'Caroline Kennedy'd be a WAVE,' Ape said.
'Nice little girl,' Pan said. 'I met her once.'
'No foolin',' Ape said. 'Yeah, I guess a guy in your position gets to meet all kinds of famous people. You wouldn't want to ship out on a DAC.'
'Is that what this ship is?' Pan asked.
'Oh, Jesus,' Happy said.
The other two looked at him. 'DAC's are secret,' be said. 'This is the prototype of the first one. They'd never have let Pan land here if they knew he could talk. Or have you been cleared and taken the loyalty oath and all?'
The chimpanzee shook his head. 'There really was never any opportunity.'
'Yeah. I can see that,' Ape said.
Feet beat a steel tattoo in the companionway; there was an official rap on the door. 'The joint is raided,' Happy said. 'I can smell copper through a steel bulkhead.'
'You got the eddication,' Ape said. He heaved himself off his bunk — he had given the two chairs which, as Master Chief Petty Officer he rated, to his visitors, and went to the door. 'This cabin's under guard,' he said.
'FBI,' a voice came back.
Ape opened the door cautiously. A hand came through, holding a card; Ape bent and read it, and opened the door.
Not one, but three cops came in. They all had cards in their left hands, guns in their right. They all wore tropical weight blue suits. They all looked pretty silly.
The one from the FBI said, 'I am Mr. Mac-Mahon. This is Mr. Crawford from NASA and this is Lieutenant Piquin from Naval Intelligence. If you men would leave us alone, we want to question this. this. Do you mind being called a chimpanzee?'
'Certainly not,' Pan Satyrus said.
'If you'd rather be called a man—'
'By no means.'
Special Agent MacMahon got a little red in the face. He looked from Happy to Ape and back again.
'Sorry, mister,' Ape said. 'The skipper said we was to guard Mr. Satyrus here, and he's the boss on this ship.'
'That is correct,' Lieutenant Piquin said, looking very efficient in his tropical weight suit.
The NASA man, Crawford, said, 'Well, Piquin, go see the captain and get him to countermand his orders. This is very high security.'
'These are not only my guards, but my friends,' Pan said. 'I don't know that I wish to talk to policemen, anyway. I'm not very fond of the law. When I was a very little chimp, not more than a year old, the police came and took away one of my very favorite keepers. He had been training the rhesus monkeys to distract the crowd on Sunday, so he could pick the men's pockets.'
'No matter how far uptown it is, rhesuses I gotta see,' Ape said.
Though Piquin had gone, the cabin was very crowded. Pan said, 'I don't know too much about firearms, gentlemen, but I do wish you'd stop waving those around. For one thing, we'd all have more room if you'd put your hands in your pockets.' He smiled, and added, 'Or I could swing from that pipe up there and give the floor space up to you.'
'Better not, Mr. Satyrus,' Happy said. 'That's a steampipe.'
'Thank you, Radioman First Class.'
Happy Bronstein smiled, too. It didn't alarm the security men nearly as much as Pan's smile had.
Pan said, 'Chief, offer your guests a seat, why don't you?'
MacMahon and Crawford put their.38s away and sat down on the bunk. Piquin came back then. 'The captain has given me the duty. The admiral concurs.'
'The duty?' Crawford asked.
'The ape duty,' Piquin said.
'Chimpanzee,' Pan Satyrus corrected, gently. 'You wouldn't like to be called a mammal or a vertebrate, would you? Neither should I, and yet we all are, aren't we?'
Piquin said, 'All right, Chief, you and the radioman here are dismissed. Carry on.'
Pan Satyrus decided to roar. He did the one he had learned from television, the man-acted gorilla roar.
Crawford leaped for the door and would have gotten it open, but it was too crowded in there; he couldn't get it open. Pan Satyrus reached out and picked him up and the tropical weight blue suit split up the back.
'You see, gentlemen, I am a chimpanzee, and you are mere men,' Pan said. 'I could undoubtedly hug you all to death if I felt like it.'
'We have guns,' Piquin said.
Before he had finished the speech, Pan Satyrus, who was still holding Crawford by the back of the neck, plucked Crawford's gun from his belt holster with the other hand. He was a little too rough about it; Crawford's belt snapped and his trousers split down the back, just as his coat had. The NASA man looked as if he were going to cry.
Pan Satyrus seemed to hold the gun correctly; he had seen a lot of television while his keepers passed the lonely night watch. Then he tossed the revolver through the open porthole, and said, 'You won't shoot me, gentlemen. Not until I tell you how I made that spaceship go faster than light.'
Silence in the cabin. The gentle tropical waves lapped at the side of the ship.
'You will go right on doing what I tell you to,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Isn't that right?'
Not a word.
'Isn't that what you're here for?' Pan Satyrus asked. 'You, Crawford. Answer me, and stop trying to pull your clothes together. I'm naked, and I don't mind, why should you?'
'You've got more fur,' Crawford said;.
Happy Bronstein strangled a cough. He had not been an enlisted man for as many years as Ape Bates, whose face didn't move a wrinkle.
'That wasn't what I asked you,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Or, rather it was, but just rhetorically. What are you here for, Crawford?'
'To find out how the Mem-sahib went as far as she did, as fast as she did,' Crawford said. He was choking on his words. 'When you blew the side-hatch out, you tore the controls loose.'
'No,' Pan said. 'I couldn't count on that. I put all the circuits back the way they were before I pressed the release button.'
'Why?' It was Piquin, in a refined wail.
'You see,' Pan said, 'if men went as fast as I did, only the other way around, they would evolve into chimpanzees, or at least gorillas. And it's not a happy fife, gentlemen. Not at all a happy life in a primate house., You see, the zoo where I was born sold both my mother and me, when I was two and a half. To the government, gentlemen, for which you are happy to work, no doubt.'
'We're not here to listen to your life story,' Mac-Mahon said. 'You think an ape can blackmail the U.S. Government?'
'As my friend, Happy, would say,' Pan said, 'you're bloody right.'
'Who's Happy?' Piquin asked, taking out his notebook. 'Another chimp?'
'By choice,' Happy Bronstein said, softly.
Ape said, 'Gents, excuse me. Pan, where's your mother now?'
'She died on a space sled in New Mexico,' Pan said. He looked at Crawford. 'Working for NASA.' Crawford dropped his torn trousers and forgot to pull them up again.
They listened to the waves knocking G.I, paint gently off the side of the Cooke.
MacMahon broke the silence. 'Let's put it another way, Mr. Satyrus. Let me ask you. You seem to know a lot. From what you've heard, do you favor ' the Russian side of the cold war?'
'Oh, no,' Pan Satyrus said. 'I don't favor any men at all. So far. Ape and Happy here seem very nice indeed, and Dr. Bedoian isn't half bad. But I'm tentative about men. Wouldn't you be, in my position?'
Piquin put his notebook away.
Pan Satyrus said, 'I should like to go ashore. I give you my word as a chimpanzee that I'll go quietly, if my friends Happy and Ape here can go with me in the copter. No strait jackets, no tranquilizer pills.'
