They were. They left the ship and walked in a group through the throng of cheering Vegians toward the nearby gaily-decorated stands in which the official greetings and thank-you’s were to take place. Helen and Babs loved it; just as though they were parading finalists in a beauty contest. Bob and Joe wished that they had stayed in the ship and kept their clothes on. Joan didn’t quite know whether she liked this kind of thing or not. Of the six Tellurians, only Neal Cloud had had enough experience in public near-nudity so that it made no difference. And Vesta?
Vesta was fairly reveling—openly, unashamedly reveling—in the spotlight with her Tellurian friends. They reached the center stand, were ushered with many flourishes to a reserved section already partly filled by Captain Ross and the lesser officers and crewmen of the good-will-touring Patrol ship Vortex Blaster II. Not all of the officers, of course, since many had to stay aboard, and comparatively few of the crew; for many men insist an wearing Tellurian garmenture and refuse to tan their hides under ultra-violet radiation—and no untanned white Tellurian skin can take with impunity more than a few minutes of giant Vega’s blue-white fury. Of the ceremonies themselves, nothing need be said; such
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things being pretty much of a piece, wherever, whenever, of for whatever reason held. When they were over, Vesta gathered her six friends together and led them to the edge of the roped-off area. There she uttered a soundless (to Tellurian ears) whistle, whereupon a group of Vegian youths and girls formed a wedge around the seven and drove straight through the milling crowd to its edge. There, by an evidently pre-arranged miracle, they found enough copters to carry them all.
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16: Vegian Justice
The nearer they got to the destination the more fidgety Vesta became. ‘Oh, I hope Zambkptkn could get away and be there by now—I haven’t seen him for over half a year!’
‘Who?’ Helen asked.
‘My brother. Zamke, you’d better call him, you can pronounce that. The police officer, you know.’
‘I thought you saw him this morning?’ Joan said.
‘I saw my other brothers and sisters, but not him—he was tied up on a job. He wasn’t sure just when he could get away tonight.”
The copter dropped sharply. Vesta seized Cloud’s arm and pointed. ‘That’s where we’re going; that big building with the landing-field on the roof. The Caravanzerie. Zee?’ In moments of etnotion or excitement, most of Vesta’s sibilants reverted to Z’s.
‘I see. And this is your Great White Way?’
It was, but it was not white. Instead, it was a blaze of red, blue, green, yellow—all the colors of the spectrum. And crowds! On foot, on bicycles, on scooters, motorbikes, and motortricyeles, in cars and in copters, it seemed impossible that anything could move in such a press as that. And as the air-cab approached its destination Neal Cloud, space-hardened veteran and skillful flyer though he was, found himself twisting wheels, stepping on pedals, and cutting in braking jets, none of which were there.
How that jockey landed his heap and got it into the air again all in one piece without dismembering a single Vegian, Cloud never did quite understand. Blades were scant fractional inches from blades and rotors; people were actually shoved aside by the tapering bumpers of the cab as it hit the deck; but nothing happened. This, it seemed, was normal!
The group re-formed and in flying-wedge fashion as before, gained the elevators and finally the ground floor and the ballroom. Here Cloud drew his first full breath for what seemed like hours. The ball-room was tremendous—and it was less than three-quarters filled.
Just inside the doorway Vesta paused, sniffing delicately. ‘He is here—come on!’ She beckoned the six to follow her and
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rushed ahead, to be met at the edge of the clear space in head-on collision. Brother and sister embraced fervently for about two seconds. Then, reaching down, the man broke his sister’s grip and flipped her around sidewise, through half of a vertical circle, so that her feet pointed straight up. Then, with a sharp ‘Blavzkt!’ he snapped into a back flip.
‘Blazkt—Zemp!’ she shouted back, bending beautifully into such an arch that, as his feet left the floor, hers landed almost exactly where his had been an instant before. Then for a full minute and a half the joyous pair pinwheeled, without moving from the spot; while the dancers on the floor, standing still now, applauded enthusiastically with stamping, hand-clapping, whistles, cat-calls, and screams.
