operating a vi-console at the back of the office and winked mischievously. She colored slightly and looked down at the keyboard below the screen. Then she glanced up, winked back with a quick smile and busied herself at the keyboard again.
Outside the building they were joined by more Ganymeans and a contingent of Swiss police headed by an apprehensive chief. The party walked down a path to the roadway and turned left to proceed between the rows of chalets toward a steel-mesh gate that formed part of the perimeter fence. As they walked clear of the chalets and continued up along the gently sloping gravel road toward the gate, a stir ran through the crowds sitting on the grassy mounds beyond the fence on the far side of the clear zone. People began jumping to their feet and looking down toward the fence. The excitement grew as the Ganymeans halted while Swiss constables unlocked the gate and swung it aside.
With Garuth on one side of him and the Swiss police chief on the other, Hunt led the party through the gate as the clamor of voices ahead of them rose and became cheering. People began running down the slopes to press together just short of the police cordon, waving and calling as the party continued along the roadway across the clear zone.
The cordon opened to let them through, and suddenly the people massed together across the roadway found themselves staring up into the awesome faces from another world. While the noise from all around continued unabated, the ranks immediately in front of the Giants grew strangely hushed, and fell back as if to maintain a respectful distance. Garuth stopped and looked slowly around the semicircle of faces. As his gaze traveled from one to another the eyes averted. Hunt could understand their uncertainty, but at the same time he was anxious that the gesture the Giants had wanted to make should not go unreciprocated.
'I #146;m Vic Hunt,' he called to the crowd in a loud voice. 'I have traveled with these people all the way from Jupiter. This is Garuth, commander of the Ganymean ship. He and his companions have come to meet you all personally and at their own request. Let #146;s make them feel at home.'
Still the people seemed to shrink back. Some seemed to want to make a welcoming gesture, but everybody was waiting for somebody else to take the first step. And then a boy at the front of the crowd wrenched his hand free from his mother #146;s, marched forward and confronted Garuth #146;s towering frame boldly. Wearing stout mountain boots below a pair of alpine-style leather shorts, he was about twelve years old with a tangle of fair hair and a face covered with freckles. His mother started forward instinctively, but the man standing next to her restrained her with his arm.
'I don #146;t care about them, Mr. Garuth,' the boy declared loudly. 'I wanna shake your hand.' With that he confidently extended his arm upward. The Giant stooped, his face contorting into an expression that could only be a smile, grasped the hand and shook it warmly. The tension in the crowd evaporated and they began surging forward jubilantly.
Hunt looked around and saw that the scene had suddenly transformed itself. In one place a Ganymean was posing with an arm around the shoulders of a laughing middle-aged woman while her husband took a photograph; in another, a Giant was accepting a proffered cup of coffee while behind him a third was looking down dubiously at a persistent, tail-wagging Alsatian dog that one family had brought along. After patting it experimentally a few times, the Giant squatted down and began ruffling its fur, to be rewarded by a frenzy of licks on the tip of his long, tapering face.
Hunt lit a cigarette and sauntered across to join the Swiss police chief, who was mopping copious perspiration from his brow with a pocket handkerchief.
'There #151;it didn #146;t go badly at all, Heinrich,' he said. 'Told you there was nothing to worry about.'
'Maybe, Dr. #146;unt,' Heinrich answered, still not sounding too happy. 'All ze same, I will be much ze #146;appier when we can, #146;ow you say in ze America. . . #145;get ze #146;ell out of #146;ere #146;.'
Hunt spent a couple more days in the Earthmen sector of Ganyville helping the liaison bureau get organized and taking his own share of rest and relaxation. Then, having voted himself a spell of special leave for conduct which, he was sure, was well beyond the call of duty, he collected Yvonne, hitched them both a ride into Geneva on one of the still-shuttling VTOL jets, and embarked on a spree in the city. Three days later they tumbled out of an eastbound groundcar that stopped on the main highway running along the perimeter, slightly disheveled, distinctly unsteady on their feet and deliriously happy.
By that time #151;over a full week since the day the
Small parties of eight-foot-tall aliens, together with their ever-vigilant police escorts, had become accepted, if not yet commonplace, sights in Times Square, Red Square, Trafalgar Square and the Champs-Elysйes. They had listened appreciatively to a Beethoven concert in Boston, toured the London Zoo with a mixture of awe and horror, attended lavish receptions in Buenos Aires, Canberra, Cape Town and Washington, D.C., and paid their respects at the Vatican. In Peking their culture had been complimented as the ultimate exemplification of the communist ideal, in New York as that of the democratic ideal, and in Stockholm as that of the liberal ideal. And everywhere the crowds thronged to greet them.
The reports from around the globe told of the aliens #146; total amazement at the variety of life, color, vitality and exuberance that they saw all around them wherever they went. Everybody on Earth, they said, seemed to be in a hurry to live a whole lifetime each day, as if they feared there might not be sufficient hours in a mortal span to accommodate all the things to be seen and done. The Minervan cities had been bigger in terms of engineering constructions and architecture, but had offered nothing that compared even remotely with the variety, energy and sheer zest for living that teemed day and night in the metropolises of Earth. The Minervan technology had been further advanced, but its rate of advancement was paltry compared to the stupendous mushrooming of human civilization that resulted from the hustling, bustling, restlessness exploding outward from this incredible planet.
Speaking at a scientific conference in Berlin, a Ganymean told his audience: 'The Ganymean theory of the origin of the universe describes a steady equilibrium in which matter appears, quietly acts out its appointed role, and then quietly vanishes #151;a slow, easy-going, evolutionary situation that goes well with our temperament and our history. Only Man could have conceived the catastrophic discontinuity of the Big Bang. I believe that when you have had an opportunity to examine our theories more closely, you will discard your Big Bang ideas. And yet I feel it singularly appropriate that Man should have formulated such a theory. You see, ladies and gentlemen, when Man visualized the cataclysmic expansion of the Big Bang Model, he was not seeing the universe at all; he was seeing himself.'
After he had been back on Earth for ten days, Hunt was contacted again by UNSA, who conveyed their hopes that he had enjoyed his leave. But some people at Houston knew him better than he thought and suggested that it might be a good idea if he began thinking about coming back.
More to the point, UNSA had made arrangements through the bureau for a Ganymean scientific delegation to visit Navcomms Headquarters at Houston, primarily to learn more about the Lunarians. The Ganymeans had been expressing a lot of interest in Man #146;s immediate ancestral race for some reason and, since the Lunarian investigations had been controlled from Houston and much of the work had been done there, it was the obvious place to bring them. UNSA suggested that since Hunt was due to return to Houston anyway, he could act as organizer and courier for the delegation and insure their safe arrival in Texas. Danchekker, who was also due to return to Houston to resume his duties at the Westwood Biological Institute, decided to fly with them.
And so, at the end of his second week home, Hunt found himself in a familiar environment: the inside of a Boeing 1017 skyliner, fifty miles up over the North Atlantic and westward bound.
Chapter Twenty
'When I sent you off to Ganymede, I just wanted you to find out a little bit more about the guys. I didn #146;t expect you to come back with a whole shipful of them.' Gregg Caldwell chewed on his cigar and looked out across his desk with an expression that was half amusement and half feigned exasperation. Hunt, sprawled in the chair opposite, grinned and took another sip of his scotch. It was good to be back among the familiar surroundings of
