“Oh I’m at the station, Doctor—Gary Station. I just got in.”
“Then grab a cab and come here at once.”
“Uh, I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Doctor. I called because mother said to say goodbye to you.” Privately he had hoped that Dr. Jefferson would be too busy to waste time on him. Much as he disapproved of cities he did not want to spend his last night on Earth exchanging politeness with a family friend; he wanted to stir around and find out just what the modern Babylon did have to offer in the way of diversion. His letter-of-credit was burning a hole in his pocket; he wanted to bleed it a bit.
“No trouble. See you in a few minutes. Meanwhile I’ll pick out a fatted calf and butcher it. By the way, did you receive a package from me?” The doctor looked suddenly intent.
“A package? No.”
Dr. Jefferson muttered something about the mail service. Don said, “Maybe it will catch up with me. Was it important?”
“Uh, never mind; we’ll speak of it later. You left a forwarding address?”
“Yes, sir—the Caravansary.”
“Well—whip up the horses and see how quickly you can get here. Open sky”
“And safe grounding, sir.” They both switched off. Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps—and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it.
Beside the queue was sprawled the big, ungainly saurian form of a Venerian “dragon.” When Don progressed in line until he was beside it, he politely whistled a greeting.
The dragon swiveled one fluttering eyestalk in his direction. Strapped to the “chest” of the creature, between its forelegs and immediately below and in reach of its handling tendrils, was a small box, a voder. The tendrils writhed over the keys and the Venerian answered him, via mechanical voder speech, rather than by whistling in his own language. “Greetings to you also, young sir. It is pleasant indeed, among strangers, to hear the sounds one heard in the egg.” Don noted with delight that the outlander had a distinctly Cockney accent in the use of his machine.
He whistled his thanks and a hope that the dragon might die pleasantly.
The Venerian thanked him, again with the voder, and added, “Charming as is your accent, will you do me the favor of using your own speech that I may practice it?”
Don suspected that his modulation was so atrocious that the Venerian could hardly understand it; he lapsed at once into human words. “My name is Don Harvey,” he replied and whistled once more—but just to give his own Venerian name, “Mist on the Waters”; it had been selected by his mother and he saw nothing funny about it.
Nor did the dragon. He whistled for the first time, naming himself, and added via voder, “I am called ‘Sir Isaac Newton.’ ” Don understood that the Venerian, in so tagging himself, was following the common dragon custom of borrowing as a name of convenience the name of some earthhuman admired by the borrower.
Don wanted to ask “Sir Isaac Newton” if by chance he knew Don’s mother’s family, but the queue was moving up and the dragon was lying still; he was forced to move along to keep from losing his place in line. The Venerian followed him with one oscillating eye and whistled that he hoped that Don, too, might die pleasantly.
There was an interruption in the flow of autocabs to the stand; a man-operated flatbed truck drew up and let down a ramp. The dragon reared up on six sturdy legs and climbed aboard. Don whistled a farewell—and became suddenly and unpleasantly aware that a security policeman was giving him undivided attention. He was glad to crawl into his autocab and close the cover.
He dialed the address and settled back. The little car lurched forward, climbed a ramp, threaded through a freight tunnel, and mounted an elevator. At first Don tried to keep track of where it was taking him but the tortured convolutions of the ant hill called “New Chicago” would have made a topologist dyspeptic; he gave up. The robot cab seemed to know where it was going and, no doubt, the master machine from which it received its signals knew. Don spent the rest of the trip fretting over the fact that his ticket had not yet been turned over to him, over the unwelcome attention of the security policeman, and, finally, about the package from Dr. Jefferson. The last did not worry him; it simply annoyed him to have mail go astray. He hoped that Mr. Reeves would realize that any mail not forwarded by this afternoon would have to follow him all the way to Mars.