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the twentieth-century air "Sentimental Journey" without adding much luster to the proceedings. As such occasions usually are, this occasion was dull, its interest diffused. The spraying of the entire hull of the ship with germicidal sprays took some while. A hatch opened, a little overalled figure appeared in the opening, was cheered, and disappeared again. A thousand children asked if that was Captain Bargerone and were told not to be silly.
    At length a ramp came out like a reluctant tongue and lolled against the ground. Transport - three small buses, two trucks, an ambulance, various luggage tenders, a private car. and several military vehicles - converged on to the great ship from different parts of the port. And finally a line of human beings began to move hastily down the ramp with bowed heads and dived into the shelter of the vehicles. The crowd cheered; it had come to cheer.
    In a reception hall, the gentlemen of the press had made the air blue with the smoke of their mescahales before Captain Bargerone was thrust in upon them. Flashes sizzled and danced as he smiled defensively at them.
    With some of his officers standing behind him, he stood and spoke quietly and unsensationally in a very English way (Bargerone was French) about how much space there was out there and how many worlds there were and how devoted his crew had been except for an unfortunate strike on the way home for which someone, he hoped, was going to get it hot; and he finished by saying that on a very pleasant planet which the USGN had graciously decided should be known as Clementina they had captured or killed some large animals with interesting characteristics. Some of these characteristics he described. The animals had two heads, each of which held a brain. The two brains together weighed 2,000 grammes - a quarter more than man's. These animals, ETA's or rhinomen, as the crew called them, had six limbs which ended in undoubted equivalents of hands. Unfortunately the strike had hindered the study of the remarkable creatures, but there seemed a fair reason to suppose that they had a language of their own and must therefore, despite their ugliness and dirty habits, be regarded as more or less - but of course nobody could be certain as yet, and it might take many months of patient research before we could be certain - as an intelligent form of life on a par with man and capable of having a civilization of their own, on a planet as yet unknown to man. Two of them were preserved in captivity and would go to the Exozoo for study.
    When the speech was over, reporters closed round Bargerone.
    "You're saying these rhinos don't live on Clementina?”
    "We have reason to suppose not.”
    "What reason?”
    ("Smile for the Subud Times, please, Captain.") "We think they were on a visit there, just as we were.”
    "You mean they travelled in a spaceship?”
    "In a sense, yes. But they may just have been taken along on the trip as experimental animals - or dumped there, like Captain Cook's pigs dumped on Tahiti or wherever it was.”
    ("More profile, Captain, if you please.") "Well, did you see their spaceship?”
    "Er well, we think we actually have ... er, their space-ship in our hold.”
    "Give, then, Captain, this is big! Why the secrecy? Have you captured their spaceship or have you not?”
    ("And over this way. sir.") "We think we have. That is, it has the properties of a spaceship, but it, er - no TP drive naturally, but an interesting drive, and, well, it sounds silly but you see the hull is made of wood. A very high-density wood." Captain Bargerone wiped his face clear of expression.
    "Oh now look. Captain, you're joking... .”
    In the mob of photographers, phototects, and reporters, Adrian Bucker could get nowhere near the captain. He elbowed his way across to a tall nervous man who stood behind Bargerone, scowling out of one of the long windows at the crowds milling about in the light rain.
    " Would you tell me how you feel about these aliens you