He looked baffled, glanced into the rear compartment, seemed to recognize me, saluted, and let us stay. I answered with a friendly wave and he opened the door for me. “The lieutenant is very particular about keeping the space back of the fence clear, Mr. Bonforte,” he apologized, “but I guess it’s all right.”
“You can have the car moved at once,” I said. “My secretary and I are leaving. Is my field car here?”
“I’ll find out at the gate, sir.” He left. It was just the amount of audience I wanted, enough to tie it down solid that “Mr. Bonforte” had arrived by official car and had left for his space yacht. I tucked my life wand under my arm like Napoleon’s baton and limped after him, with Penny tagging along. The cop spoke to the gatemaster, then hurried back to us, smiling. “Field car is waiting, sir.”
“Thanks indeed.” I was congratulating myself on the perfection of the timing.
“Uh. . .” The cop looked flustered and added hurriedly, in a low voice, “I’m an Expansionist, too, sir. Good job you did today.” He glanced at the life wand with a touch of awe.
I knew exactly how Bonforte should look in this routine. “Why, thank you. I hope you have lots of children. We need to work up a solid majority.”
He guffawed more than it was worth. “That’s a good one! Uh, mind if I repeat it?”
“Not at all.” We had moved on and I started through the gate. The gatemaster touched my arm. “Er … Your passport, Mr. Bonforte.”
I trust I did not let my expression change. “The passports, Penny.”
She looked frostily at the official. “Captain Broadbent takes care of all clearances.”
He looked at me and looked away. “I suppose it’s all right. But I’m supposed to check them and take down the serial numbers.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I suppose I must ask Captain Broadbent to run out to the field. Has my shuttle been assigned a take-off time? Perhaps you had better arrange with the tower to ‘hold.'”
But Penny appeared to be cattily angry. “Mr. Bonforte, this is ridiculous! We’ve never had this red tape before-certainly not on Mars.”
The cop said hastily, “Of course it’s all right, Hans. After all, this is Mr. Bonforte.”
“Sure, but–”
I interrupted with a happy smile. “There’s a simpler way out. If you-what is your name, sir?”
“Hasiwanter. Hans Haslwanter,” he answered reluctantly.
“Mr. Haslwanter, if you will call Mr. Commissioner Boothroyd, I’ll speak to him and we can save my pilot a trip out to the field- and save me an hour or more of time.”
“Uh, I wouldn’t like to do that, sir. I could call the port captain’s office?” he suggested hopefully.
“Just get me Mr. Boothroyd’s number. 1 will call him.” This time I put a touch of frost into my voice, the attitude of the busy and important man who wishes to be democratic but has had all the pushing around and hampering by underlings that he intends to put up with.
That did it. He said hastily, “I’m sure it’s all right, Mr. Banforte. It’s just-well, regulations, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you.” I started to push on through.
“Hold it, Mr. Bonforte! Look this way.”
I glanced around. That i-dotting and 1-crossing civil servant had held us up just long enough to let the press catch up with us. One man had dropped to his knee and was pointing a stereobox at me; he looked up and said, “Hold the wand where we can see it.” Several others with various types of equipment were gathering around us; one had climbed up on the roof of the Rolls. Someone else was shoving a microphone at me and another had a directional mike aimed like a gun.
I was as angry as a leading woman with her name in small type but I remembered who I was supposed to be. I smiled and moved slowly. Bonforte had a good grasp of the fact that motion appears faster in pictures; I could afford to do it properly.
“Mr. Bonforte, why did you cancel the press conference?”