Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER ONE

Hello. This is Bill Dunham at Cape Canaveral, and the count is down to ninety seconds and go. Go all the way, as General Billy Maguire, who is spokesman for NASA today, just said. Eighty-six seconds, still go.

This is a big day, though it's not like an astronaut was taking off. After all, Mem doesn't have any family to leave behind, or any loved ones to worry about him so far as we know. Eighty seconds and still go.

No, Mem is a bachelor. But he's a mighty important bachelor today, the thirteenth chimpanzee to go into orbit for our side, the side of liberty, freedom and— seventy-two seconds, and go all the way.

That's what his name means, folks, as you undoubtedly know: Mem, the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There are some mighty learned men — sixty-five seconds — here at Cape Canaveral, and women, too, and it was Mrs. Billy Maguire that named Mem. Seems that the study of Hebrew and Arabic is her hobby — sixty seconds — and so it's Mem who's going to take the test ride today, Mem all the way, as General Maguire said just a little while ago.

Quite a ride, too — fifty seconds — twenty-four hours in orbit, with electrodes to report back on every phase of Mem's processes — forty-five seconds, still go — electrodes that will broadcast his pulse beat and any nervous tremors and his adrenalin count and — thirty seconds, half a minute to blast-off.

He's a fine specimen of chimp, Mem is. We showed you pictures of him going into his space capsule, and stopping to shake hands with the doctor, Dr. Aram Bedoian, who brought him here from White Sands and who has been in constant attendance — fifteen seconds to blast-off and if you think you're nervous, the camera ought to give you a close shot of my hands shaking — ten seconds — I guess the only one who isn't nervous is Mem, he doesn't know what he's in for — nine — eight — seven — six — five — four — three — two— one — zero.

And there she goes, a beautiful blast-off, and the rocket is rising, and in a few seconds we'll see the first stage fall into the sea — there it goes — and then the second and then the Mem-sahib — Mrs. Maguire's name, that is, too — will go out across the Atlantic, and in half an hour old Mem can look down and see Africa, where his folks came from, like all good chimpanzees, or do they come from Asia? And — great grief — second stage away and the SPACE SHIP IS TURNING WEST INSTEAD OF EAST-it's going back across the United States, IT CANT DO THAT — Flash — the Mem-sahib is in orbit, just got word from General Billy Maguire — and — I'm turning you back to New York for a minute while I chase over to NASA and try and get a word from General Billy — we've got a wrong-way chimp on our hands!

WHITE SANDS calling NASA CONTROL-do you read me? Okay, NASA the Mem-sahib came in clear and loud as she went over. But listen, the beep-transmission went out when she was square in our radius, and she went on dot-dash. Yeah, dot-dash, old International Morse… I do not drink on duty, or any other time for that matter, on account of I got an ulcer from talking to guys like you — sir. I said Morse code and I mean Morse code… I thought you would get around to that… It said, he said, I dunno: "The sun was in my eyes, so I headed West." In clear code, like he was breaking and making a wire. He's got a fist like an old Navy radio-op, which is what I used to be… I repeat, sir: "The sun was in my eves, so I headed West."

'SAN DIEGO to NASA Control — The Mem-sahib just reported that it would make only one orbit. I quote: "When you have been around the earth once, you've seen everything you're going to see. Will land near Grand Inagua in an hour. Have some lunch ready." Unquote… I just pass it along, I do not comment.

It was a lovely day in the Caribbean. The USS Cooke, a destroyer attack carrier — a DAC — had no trouble hauling the space capsule out of the sea and onto its deck. The crew lined up and the Yeoman First took pictures of them, in turn, leaning under the name Mem-sahib. He charged the sailors a dollar apiece, two dollars for officers.

But before the skipper — a full Lieutenant — could pose, the side hatch blew out, and Mem stepped out on the deck.

He was tall and thin for a chimp, about a hundred and twenty pounds, though, which was heavy for his age, seven and a half. He did not look inhuman in his space suit and helmet.

The first thing he said was, "Help me out of this suit, will you? I think I picked up a flea at Cape Canaveral."

The Navy was glad to help.

While his gallant crew was stripping away the intricate suit, the skipper retired to the bridge. He was joined there by the executive, a j.g. The skipper said, "You heard him?"

The executive considered. "It was what I would have said. Gawd, and they would have kept him in orbit twenty-four hours with a flea inside his suit."

He shuddered.

"But he talked, Johnny. I heard him with my own ears. Apes don't talk."

"Sir, beg to submit that this one did. Hell, the Army talks — why not chimps?"