Vesta stopped the exhibition finally, and led her brother toward Cloud and Joan. The music resumed, but the dancers did not. Instead, they made a concerted rush for the visitors, surrounding them in circles a dozen deep. Vesta, with both arms wrapped tightly around Cloud and her tail around Joan, shrieked a highly consonantal sentence—which Cloud knew meant ‘Lay off these two for a couple of minutes, you howling hyenas, they’re mine’—then, switching to English: ‘Go ahead, you four, and have fun!’
The first two men to lay hands on the two tall Tellurian beauties were, by common consent and without argument, their first partners. Two of the Vegian girls, however, were not so polite. Both had hold of Joe, one by each arm, and stood there spitting insults at each other past his face until a man standing near by snapped a few words at them and flipped a coin. The two girls, each still maintaining her grip, leaned over eagerly to see for themselves the result of the toss. The loser promptly relinquished her told on Joe and the winner danced away with him.
‘Oh, this is wonderful, Storm!’ Joan thought. ‘We’ve been accepted—we’re the first group I ever actually knew of to really break through the crust.’
The Vegians moved away. Vesta released her captives and turned to her brother.
‘Captain Cloud, Doctor Janowick, I present to you my brother Zamke,’ she said. Then, to her brother: ‘They have been very good to me, Zambktpkn, both of them, but especially the captain. You know what he did for me.’
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‘Yes, I know.’ The brother spoke the English ‘S’ with barely a trace of hardness. He shook Cloud’s hand firmly, then bent over the hand, spreading it out so that the palm covered his face, and inhaled deeply. Then, straightening up: ‘For what you have done for my sister, sir, I thank you. As she has said, your scent is pleasing and will be remembered long, enshrined in the Place of Pleasant Odors of our house.’
Turning to Joan, and omitting the handshake, he repeated the performance and bowed—and when an adult male Vegian sets out to make a production of bowing, it is a production well worth seeing.
Then, with the suddenest and most complete change of manner either Cloud or Joan had ever seen he said: ‘Well, now that the formalities have been taken care of, Joan, how about us hopping a couple of skips around the floor?’
Joan was taken slightly aback, but rallied quickly. ‘Why, I’d love it … but not knowing either the steps or the music, I’m afraid I couldn’t follow you very well.’
‘Oh that won’t make any …’ Zamke began, but Vesta drowned him out.
‘Of course it won’t make any difference, Joan!’ she exclaimed. ‘Just go ahead and dance any way you want to. He’ll match your steps—and if he so much as touches one of your slippers with his big, fat feet, I’ll choke him to death with his own tail!’
‘And I suppose it is irrefutable that you can and will dance with me with equal dexterity, aplomb, and insouciance?’ Cloud asked Vesta, quizzically, after Joan and Zamke had glided smoothly out into the throng.
‘You zaid it, little chum!’ Vesta exclaimed, gleefully, ‘And I know what all those words mean, too, and if I ztep on either one of your feet I’ll choke my zelf to death with my own tail, zo there!’
Snuggling up to him blissfully, Vesta let him lead her into the crowd. She of course was a superb dancer; so much so that she made him think himself a much better dancer than he really was. After a few minutes, when he was beginning to relax, he felt an itchy, tickling touch—something almost impalpable was creeping up his naked back—the fine, soft fur of the extreme tip of Vesta’s ubiquitous tail!
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He grabbed for it, but, fast as he was, Vesta was faster, and she shrieked with glee as he missed the snatch.
‘See here, young lady,’ he said, with mock sternness, ‘if you don’t keep your tail where it belongs I’m going to wrap it around your lovely neck and tie it into a bow-knot.’
Vesta sobered instantly. ‘Oh … do you really think I’m lovely, Captain Nealcloud—my neck, I mean?’
‘No doubt about it,’ Cloud declared. ‘Not only your neck— all of you. You are most certainly one of the most beautiful things I ever saw.’