out some men to secure that ape!'
'I wish you'd stop dwelling on my apehood, Admiral,' Pan said. 'I don't like being lumped with gorillas and orangs and gibbons. I am a chimpanzee, Pan Satyrus, chimp for short.' He scratched his head, and added: 'Sir.'
'You're talking,' the admiral said.
Pan Satyrus said, reasonably, he thought: 'So are you, Admiral.'
The admiral got red in the face. He said, 'Did you hear me, mister? Fall out some of your men and—'
The skipper was very straight at attention. 'Sir, I would have to ask for volunteers.'
'Do so.'
Pan howled again. He beat on the deck this time instead of on his chest. It made a very satisfactory noise.
The attendant who was holding the strait jacket wiped his face with it.
'I don't think you're going to get any volunteers,' Pan said.
The admiral said, 'Captain, order your master-at-arms to shoot that beast.'
Pan decided to stroll towards the admiral.
But then there was an interruption. A sailor with about the same insignia as Happy Bronstein, only with less stripes, came trotting up, saluted the admiral, and handed him a piece of paper. Radio message.
The admiral read it, and read it again. He wiped his face, though he didn't have a strait jacket to do it with. He said, 'Captain, belay that last order. Have your master-at-arms post a guard on the spaceship. No one is to enter it, repeat, no one. And no one is to talk to the. the pilot, either.'
Men went trotting around and lined up around the Mem-sahib.
Then Ape Bates started marching from where he had stood at the head of the torpedomen. He marched up to the admiral and saluted. 'Sir.' he said, 'I volunteer to stand guard over Mr. Satyrus there.'
The admiral looked at Ape. He seemed to be counting the stripes on his arm. 'Bates, aren't you, Chief?' the admiral said. 'We were together on the Howland.'
'Yes, sir. You was j.g. then, Admiral. I volunteer to stand guard on Mr. Satyrus.'
'Who?'
'Pan Satyrus there, sir, the chimp. That's what he likes to be called. Pan Satyrus, Mr. Satyrus.'
'Don't call him mister.'
'He's a pilot, ain't he? Ill stand guard an' see nobody talks to him till the security guys get here from shore.'
Pan Satyrus rocked on his knuckles, lifting his feet up from the deck. He really didn't care how long this went on. It was a lot more pleasant here than back at Cape Canaveral.
The admiral said, 'How did you know the security men were coming, Chief?'
Pan sympathized with Ape Bates, who looked as though he would like to scratch his head, a feeling Pan knew quite well, from being tied down in space capsules and pressure chambers and speed sleds. The Chief was clumsy answering. He said, finally, 'Well, at lu — at dinner, Pan said he fixed his spaceship so's it would go faster'n light. I figgered that signal you got said about that, and to keep guys away from the spaceship. And not to let no one talk to Mr. Satyrus.
That'd be a pretty good secret weapon, going faster than light.'
The admiral nodded. His face was just a normal red now. 'Trust an old chief,' he said. He cleared his throat. He said to the lieutenant, 'It's your vessel, Captain.'
The lieutenant said quickly, Take another volunteer with you, Chief. Admiral, we have coffee in the wardroom.'
'Radioman First Class Bronstein, volunteer,' Chief Bates said.
As Happy and Ape walked towards him, their faces very serious, the admiral and the skipper and the doctor went inside or below, or wherever men go on a ship.
The j.g. was dismissing the parade.
The two keepers tossed the strait jacket into the helicopter and went in after it and shut the door.
'Let's all go down to Ape's quarters, Pan,' Happy said. 'I couldn't promote anything to drink, but I got some lemonade and cookies up in the radio shack.'
They strolled across the emptying deck. Pan said, 'That will do very nicely. Is that admiral crazy, Ape?'
'If he wasn't before, he's a step closer now. How'd you like that crack about calling you mister cause you was a pilot? You gotta go to college to steer a plane in this lashup.'
'I don't think I like the admiral at all.'
'Pay it no heed, pal. It's the chiefs run the Navy.'
CHAPTER TWO
Security: (3)…a document giving the holder the right to demand and receive property not in his possession…
They were very happy in Chief Bates's quarters. Pan was learning that there was a funny thing about talking; when you got into conversation with a man, you forgot, after a while, how very different and peculiar looking men were, and they began to look like chimpanzees to you.
Of course, Ape Bates had had a good start, though he really looked a little more like a gorilla, a very young gorilla.
They didn't talk about the spaceship and the adjustments Pan had made in it. They steered way away from security matters. Ape told about how drunk he got once in China, and Happy told about a girl he had known in Villefranche, and Pan told them about the time a cageful of rhesus monkeys back at the zoo got into the keeper's whiskey bottle.
'Really, you know, the sex life of the rhesus monkey is enough to empty the primate house on a good Sunday,' he said. 'Or fill it, depending on the kind of crowd you're getting. But you ought to see them when they're drunk. My goodness.'
'Like seamen in San Diego after a long cruise,' Happy Bronstein said.
'I've never seen that,' Pan admitted. 'Maybe I will, if I ever get out of government service. There's a very nice zoo in San Diego.'
'I never got four blocks off the waterfront there,' Ape said. 'I missed a lotta opportunities in my time.'
'And you always will,' Happy Bronstein put in. 'You've been a sailor too long, You could put into any port in the world, and never get three blocks off the farm. That's what we call the stretch along the docks,' he added to Pan.
Ape said, 'Well, yeah, chiefs lead a funny life-Taking orders from any guy with the right ring on his finger. And, you know, I never met a chimp before, but I thought about 'em, believe it or not. I mean, there's something lousy about strapping a guy on a sled and seeing how fast he can go before he busts a blood vessel. Or like they, did to you this morning. That stinks.'
Happy Bronstein opened the door of Ape Bates's cabin and bawled, 'Pass the word for yeoman!' His voice echoed down through the ship. 'I got an idea.'
Yeoman First Class Dilling must have run all the way. The other petty officers so seldom wanted to talk to him that he felt as though he'd been in orbit himself. He burst in, 'Yeah, Happy, Ape?'
'What's the book on keeping a mascot?' Happy asked.
'Discretion of the skipper,' Dilling said, and stood there.
'Thanks,' Ape said. And when nobody said anything more, the yeoman's face fell and he went away again. When the door was closed — secured — Ape said, 'It might work.'
'You're bloody right,' Happy said. 'You ever know a skipper to turn down any reasonable request from the Chiefs' Mess?' Then he cleared his throat. 'We wouldn't treat you like a mascot, Pan. But you can't enlist. They let you in, the first thing you know, the Navy'd be crawling with seven-and-a-half year olds.'