"We have a problem in etiquette on our hands. Where does he eat lunch?"

The executive nearly said "Huh," but he swallowed it and translated it into "Sir?"

"I mean," the skipper said, "he's famous. How many, monkeys or people, have gone into orbit? He's a celebrity, even if he is an ape. We can't have him mess with the enlisted men."

"No, sir." The exec was finding the blue surface of the Caribbean absorbing.

"And I don't know what Bupers would say about an ape in the wardroom."

"No, sir."

"I don't want to get passed over for LCDR. I'm pretty close to the top of the list."

"Yes, sir."

"Damn it, Johnny, I'm asking for suggestions."

The exec sighed. He was not close to the top of j.g., but he didn't want his folder marked "uncooperative". Unimaginative he didn't mind, but not uncooperative. "Let him mess with the chiefs," he said. "Issue a statement that they're getting the honor because they are the backbone of the Service."

"Johnny, you'll fly your own flag before you're through."

"Thank you, sir."

The chiefs mess on the Cooke was small — four CPO's and eight Petty Officers, 1st. With Mem, this made thirteen, but as the chimpanzee said: "After all, I was the thirteenth of my people to go out into space, and it wasn't unlucky for me."

Radioman 1st Happy Bronstein said: "No, sir. If you're not superstitious, we don't have to be."

"You gentlemen don't have to call me sir."

"Well, don't call us gentlemen, then," Happy said. "We're just enlisted men."

"Ape there — I mean, I beg your pardon. Chief Torpedoman Bates — is senior. Thirty-five years."

The chimp called Mem laughed. "Your nickname is Ape, Chief?"

History was being made in the U.S. Navy: Chief Bates was blushing. "Yes, sir."

Mem laughed again, and scratched himself luxuriously. "Don't be ashamed of it, Chief. I'd rather be called Ape than Mem. That fool mate of the general's was going to sprinkle champagne on my head when she gave me the name. Dr. Bedoian stopped her. Which puts an idea into my head!" His heavy, wrinkled lid came up from his red left eye. He looked around the table.

Happy Bronstein shook his head sadly. "Not even torpedo juice, Mem. I mean, Ape."

"Call me Pan," the chimp said. "The Latin name for my people is Pan Satyrus." He smiled, a little wistfully. "There was a metal sign on my mother's cage that said that. When I was a little ape, I thought it was her name."

Ape Bates said: "Ah, to hell wit' it. If I'm rude, Mr. Satyrus, I'm rude; I bin a torpedoman twenty-five years. I wanna know: where did you learn how to talk?"

Pan Satyrus laughed. "How could a direct question be rude, Chief? Why, I've known how to talk— and read for that matter — since I was two. I just never saw the need for it till today, when I found myself up in that spaceship with the cute name, and a flea inside my suit."

Yeoman First Dilling said: I'll be damned. Can all your people talk if they want to?"

"I suppose so. I never really thought about it".

"Okay," Happy Bronstein said, "okay. But that all chimps — chimpanzees — Pan satiricals or what not — can pound out good International on a broken wire, that I do not swallow."

"Was my fist good?" Pan asked. "I'm out of practice. Back when I was still with Mother, the night keeper used to practice. He wanted to get a job in the merchant marine. I'd drum on the cage floor in time with him."

The messmen, after some whispered discussion in the galley, were serving chow. Pan Satyrus took a French roll, broke it in two, and swallowed the halves, one at a time. "No fresh fruit, I suppose," he said. "It doesn't matter. I eat almost anything, having been with people all my life. I'm starving; they didn't give me any breakfast for fear I'd vomit in my helmet".

"Bring the gent a can of peaches, boy," Ape said. The messman scurried. "Pan, I like you. You gonna keep on talking?"

Pan Satyrus set down the strawberry jam he had been eating with a spoon. "Ape," he said slowly, "that is a very good question. I don't seem to be able to stop. You see, I think I made a mistake, going around the world as fast as I did, in the direction I did. I should have stayed with the natural, or west-to-east direction. I think I have retrogressed!"

Happy Bronstein said: "You what?"

"Maybe that's not the right word," Pan said. His dark eyes were gloomy. "Whatever the opposite of evolution is."

"I got a dictionary in my office," the yeoman said, but nobody was listening to him.

"You see, chimpanzees are more advanced than humans," Pan Satyrus said. "Which isn't a nice way to talk considering I'm your guest, but the truth is the truth. Only — I read it over Dr. Bedoian's shoulder, once when I was ill and he was nursing me — a man named Einstein had a theory about very fast travel, faster than the speed of light, and what it does to travellers."

