"Not," said Barnes, "unless you would like to try some _noedan_."
"No thank you, sir."
Randolph and Burke raised their eyehoods humorously. Then they looked a
little less amused as Barnes' voice hardened.
"You might like it, Martian. Try it." He pulled a tough green wad of
_noedan_ from his pouch and tore off a strip. "I think the sooner you
Martians get used to doing as we do and liking the things we like, the
better off you'll be. Now take this _noedan_ and use it."
"Oh, for hell's sake, Barnes--" Randolph put out a hand. "Let him
alone. He doesn't want it. It makes him sick."
The Intelligence Officer got up from the bar and started for the table,
his eyes hard, his aural fronds quivering with emotion.
Burke spotted him and seemed to shrug. "You asked for it, kid," he told
Randolph. "Give my love to the home worlds. You're through on Mars."
"Maybe that's what I wanted," said Randolph.
* * * * *
The Intelligence Officer halted beside the table and Randolph got up
without a word and left with him.
Burke and Barnes watched them down the winding clay street, saw them
enter a portable teleport booth, one of the several scattered about
Kinkaaka to facilitate trips to and from the space-cube. The door
closed, the light blinked on and off, then the booth was open again,
empty.
"On his way back to the home-ship and Parna," grunted Burke, "and I
don't know but that I envy him."
"You too?"
"Yeah. Now that there's no damned Intelligence Officer around, me too."
"Disgrace and all?"
"That's what stops me--" and noticing the angry color to Barnes'
_uiye_--"and the glory of our mission. Hell, anyone can get homesick,
can't they?"
During the few moments of Randolph's arrest and departure the Martian
had disappeared. Barnes grunted and shoved the _noedan_ back into his
pouch and finished his drink.
"You'll never get anywhere acting like that," said Burke after a
short silence. "You can't shove our ways down their throats and get
cooperation."
Barnes got up a little angrily. "Who wants to get anywhere? What do we
want out of these creatures? They smell! How are we _supposed_ to act?
We own their smelly little world--"
"Randolph might say we don't own it."
"Shut up, Burke. I'm sick of that!"
Barnes started for the door and Burke got up to follow. They stepped
out onto the hot clay of the street, moving their top-skins against the
tight-fitting impact of the sun's rays.
"_I_ don't want anything from them, Burke. _I'm_ the one who should be
sent home. _I_ want to go home. Why should we go around labeled with
Martian names? Barnes, Randolph, Burke, Smith--good God! And talking
this _jsu_-twisting _sutz_ of a language Martian of all the time
speaking!"
Burke chuckled, deep in his sac. "The Psychologists dreamed it up--to
make us seem less alien. We speak their sounds. And we take their
names. After all, no trouble at all is better than the little they
might be able to give us if they got excited."
They went down the street toward the teleport booth, two big octopoids,
the sun warming their glistening brown backs.
* * * * *
The "Martian" was in the cool back room of the restaurant, seated
before a group of his kind. This was afternoon rest period, and some
freedom to congregate existed then.
A man turned from the wall slit through which he had watched the exit
of Burke and Barnes.
"Those things make me sick, Burke," he said to the "Martian". "How can
you get so close to them and keep your stomach? They smell."