The Glory of Ippling | Page 5

blood pressure up another notch, and the moment the ramp was unshipped he hit the ground.
Officers and crewmen quickly lined up to pipe Boswellister aboard. But the crowd pushed in close, forcing Boswellister to the rear as they screamed for their free samples. Two bulky crewmen stood embattled by the entrance port, strong-arming the kids who tried to storm through the port and inside.
"Space Angel's inside!" That was their battle cry as they tried to wriggle under the legs of the crewmen.
"Ya sellin' Oatbombs?" one screamed in the commander's ear, then reached up to snatch off a shoulder patch.
Boswellister stood in the rear of the crowd and wrung his hands while the crowd clamored for their samples.
"Give us the pitch, then pass out the stuff!"
"Lookit that ship! Ain't it a dilly! Whatcha sellin', Wheatsnaps?"
"Bring on the dames!"
* * * * *
They pressed in close to the starship, running their hands over the slick metal surface.
"Boy, what a prop! Bet it cost a million bucks. What ya sellin', mister?"
"Sanity!" Boswellister shouted from the rear.
His men tried to hold their ranks, but the crowd broke the lines, jerking the medals off their chests for souvenirs.
Boswellister was almost babbling by the time the commander and his men battled their way to him.
"You saw it all! You know!" Boswellister protested. "That Blond Terror and his harem darlings, and those violence-avid ruffians in the audience! Dodie, the stripper, with her lip-licking ogglers! That Calsobisidine pitchman, oozing allure and implied invitation! My equation! My precious equation, buried under a mass of pills, lotions, toys, food, clothes and everything sold with a bump and grind!"
They fought to the ship with him, while the crowd opposed each step, yelling for entertainment, for TV cameras, for samples of anything.
"How could I have missed it?" Boswellister moaned. "I should have sold them with sex, right from the beginning."
"What do you do, handsome? Sing?" A bundle-clutching housewife breathed into his face, stepping on the commander's foot as she shoved in close to Boswellister.
"Take me home!" Boswellister beseeched the commander.
The officers and crew, tattered, demedaled, bruised and completely defeated in morale, formed a flying wedge and drove for the safety of the ship.
The ramp retracted. The port closed, then opened briefly to eject a nosey boy, closing finally on the demands and the mocking laughter and the clangor of arriving police cars.
"Raise ship!" the commander ordered. He sopped at the blood from his gashed arm and said to his first officer, "Somebody in that mob used a knife to go after those service stripes."
The first shuddered. "Ugly brutes."
Boswellister leaned against the corridor bulkhead and sighed as the Ipplinger starship rose from the ground. How could he explain to his poppa? All his brothers had won their worlds. He would do it. He squared his shoulders. After all, he was a Boswellister. Boswellister XIV, no less. A son of Gaphroldshan IX himself, the Prince of Ippling World LXIV, a Royal Prince of the Central Ippling.
He walked resolutely to the control room, riding the crest of his refurbished dignity.
"Put me down on that planet we spotted last year," he ordered. "What was that star map number?"
"G.S.R. 285139-F. R. A. 592-105-R.U. 13," his alert assistant astronomical officer answered, reading the number from a prepared memorandum.
Boswellister hesitated. Should he reprimand the officer for anticipating his failure or compliment him for his efficiency? Boswellister backed water and went to his room to learn the language he'd need, while the officers pulled their own demoralized spirits together so they could go to work on the crew when the news broke that they weren't going home.
* * * * *
They made a quick passage to their destination, and Boswellister--well rested, well fed, hypnotically tutored, supplied with communicators, a synthesizer for his food and a portable equation writer strapped to his back, and his irrepressible, dauntless belief in himself in triumphant operation--stepped from the ramp onto this newest world of his Princely destiny.
"Circle in orbit," he ordered. "I'll call you when I need you."
Boswellister walked confidently down the road to town. He congratulated himself on having learned, also on his wise humility in admitting the fact of his having learned. He smiled now at the naiveté with which he had approached his first try at establishing a realm for his Ipplinger Princedom rights.
He had been so full of illusions that he had landed openly, had stepped right up and announced that he had come to establish his household and rear his own Princes, who would, in their maturity, leave to win their own worlds. In addition to their being small-minded on that first world about his needing five wives for his household, they had nearly managed to commit him to a lunatic asylum, for he had overlooked, in his equation, the fact that his first planet, with its two suns