"You can't travel faster than light," Bronstein said.

Pan Satyrus said: "I'm afraid I did. You see, they kept putting me in that capsule, or spaceship, or what not." He shuddered, chimpanzee-style, his fur standing straight up all over him. "For rehearsals, dry runs. I had nothing to do, and I kept studying the circuits. As soon as I was aloft, I changed them."

"I don't get it," Ape said.

"I have retrogressed," Pan Satyrus said. For no apparent reason he reached out and patted Ape Bates's hand, kindly. "Yes, I am sure that is the word. Not devoluted. I have an irresistible compulsion to talk, you see. I have always thought of it as Adam's curse." He sighed.

Nobody seemed to understand him but Ape Bates. The old Chief said, "You could join the Navy. It ain't so bad at sea. From what Bronstein says, you could make Radioman 2nd right off, maybe First."

"I'm only seven and a half," the chimpanzee said. "They wouldn't take me." "Not even with your parents' consent," said the yeoman, though nobody listened.

"Anyway," Pan Satyrus said, "the uniform isn't exactly suitable for a chimpanzee."

"I know what you mean," Bronstein said. "I saw a picture of Bates before he made chief."

There was a twittering, a ringing, and then a voice now-hear-thising. "All hands to the flight deck! All hands to the flight deck!"

"I suppose I'm a hand," Pan Satyrus said. "I'd certainly not like to think of myself as four feet."

But the chief's mess didn't hear him; they were trotting to the flight deck and their duty. He finished the last of his canned peaches and strolled after them, his knuckles rapping gently on the steel deck with each step.

The ship's company was already lined up at parade rest when he got to the flight deck. They were lined up by divisions or companies or however the Navy lines up; none of his keepers had ever read sea stories, so he couldn't be sure.

The Mem-sahib had been hauled to one side of the deck, and he sauntered over and leaned on it, and watched the apparent cause of the turn out, or hornpipe or lashup, or whatever it was the sailors were doing. A helicopter was approaching the Cooke.

While he watched he scratched himself thoroughly, enjoying turning his fur up to the tropic breezes. His alert and educated fingernail finally located the flea that had caused him to abort the flight of the Mem-sahib and he crushed it with pleasure. He would be glad to get back to White Sands; Florida was definitely pro-flea and anti-chimp country.

Yawning, he watched the helicopter, a little critically. For the past five and a half years he had been stationed at Air Force and NASA installations. He had even done a little duty for the AEC at Los Alamos, where the doctor had been good and the food terrible; they seemed to think a chimp cared for nothing but cold storage bananas.

Yes, since leaving his mother, he had seen an awful lot of helicopters land. Noisy devils, and poorly designed. And without any real function. Most transportation was that way; it took someone from where he was doing nothing useful and hurried him to be useless elsewhere. Walking, climbing, swinging made some sense; you felt better after you'd done them.

There! The helicopter was safely on the deck. The pilot secured his motors, and men in queerly-colored outfits ran forward and tied him down. Yep, secure. He had had a Navy doctor at Holloman who was always telling people to secure things, which seemed to mean to leave them alone.

Those officers over there were saluting. He knew all about ranks, uniforms, grades, rate of pay. He had heard a lot about Government service, both civilian and in uniform. That was a full lieutenant and a j.g. saluting. That was an admiral — whoops, ADMIRAL — getting out of the chopper. And a Navy doctor, CDR. And two civilians, who looked like keepers. Keepers, nowadays, wanted to be known as Attendants (Simian) but they were still keepers to him, and they came all ways, from mean to very nice.

That yeoman whom nobody listened to was taking the Admiral's picture now.

Pan Satyrus smoothed his fur and strolled forward, rolling his knuckles on the deck.

The Admiral saw him first. He stopped posing for his picture and pointed. "There's the ape! Why haven't you secured him. Mister?"

The Navy doctor turned and said something to one of the keepers, who scurried back into the chopper.

Pan Satyrus said, "Oh, they didn't have to secure me, Admiral. I enjoyed talking to the men. I had lunch in the Chiefs' mess."

"Chiefs don't eat lunch," the admiral said. "They eat dinner and supper. Officers eat lunch."

Pan Satyrus shrugged and turned away. There was absolutely no point in talking to this man; it could go on for years, and get no place. Like airplanes and helicopters — and spaceships named Mem-sahib.

The civilian was back, Pan Satyrus noticed, starting to turn away. And then he turned back, fast. He knew what the man was carrying: a strait jacket and a tranquilizer gun. "Put those things away," he said. "I don't like to look at them."

The admiral barked, "Shoot, man, shoot. If you think I'm going to ride with an unchained ape!"

The keeper hesitated. "This is just a tranquilizer, sir," he said. "It don't knock them out."

Pan Satyrus decided to growl. When he finished he beat his chest a bit, as he had seen a man do on television, when the man was playing a gorilla.

"Maybe you'd better secure that gun, Nelson," the doctor said.

"Secure the ape," the admiral said. Something was wrong here. Secure meant to leave alone and it also meant to do something about. Pan wished he'd had more chance to read sea stories, navy stories. He wondered whatever happened to the keeper who had wanted to be a merchant marine radio operator.

The admiral was admiralling again. He had turned to the full lieutenant. "You the captain of this vessel? Fall out some men to secure that ape!"

"I wish you'd stop dwelling on my apehood, Admiral," Pan said. "I don't like being lumped with gorillas and orangs and gibbons. I am a chimpanzee, Pan Satyrus, chimp for short." He scratched his head, and added: "Sir."

"You're talking," the admiral said.

Pan Satyrus said, reasonably, he thought: "So are you, Admiral."

The admiral got red in the face. He said, "Did you hear me, mister? Fall out some of your men and—"

The skipper was very straight at attention. "Sir, I would have to ask for volunteers."

"Do so."

Pan howled again. He beat on the deck this time instead of on his chest. It made a very satisfactory noise.

The attendant who was holding the strait jacket wiped his face with it.

"I don't think you're going to get any volunteers," Pan said.

The admiral said, "Captain, order your master-at-arms to shoot that beast."

Pan decided to stroll towards the admiral.

But then there was an interruption. A sailor with about the same insignia as Happy Bronstein, only with less stripes, came trotting up, saluted the admiral, and handed him a piece of paper. Radio message.

The admiral read it, and read it again. He wiped his face, though he didn't have a strait jacket to do it with. He said, "Captain, belay that last order. Have your master-at-arms post a guard on the spaceship. No one is to enter it, repeat, no one. And no one is to talk to the. the pilot, either."

Men went trotting around and lined up around the Mem-sahib.

Then Ape Bates started marching from where he had stood at the head of the torpedomen. He marched up to the admiral and saluted. "Sir." he said, "I volunteer to stand guard over Mr. Satyrus there."

The admiral looked at Ape. He seemed to be counting the stripes on his arm. "Bates, aren't you, Chief?" the admiral said. "We were together on the Howland."

"Yes, sir. You was j.g. then, Admiral. I volunteer to stand guard on Mr. Satyrus."

"Who?"

"Pan Satyrus there, sir, the chimp. That's what he likes to be called. Pan Satyrus, Mr. Satyrus."

"Don't call him mister."

"He's a pilot, ain't he? Ill stand guard an' see nobody talks to him till the security guys get here from shore."

Pan Satyrus rocked on his knuckles, lifting his feet up from the deck. He really didn't care how long this went on. It was a lot more pleasant here than back at Cape Canaveral.

The admiral said, "How did you know the security men were coming, Chief?"

Pan sympathized with Ape Bates, who looked as though he would like to scratch his head, a feeling Pan knew quite well, from being tied down in space capsules and pressure chambers and speed sleds. The Chief was clumsy answering. He said, finally, "Well, at lu — at dinner, Pan said he fixed his spaceship so's it would go faster'n light. I figgered that signal you got said about that, and to keep guys away from the spaceship. And not to let no one talk to Mr. Satyrus.

That'd be a pretty good secret weapon, going faster than light."

The admiral nodded. His face was just a normal red now. "Trust an old chief," he said. He cleared his throat. He said to the lieutenant, "It's your vessel, Captain."

The lieutenant said quickly, Take another volunteer with you, Chief. Admiral, we have coffee in the wardroom."

"Radioman First Class Bronstein, volunteer," Chief Bates said.

As Happy and Ape walked towards him, their faces very serious, the admiral and the skipper and the doctor went inside or below, or wherever men go on a ship.

The j.g. was dismissing the parade.

The two keepers tossed the strait jacket into the helicopter and went in after it and shut the door.

"Let's all go down to Ape's quarters, Pan," Happy said. "I couldn't promote anything to drink, but I got some lemonade and cookies up in the radio shack."

They strolled across the emptying deck. Pan said, "That will do very nicely. Is that admiral crazy, Ape?"

"If he wasn't before, he's a step closer now. How'd you like that crack about calling you mister cause you was a pilot? You gotta go to college to steer a plane in this lashup."

"I don't think I like the admiral at all."

"Pay it no heed, pal. It's the chiefs run the Navy."