"Like me," mumbled the engineer.
The girl whirled about. "But people will be hurt!" she cried. "Don't you understand? I've tried and tried to explain to you, my father's tried, everyone on Grendel has and none of you will listen! It's been forty years since our nations were last close enough together to have much contact. I mean, you just don't know how the situation has changed in Anglia. You think you can steal Lois, and our government will swallow a fait accompli rather than start a war—the way yours did when we first took it. But ours won't. Old King James died ten years ago. King Charles is a young man—a fire-eater—and the P.M. claims descent from Sir Winston Churchill—they won't accept it! I mean to say, your government will either have to repudiate you and give Lois back, or there'll be interplanetary war!"
"I think not, acushla, I think not," said McConnell. "Ye mustn't trouble your pretty head about these things."
"I t'ink maybe she ban right," said Herr Syrup. "I ban in Anglia often times."
"Well, if the Sassenach want a fight," said McConnell merrily, "a fight we'll give them!"
"But you'll kill so many innocent people," protested Emily. "Why, a bomb could destroy the Greek theatre on Scotia! And all for what? A little money and a mountain of pride!"
"Ja, you ruin my business," croaked Sarmishkidu.
"And mine. My whole ship, said Herr Syrup, almost tearfully.
"Oh, now, now, now, man, ye at least should not be tryin" to blarney me," said McConnell. "What harm can a six or seven weeks" holiday here do to yez?"
"Ve ban carrying a load of Brahma bull embryos in ex-ogenetic tanks," said Herr Syrup. "All de time, dose embryos is growing." He banged his mug on the table. "Dey is soon fetuses, by Yudas! Ve have only so much room aboard ship; and it takes time to reash Alamo from here. If ve are held up more dan two, t'ree veeks—"
"Oh, no!" whispered McConnell.
"Ja," said Herr Syrup. "Brahma bull calves all over de place. Ve cannot possibly carry dem, and dere is a stiff penalty in our contract."
"Well, now." McConnell looked uneasy. "Sure, an' 'tis sorry I am, an' after this affair has all been settled, if yez wish to file a claim for damages at Teamhair I am sure the O'Toole government will—Oh, oh." He stopped. "Where did ye say your owners are?"
"Anguklukkakok City, Venus."
"Well—" Major McConnell stared at his toes, rather like a schoolboy caught in the cookie jar. "Well, now, I meself think 'twas a good thing the Anguklukkakok Venusians were all converted last century, but truth 'tis, Jiniral O'Toole is pretty strict an'—"
"I say," broke in Emily, "what's the matter? I mean, if your owners are—" "Baptists," said Rory McConnell.
"Oh," said Emily in a small voice.
McConnell leaped to his feet. One huge fist crashed on the table so the beer steins leaped. "Well, 'tis sorry I am!" he shouted. Sarmishkidu flinched from the noise and folded up his ears. "I've no ill will to anyone, meself, tis a dayd done for me country, an'—an'—an' why must all of yez be turnin' a skylarkin' merry-go into hurt an' harm an' sorrow?"
He stormed toward the exit.
"The score!" thundered Sarmishkidu in his thin, reedy voice. "The score, you unevaluated partial derivative!"
McConnell ripped out his wallet, flung a five-pound note blindly on the floor, and went up the stairs three at a time. The door banged in his wake.
CHAPTER THREE
The sun was low when Knud Axel Syrup pedaled a slightly erratic course over the spaceport concrete. He had given the Alt Heidelberg several hours' worth of his business: partly because there was nothing else to do but work his way down the beer list, and partly because Miss Emily Croft—once her tears were dried—was pleasant company, even for a staid old married man from Simmerboelle. Not that he cared to listen to her exposition of Duncanite principles, but he had prevailed on her to demonstrate some classical dances. And she had been a sight worth watching, once he overcame his natural disappointment at learning that classical dance included neither bumps nor grinds, and found how to ignore Sarmishkidu's lyre and syrinx accompaniment.
"Du skal faa min sofacykel naar jeg doer —" sang Herr Syrup mournfully.
"An' what might that mean?" asked the green-clad guard posted beneath the Mercury Girl. "You shall have my old bicycle ven I die," translated Herr Syrup, always willing to oblige.
"You shall have my old bicycle ven I die, For de final kilometer Goes on tandem vif St. Peter.
You shall have my old bicycle ven I die.
"Oh, said the guard, rather coldly.
Herr Syrup leaned his vehicle against the berth. "Dat is a more modern verse," he explained. "De orig'inal song goes back to de T'irty Years' Var."
"Oh."
"Gustavus Adolphus' troops ban singing it as—" Something told Herr Syrup that his little venture into historical scholarship was not finding a very appreciative authence. He focused, with some slight difficulty, on the battered hull looming above him. "Vy is dere no lights?" he asked. "Is all de crew in town?"
"I don't know what," confessed the guard. His manner thawed; he brought up his rifle and began picking his teeth with the bayonet."'Twas a quare thing, begorra. Your skipper, the small wan in the dishcloth hat, was argyfyin' half the day wi' General O'Toole. At last he was all but thrown out of headquarters an' came back here. He found our boys just at the point of removin' the ship's radio. Well, now, sir, ye can see how we could not let ye live aboard your ship an' not see-questrate the apparatus by which ye might call New Winchester an' bring the King's bloody solthers down on our heads. But no,
that poor little dark sad man could not be reas'nable, he began whoopin' and screamin' for all his crew, an' off he rushed at the head of 'em. Now I ask ye, sir, is that any way to—"
Knud Axel Syrup scowled, fished out his pipe, and tamped it full with a calloused thumb. One could not deny, he thought, Captain Radhakrishnan was normally the mildest of human creatures; but he had his moments. He superheated, yes, that was what he did, he superheated without showing a sign, and then all at once some crucial thing hap pened and he flashed off in live steam and what resulted thereafter, that was only known to God and also the Lord.
"Heigh-ho," sighed the engineer. "Maybe someone like me vat is not so excited should go see if dere is any trouble."
He lit his pipe, stuck it under his mustache, and climbed back onto his bicycle. Four roads led out of the spaceport, but one was toward town—so, which of three?—wait a minute. The crew would presumably not have stampeded quite at random. They would have intended to do something. What? Well, what would send the whole Shamrock League adventure downward and home? Sabotage of their new drive unit. And the asteroid's geegee installations lay down that road.
Herr Syrup pedaled quickly off. Twilight fell as he crossed the Cotswold Mountains, all of 500 meters high, and the gloom in Sherwood Forest was lightened only by his front-wheel lamp. But beyond lay open fields where a smoky blue dusk lingered, enough light to show him farmers' cottages and hayricks and—and—He put on a burst of speed.
The Girl's crew were on the road, brandishing as wild an assortment of wrenches, mauls, and crowbars as Herr Syrup had ever seen. Half a dozen young Grendelian rustics milled about among them, armed with scythes and pitchforks. The whole band had stopped while Captain Radhakrishnan exhorted a pair of yeoman who had been hoeing a wayside cabbage patch and now leaned stolidly on their tools. As he panted closer, Herr Syrup heard one of them: