“Interesting,” said Boyle. “Mind if we take a look at your ear later on? We have some pretty good doctors for things like that.”
“We Hakh’hli have excellent doctors,” Polly said frostily.
“Oh, no doubt. But perhaps ours have had more experience with human medicine, don’t you think? Anyway, let’s go to the restaurant.”
“I’d rather have cookies and milk in our room,” Obie said wistfully.
“It is not yet time for cookies and milk,” Polly rebuked him. “If you are really hungry you can try some of this Earth food; it will be good to discover if you can digest it.”
“Aren’t you going to try some?” Hamilton Boyle asked politely. “The biologists say we have about the same kind of metabolism, you know.”
Polly looked at him thoughtfully. “And how do your biologists know that?” she asked.
He looked apologetic. “Well, of course, we’ve tested the food samples Lysander was kind enough to give us.”
“Indeed!” said Polly, gazing hard at Sandy. “No matter. We will discuss that another time; but I am not prepared to experiment on myself. An astronomer like Oberon can be spared, but I am in charge of this expedition. I, at least, am not expendable.”
From every side the sensory inputs assailed Sandy—unfamiliar, tantalizing, mysterious—Earthly. He delighted in the smells of the Earth: sweat, perfume, feet, cinnamon, fresh-brewed coffee, pine trees, sewage, roses, gardenias, pepper, bakery bread, roasting meat, boiling cabbage, stepped-on excrement of dogs, fresh-cut grass, laundered clothes, hot oil, wet paving. He was thrilled by the colors of Earth: mountains that were green, brown, white-topped, rust red, mud gray. Human skin in chocolate, olive, pink, black that was almost purple-blue, pale that was almost white. It had never occurred to him that the Hakh’hli were color-deprived until he saw the cars and trucks, from white to cobalt blue and fire red and sunshine yellow; the clothing in every hue and pattern; the signs that flashed (even in daylight!) in every spectrum hue.
Most of all it was the people who thrilled him—pausing to stare, leaning out of windows to gape, calling friendly hellos as they passed. Most of all, of course, it was one particular person. When they crossed a street Marguery courteously took Sandy’s hand. Her touch made him shiver. He didn’t let go of her hand even when they were safely on the other side. Marguery gave him a curious, unsmiling look. But she didn’t resist, and he held her hand all the way to the revolving door of the restaurant, when she gently disengaged herself to let him go through first.
They were expected. The waitress led them at once to a table for six—four chairs and two empty spaces for Polly and Oberon. Around them other breakfasters peered curiously from their tables as the two Hakh’hli arranged themselves, squatting comfortably enough on the floor, their heads at about the same level as the humans.
The variety of Earth food was baffling. There was a whole “breakfast” menu and a quite separate one for “lunch”; Hamilton Boyle explained that they could choose from either one. Neither Sandy nor the Hakh’hli had ever had the necessity of choosing what to eat at any meal. Sandy floundered. All the names of things were familiar—well, reasonably familiar. Though what could “Eggs Benedict” or “avocado melt” be? He had no trouble recognizing such things as hamburgers, fries, milk shakes, fudge, ice cream, and cheese sandwiches. But when the three escorts chose for themselves and the dishes arrived they offered samples, and none of the things tasted anything like the practice foods they had eaten on the ship. Certainly none of them were at all like ordinary shipfare. Hippolyta refused to touch any of them; she had brought a fistful of shipfare biscuits in her pouch and munched them doggedly.
Sandy was more daring—or more stubborn. After all, why should human fare be alien to him when he was human? It wasn’t easy, though, until Marguery came to his aid. He let her order for him. Gratefully he found that he could manage the plain boiled potatoes she chose, and graduated from that to dry toast. But everything else he sampled only a nibble at a time, and had to force himself that far.
Oberon was more daring. He had a dozen different things spread before him on the table—a Western omelette, an avocado stuffed with crabmeat, a hamburger, a “Texas chili dog”; Sandy lost track of the names. Obie managed to eat some of the hamburger, but everything else was too startlingly strange. He wheedled a few biscuits from Polly and chewed them morosely. But he cheered up when the waitress brought them “dessert.” It was called “ice cream.” His first tentative spoonful made his eyes pop in surprise, but then he declared it delicious. “It’s cold,” he cried in pleased surprise. “I never heard of eating things that had been refrigerated, but it’s good.”
