepared to dispose of you, as humanely as possible, but as finally as possible, too. In other words, a gas chamber, a bullet, whatever is feasible.'
'Hold on, mister,' Ape Bates exclaimed.
The one of the three men who had not yet spoken spoke now. He barked, ''Ten-shun, Chief!'
Ape Bates came to attention; so did Happy Bronstein.
Pan Satyrus said, slowly, 'I have seen your face, sir. In the papers. You are the admiral the Navy hates.'
The third man chuckled slightly, and then was still.
'But you are intelligent,' Pan said. 'And nice looking. Given a little makeup you could pass for some species of giant gibbon. Do you think men ought to have the secret of faster-than-light travel?'
'I think, by and large, they'll have it sooner or later; much sooner, now that we know it is possible. And I think that if anybody is going to have it, our side should. Period.'
'Satyrus, you can talk,' Mr. Armstrong said. 'We cannot let you loose, or even confined to a cage, with this knowledge unless we are sure you are cooperative. At the level of animal keeper, security becomes improbable, if not impossible.'
'Has my spaceship been well examined?' Satyrus asked. 'Have you had a metallurgist go over it?'
Mr. Armstrong kept his steady eyes on Pan's. The admiral and the pipe cleaner looked up.
'You'll find Mendelev's law confirmed in a new way,' Pan went on. 'Each of the metals has moved up one notch in his scale. Alchemy, gents, alchemy.'
The unpopular admiral frowned. 'Better check, Armstrong,' he said.
Mr. Armstrong opened a drawer, took a microphone out of it, and held it to the corner of his mouth. He talked, apparently, but not a sound came out into the room. Then he put the microphone away.
'I think I know what this means, but someone fill me in, to be sure,' he said.
The man with the mustache said, 'Shoot up a load of copper, get back a load of gold.'
'I was up there quite a while,' Pan said. 'I had to do something to occupy myself. Weightlessness and idleness don't go together in the chimpanzee's cosmos. I did not, however, expect to retrogress, or devolute, or devolve. Or I wouldn't have been so damned playful.'
'You're not amusing us,' Mr, Armstrong said.
'No,' the admiral put in. 'If this gets out, gold isn't worth anything at all.'
Pan Satyrus sat down on the floor and began grooming himself. 'I'm hungry.'
'Too bad,' Armstrong said. He began to grin, slightly.
Dr. Bedoian pushed forward. 'If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, forget it. I have been handling chimpanzees — and other primates — quite a while. There comes a point where that sort of thing only makes them more rebellious. To the point of suicide.'
The man with the mustache said, 'Young man, just which side are you on, anyway?'
'Oh, I'm loyal enough. But Pan Satyrus is my patient. And I don't believe anyone else here is a primate expert.'
'And you are?'
'Mr. Armstrong, if I'm not, the government wasted several years of salary on me. Believe me, there comes a time in a chimpanzee's life when he rebels. And Pan Satyrus here is mighty close to it.'
'Then you advise — extinction.'
The croaking bellow of Chief Bates filled the room. 'That's murder.'
The admiral said, coldly, 'As you were, Chief. The disposal of an animal — government property — is hardly murder.'
The old chief stood his ground. 'Pan ain't an animal.'
Happy Bronstein took his cue from the chief. 'I wasn't brought up to be a sea lawyer, but I'd sure hate to shoot a chimpanzee who talked. You'd be in the brig for years, while the lawyers tried to decide was it murder or not. Pan, here, is a person.'
Pan Satyrus pulled himself to his full four feet six. 'I am not,' he said.
Silence fell across the star chamber.
CHAPTER EIGHT
No qualified person thinks that man is descended from any existing anthropoid ape.
Flying up to New York, I was not easy in my mind. That Iggie Napoli, my assistant, was too smart. So now he had my mobile unit and my mike, and if any kind of story broke in Florida while I was away, he would go on the air. And who could fail to remember a man named Ignatz Napoli? I had spent more than ten years teaching them to remember Bill Dunham, but Iggie could do it in two interviews, if they were good ones.
So here I went, back to the front office to report, and not at all happy.
My story on the chimponaut was a beat, all right, an old-fashioned scoop, but I hadn't dominated the interview — Pan Satyrus had. And in this business, you limp once, and somebody bites both legs off and sends you a bunch of roses because they're so sorry you're not feeling well.
I took a cab at the airport. I wasn't in any mood to ride with the schnooks in the regular bus. New York, when we came out of the tunnel, looked just the same, everybody hurrying, everybody wrapped up in himself. The elevator starter at the network building remembered me, and I began to feel a little better.
Those guys are the first ones to get the word when the sling has been rigged.
'Take Mr. Dunham right up,' he told the operator, and my spirits went up without mechanical help. Thirty- second, Mr. Dunham?'
'Thirty-second,' I said, and slipped him a five, He said he was glad to see me back.
No sling today.
Yep. Little pretty-thighs on the reception table had a big row of teeth ready for me and a look down her cleavage. You can always tell how high you are in the network by how deep you can see. She must practice all night; I don't know when she sleeps, though I know with whom, usually…
And whooo-whoppie — here I am, with two vice presidents and an exec, and the bottle coming out, and
