Explorers of Space by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0840764391
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 1975-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

We hauled Mays down about an hour later. He was only twenty kilometers up, and we located him quickly enough by the flashing light on his suit. His radio had been disconnected, for a reason that hadn’t occurred to me. He was intelligent enough to realize that he was in no danger, and if his set had been working he could have called his ship and exposed our bluff. That is, if he wanted to. Personally, I think I’d have been glad enough to call the whole thing off even if I had known that I was perfectly safe. It must have been awfully lonely up there.

To my great surprise, Mays wasn’t as mad as I’d expected. Perhaps he was too relieved to be back in our snug little cabin when we drifted up to him on the merest fizzle of rockets and yanked him in. Or perhaps he felt that he’d been worsted in fair fight and didn’t bear any grudge. I really think it was the latter.

There isn’t much more to tell, except that we did play one other trick on him before we left Five. He had a good deal more fuel in his tanks than he really needed, now that his payload was substantially reduced. By keeping the excess ourselves, we were able to carry “The Ambassador” back to Ganymede after all. Oh, yes, the Professor gave him a check for the fuel we’d borrowed. Everything was perfectly legal.

There’s one amusing sequel I must tell you, though. The day after the new gallery was opened at the British Museum I went along to see “The Ambassador,” partly to discover if his impact was still as great in these changed surroundings. (For the record, it wasn’t—though it’s still considerable and Bloomsbury will never be quite the same to me again.) A huge crowd was milling around the gallery, and there in the middle of it were Mays and Marianne.

It ended up with us having a very pleasant lunch together in Holborn. I’ll say this about Mays—he doesn’t bear any grudges. But I’m still rather sore about Marianne.

And, frankly, I can’t imagine what she sees in him.

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