Happy Bronstein shook his head sadly. 'Not even torpedo juice, Mem. I mean, Ape.'
'Call me Pan,' the chimp said. 'The Latin name for my people is Pan Satyrus.' He smiled, a little wistfully. 'There was a metal sign on my mother's cage that said that. When I was a little ape, I thought it was her name.'
Ape Bates said: 'Ah, to hell wit' it. If I'm rude, Mr. Satyrus, I'm rude; I bin a torpedoman twenty-five years. I wanna know: where did you learn how to talk?'
Pan Satyrus laughed. 'How could a direct question be rude, Chief? Why, I've known how to talk— and read for that matter — since I was two. I just never saw the need for it till today, when I found myself up in that spaceship with the cute name, and a flea inside my suit.'
Yeoman First Dilling said: I'll be damned. Can all your people talk if they want to?'
'I suppose so. I never really thought about it'.
'Okay,' Happy Bronstein said, 'okay. But that all chimps — chimpanzees — Pan satiricals or what not — can pound out good International on a broken wire, that I do not swallow.'
'Was my fist good?' Pan asked. 'I'm out of practice. Back when I was still with Mother, the night keeper used to practice. He wanted to get a job in the merchant marine. I'd drum on the cage floor in time with him.'
The messmen, after some whispered discussion in the galley, were serving chow. Pan Satyrus took a French roll, broke it in two, and swallowed the halves, one at a time. 'No fresh fruit, I suppose,' he said. 'It doesn't matter. I eat almost anything, having been with people all my life. I'm starving; they didn't give me any breakfast for fear I'd vomit in my helmet'.
'Bring the gent a can of peaches, boy,' Ape said. The messman scurried. 'Pan, I like you. You gonna keep on talking?'
Pan Satyrus set down the strawberry jam he had been eating with a spoon. 'Ape,' he said slowly, 'that is a very good question. I don't seem to be able to stop. You see, I think I made a mistake, going around the world as fast as I did, in the direction I did. I should have stayed with the natural, or west-to-east direction. I think I have retrogressed!'
Happy Bronstein said: 'You what?'
'Maybe that's not the right word,' Pan said. His dark eyes were gloomy. 'Whatever the opposite of evolution is.'
'I got a dictionary in my office,' the yeoman said, but nobody was listening to him.
'You see, chimpanzees are more advanced than humans,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Which isn't a nice way to talk considering I'm your guest, but the truth is the truth. Only — I read it over Dr. Bedoian's shoulder, once when I was ill and he was nursing me — a man named Einstein had a theory about very fast travel, faster than the speed of light, and what it does to travellers.'
'You can't travel faster than light,' Bronstein said.
Pan Satyrus said: 'I'm afraid I did. You see, they kept putting me in that capsule, or spaceship, or what not.' He shuddered, chimpanzee-style, his fur standing straight up all over him. 'For rehearsals, dry runs. I had nothing to do, and I kept studying the circuits. As soon as I was aloft, I changed them.'
'I don't get it,' Ape said.
'I have retrogressed,' Pan Satyrus said. For no apparent reason he reached out and patted Ape Bates's hand, kindly. 'Yes, I am sure that is the word. Not devoluted. I have an irresistible compulsion to talk, you see. I have always thought of it as Adam's curse.' He sighed.
Nobody seemed to understand him but Ape Bates. The old Chief said, 'You could join the Navy. It ain't so bad at sea. From what Bronstein says, you could make Radioman 2nd right off, maybe First.'
'I'm only seven and a half,' the chimpanzee said. 'They wouldn't take me.' 'Not even with your parents' consent,' said the yeoman, though nobody listened.
'Anyway,' Pan Satyrus said, 'the uniform isn't exactly suitable for a chimpanzee.'
'I know what you mean,' Bronstein said. 'I saw a picture of Bates before he made chief.'
There was a twittering, a ringing, and then a voice now-hear-thising. 'All hands to the flight deck! All hands to the flight deck!'
'I suppose I'm a hand,' Pan Satyrus said. 'I'd certainly not like to think of myself as four feet.'
But the chief's mess didn't hear him; they were trotting to the flight deck and their duty. He finished the last of his canned peaches and strolled after them, his knuckles rapping gently on the steel deck with each step.
The ship's company was already lined up at parade rest when he got to the flight deck. They were lined up by divisions or companies or however the Navy lines up; none of his keepers had ever read sea stories, so he couldn't be sure.
The Mem-sahib had been hauled to one side of the deck, and he sauntered over and leaned on it, and watched the apparent cause of the turn out, or hornpipe or lashup, or whatever it was the sailors were doing. A helicopter was approaching the Cooke.
While he watched he scratched himself thoroughly, enjoying turning his fur up to the tropic breezes. His alert and educated fingernail finally located the flea that had caused him to abort the flight of the Mem-sahib and he crushed it with pleasure. He would be glad to get back to White Sands; Florida was definitely pro-flea and anti- chimp country.
Yawning, he watched the helicopter, a little critically. For the past five and a half years he had been stationed at Air Force and NASA installations. He had even done a little duty for the AEC at Los Alamos, where the doctor had been good and the food terrible; they seemed to think a chimp cared for nothing but cold storage bananas.
Yes, since leaving his mother, he had seen an awful lot of helicopters land. Noisy devils, and poorly designed. And without any real function. Most transportation was that way; it took someone from where he was doing nothing useful and hurried him to be useless elsewhere. Walking, climbing, swinging made some sense; you felt better after you'd done them.
There! The helicopter was safely on the deck. The pilot secured his motors, and men in queerly-colored outfits ran forward and tied him down. Yep, secure. He had had a Navy doctor at Holloman who was always telling people to secure things, which seemed to mean to leave them alone.
Those officers over there were saluting. He knew all about ranks, uniforms, grades, rate of pay. He had heard a lot about Government service, both civilian and in uniform. That was a full lieutenant and a j.g. saluting. That was an admiral — whoops, ADMIRAL — getting out of the chopper. And a Navy doctor, CDR. And two civilians, who looked like keepers. Keepers, nowadays, wanted to be known as Attendants (Simian) but they were still keepers to him, and they came all ways, from mean to very nice.
That yeoman whom nobody listened to was taking the Admiral's picture now.
Pan Satyrus smoothed his fur and strolled forward, rolling his knuckles on the deck.
The Admiral saw him first. He stopped posing for his picture and pointed. 'There's the ape! Why haven't you secured him. Mister?'
The Navy doctor turned and said something to one of the keepers, who scurried back into the chopper.
Pan Satyrus said, 'Oh, they didn't have to secure me, Admiral. I enjoyed talking to the men. I had lunch in the Chiefs' mess.'
'Chiefs don't eat lunch,' the admiral said. 'They eat dinner and supper. Officers eat lunch.'
Pan Satyrus shrugged and turned away. There was absolutely no point in talking to this man; it could go on for years, and get no place. Like airplanes and helicopters — and spaceships named Mem-sahib.
The civilian was back, Pan Satyrus noticed, starting to turn away. And then he turned back, fast. He knew what the man was carrying: a strait jacket and a tranquilizer gun. 'Put those things away,' he said. 'I don't like to look at them.'
The admiral barked, 'Shoot, man, shoot. If you think I'm going to ride with an unchained ape!'
The keeper hesitated. 'This is just a tranquilizer, sir,' he said. 'It don't knock them out.'
Pan Satyrus decided to growl. When he finished he beat his chest a bit, as he had seen a man do on television, when the man was playing a gorilla.
'Maybe you'd better secure that gun, Nelson,' the doctor said.
'Secure the ape,' the admiral said. Something was wrong here. Secure meant to leave alone and it also meant to do something about. Pan wished he'd had more chance to read sea stories, navy stories. He wondered whatever happened to the keeper who had wanted to be a merchant marine radio operator.
The admiral was admiralling again. He had turned to the full lieutenant. 'You the captain of this vessel? Fall