“If it doesn’t poison you,” Polly said darkly.
ChinTekki-tho’s broadcast from the interstellar ship came to them through a mixture of human and Hakh’hli technology. The ship’s transmission went to the communications equipment in the lander, back in the Inuit Commonwealth. There a human camera inside the lander was to pick the picture up from the lander’s screens to retransmit to all the human world. When Polly heard Bottom explaining the setup she cried sharply, in Hakh’hli, “But that is wrong and not at all advisable! You were given no authority to permit humans to enter our vessel!”
“You are incorrect and not accurate,” Bottom said smugly. “Authorization came from ChinTekki-tho himself.”
“But that should not happen!” Polly began in indignation, and then collected herself. She turned to the humans in the studio and, weeping a friendly tear, said, “I was simply confirming the arrangements with our cohort-mates. Everything is prepared. You will be addressed by our personal leader, the Senior ChinTekki-tho.”
“We’re honored,” Hamilton Boyle said politely. “Of course, we wondered why the Hakh’hli didn’t simply transmit directly to our own Earth stations, instead of going through your landing ship.”
“That was undoubtedly a decision of the Major Seniors,” Polly explained. “They surely had an excellent reason. They always do.”
In the screen, Bottom turned to listen to something, then turned back. “That was the twelfth-twelfth warning,” he said into the camera. “ChinTekki-tho is almost ready to speak.”
And then the picture on the screens in the studio switched to the lander’s own receivers.
It was certainly not a good picture. In spite of the best efforts of humans and Hakh’hli the broadcast systems were not very compatible, and annoying moire figures kept creeping across the screen in pale rainbow tints. But Sandy immediately recognized their old teacher as he beamed out at them.
“Greetings,” ChinTekki-tho said in his precise English, weeping gladly. “It is a very great honor to be the first Senior of the Hakh’hli to speak to our friends and brothers, the human beings of Earth. As our friends in the first landing group have already informed you, we come to you in peace and friendship. Just as you humans do, we Hakh’hli have a tradition that a visitor brings gifts to his hosts,”—Sandy frowned suddenly, since he had never heard of that tradition; but Polly made a quick pinching gesture and he was silent—“and so we have first given you the gift of a member of your own race, John William Washington, known better to his Hakh’hli friends here as Lysander, restored to his native world by us in proof of our good intentions.” Then ChinTekki-tho beamed and hunched himself closer to the camera. “Are you in good health, Lysander?” he inquired. “Are you pleased to be with your own people again?”
Sandy felt Polly’s eyes boring into him. He said at once, respectfully. “It’s wonderful, ChinTekki-tho. I’m very happy here.”
He waited for a response. It took a few moments to arrive, while the Senior gazed amiably into the screen. Of course, Sandy thought; the ship was a good long distance away, and even radio signals at the speed of light took appreciable time for the round trip. Then ChinTekki-tho waggled his head. “That is good, Lysander. Now let me speak of other things. There are many other gifts we Hakh’hli wish to offer the people of Earth. I will describe only a few of them. We are aware of some of your problems. We have certain techniques for dealing with radioactive and other kinds of pollution which we will gladly put at your disposal. We also have ways of gene-splicing new kinds of vegetation to seed your devastated forests and help to redress the carbon dioxide imbalance.”
ChinTekki-tho wept a charitable tear, as he allowed this to sink in for his human audience. Then he added, “There is also the question of energy. The drive engines of our ship produce enormous quantities of energy. We are willing to convert this into electricity and beam it down to the surface of your planet, wherever you direct. This is a free gift. All you need to do is put up receivers for it. Then there is the device we call an ‘electromagnetic accelerator.’ I believe that your own term is ‘railgun.’ With this as a launcher you will be able to put satellites into space again. They will go through the debris orbit so rapidly that no more than from two- to five-twelfths of them will be destroyed. This is acceptably low, since the capsules themselves require no engines or fuel, thus making them so cheap that losses up to six-twelfths or more can easily be tolerated.”