'Where are you going to find a pilot?' Piquin asked.
MacMahon said, 'Maybe one of these sailors can fly a copter.'
'Naw,' Ape said, 'we're enlisted men, not pilots.'
Pan Satyrus shrugged. As always, any movement made his muscles ripple rather alarmingly. He sighed, and that was a rather powerful thing, too, in the small, crowded cabin. 'Then you'll have to take me in on this DAC,' he said.
Piquin came to life. 'How did you find out this was a DAC? DAC's are top secret!'
'You may not be a chimpanzee,' Pan Satyrus said, 'or even a gorilla. But you could try to use the brains that evolution gave you, couldn't you?'
Piquin blushed.
CHAPTER THREE
Distinct species present analogous variations.
The Origin of the Species
The waterfront at Floridaville was crowded. For three hours the Cooke had been maneuvering, feinting for Miami first and then for Key West, and NBC and ABC and CBS were whooping it up in those cities, dodging from dock to dock, but me, Bill Dunham, I had been in the trade a long, long time, and I saved my mileage and used the money for a helicopter, and here I was at Floridaville, the only TV man on the spot, complete with my crew, and ready to go.
Oh, there were a couple of newsmen, a local and an AP guy there, but let them have it. With any luck, I would be the first man ever to get a chimp to talk through his mike, and mister, that was money in my pocket. Let the other guys get the Emmies and the Peabodys; I love that cash.
One of my crew had an ultra short wave radio and the other had a broadcast band, so we could hear what the opposition was up to. NBC had hit three bars, they had the admiral on, the one who had flown out to talk to the monkey and then had flown back again. CBS was kind of badly scooped; all they had was Brigadier General Billy Maguire saying nothing because he didn't know anything since the rocket had gone up. ABC had a good radio story, but no video; they had a man aboard the plane that was flying Dr, Aram Bedoian down to his favorite patient in Floridaville.
So now the opposition knew where the story was. I guess they knew where I was, too, because our boy Tom Leiberg was filming the helicopter pilot I had hired; he'd gone back to Miami when I was through with him. The pilot said he saw the glint of gun barrels when he flew over the USS Cooke, but nobody had fired on him. What did he expect on the deck of a Navy ship, the rustle of triplicates?
The Cooke didn't tie up at Floridaville. She was a long, rangy looking ship with a flight deck bulging her out like a thin woman in her eighth month. I don't see how she ever tied up to anything that didn't have a hole in the middle.
I directed my cameraman to get every foot of the Cooke he could, and went on the air, interrupting Tom Leiberg's interview, which was getting pretty thin, anyway; the pilot hadn't even seen the monkey.
So I described the Cooke, and then I got to tell how they were putting a motorboat over the side, and I found a cracker from Floridaville — the whole town had come down to the water when our mobile unit rolled in — who had been in the Navy, and he told me that was a whaleboat they were launching. So the Navy hunts whales on our taxes?
'Three men are going over the side and down the rope ladder to the whaleboat,' I told my breathless audience. 'No, no folks. I'm wrong. Two men, and— whatya know — it's old Mem, the chimponaut himself, coming ashore.'
I thought that 'chimponaut' was pretty good stuff. I've heard it since, and it makes me proud to know I added a good word like that to the English language.
All the time I was talking, my cameraman held the whaleboat in his telephoto lens, and she came in fast. Then another boat was put over — the local Neptune said it was a workboat, which sounds better from the taxpayers' point of view — and a couple of sailors and two civilians and one guy I wasn't too sure of got in. I mean, I wasn't too sure of this guy, because he had on those light blue Navy dungarees, but no cap. You can't tell the armed services without their hats.
The whaleboat came in and then turned and right angled to us and cut its speed, and we got a beautiful shot of the chimponaut trailing his hand in the water, like an old-fashioned picture of a lady in a canoe.
So the workboat came in first, and one of the sailors threw a rope up around a gizmo on the dock, and jumped up, and helped the three passengers up. They all pulled guns when they got on the dock, and one of them yelled, 'Are the local police here?'
We got that, and we got a shot of a chubby Florida cracker showing a badge pinned to his suntan shirt and saying, 'I'm them,' and then the guy who had spoken showed a card, and said, 'I want all these people cleared away.'
The workboat was going back to the ship.
The chimp had pulled his hand in and was wiping off the salt water on the fur on his chest. He hadn't gotten in for a close shot yet, moreover a close-up, but I'd caught him at the Cape that morning, getting into his capsule, and shaking hands with his doctor — those monkeys are all hams — and I knew what he'd look like. Which is not much, you ask me. There's not enough contrast in a chimp's face to make him photogenic, for my money.
I know Hollywood uses them, but I'll bet they make them up. When the doctor got there, this Bedoian, I'd ask him if he'd put makeup on old Mem's kisser. I wasn't going to do it myself. I'd seen those arms and those teeth.
We were filming the local chief of police and the Federal men, who were having an argument; the chief wouldn't pull a gun on his taxpayers, and I guess the Fed boys weren't too anxious to shoot the citizenry, either — when my legman, Iggie Napoli, pulled at my sleeve. 'Hey, look, Bill. That man o' war's pulling out without her whaleboat.'
Sure enough the Cooke was heading for sea again, the workboat going up in its elevator or I guess I should say davits, but the whaleboat was still lying off the dock there.
'They'll be in a helluva spot if they meet any whales,' I said, but off-mike.
The law was deadlocked there on the dock. They couldn't clear the people away and the head Fed was saying that the chimp couldn't land till they did, and he was pointing out that the monkey was Government Property, and they were endangering Government Property, and what could happen to people who did that.
He wasn't impressing all of Florida, or even all of Floridaville.
Then this guy at the wheel of the whaleboat — how's that for a phrase? — lets out a bellow like he had a built-in P.A. system in his throat. He yells, 'Hey, Mr. MacMahon, Mr, Satyrus is getting seasick.'
I snap my fingers at Iggie for the glasses, and take a look. Sure enough, the wake of the Cooke has really set that whaleboat rocking, and the chimp is leaning over the side. Mr. Satyrus, that was the chimp, but I didn't find out why till later.
The fuzz named MacMahon throws up his hands, not really, but from his expression, and says, 'All right, all right. Signal them to come in, Piquin. But you people here, stand back. Just remember that this man, this chimpanzee, has been around the earth, out in space, since morning. Don't crowd him.'
I am certainly glad I got that. I knew these top security men think we're all monkeys, but I didn't know they thought monkeys were men.
So the whaleboat came in and tied off where the workboat had been — if I still have my boats straight — and my cameraman switched from telephoto to a zoomar, and I yakked it up while they tried for the first close-up.
I waved to the truck to come on out towards me. That close-up was like gelt in the pocket.
If we didn't get it right away, we might never, because those three G-men and the local cop were likely to close in and maybe shield the chimp from us. He was tall for a monkey, but that ain't John Wayne.
