A small bell chimed in the greenhouse. Hoqqueah got up at once, his movements precise and almost graceful despite his tubbiness. “Thus endeth the day,” he said cheerfully. “Thank you for your courtesy, Captain.”
He waddled out. He would, of course, be back tomorrow.
And the day after that.
And the next dayunless the crewmen hadn’t tarred and feathered the whole bunch by then.
If only, Gorbel thought distractedly, if only the damned Adapts weren’t so quick to abuse their privileges! As a delegate of the Colonization Council, Hoqqueah was a person of some importance, and could not be barred from entering the greenhouse except in an emergency. But didn’t the man know that he shouldn’t use the privilege each and every day, on a ship manned by basic-form human beings most of whom could not enter the greenhouse at all without a direct order?
And the rest of the pantropists were just as bad. As passengers with the technical status of human beings, they could go almost anywhere in the ship that the crew could goand they did, persistantly and unapologetically, as though moving among equals. Legally, that was what ‘they werebut didn’t they know by this time that there was such a thing as prejudice? And that among common spacemen the prejudice against their kindand against any Adapted Manalways hovered near the borderline of bigotry?
There was a slight hum as Averdor’s power chair swung around to face the Captain. Like most Rigellian men, the lieu-tenant’s face was lean and harsh, almost like that of an ancient religious fanatic, and the starlight in the greenhouse hid nothing to soften it; but to Capt. Gorbel, to whom it was familiar down to its last line, it looked especially forbidding now.