"You understand your mission, Newton?" the voice asked. "You are to establish yourself on Earth. In time you will receive instructions. Then you will attack. You will not see us, your masters, again until the atmosphere has been sufficiently chlorinated. In the meantime, serve us well."
He stumbled out toward the docks, then looked about for Mary Ann. He saw her at last behind the ropes, her lovely face in tears.
Then she saw him. Waving frantically, she called his name several times. Pembroke mingled with the crowd moving toward the ship, ignoring her. But still the woman persisted in her shouting.
Sidling up to a well-dressed man-about-town type, Pembroke winked at him and snickered.
"You Frank?" he asked.
"Hell, no. But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know why they even make 'em."
Suddenly Mary Ann was quiet.
"Ambulance squad," Pembroke's companion explained. "They'll take her off to the buggy house for a few days and bring her out fresh and ignorant as the day she was assembled. Don't know why they keep making 'em, as I say. But I guess there's a call for that type up there on Earth."
"Yeah, I reckon there is at that," said Pembroke, snickering again as he moved away from the other. "And why not? Hey? Why not?"
Pembroke went right on hating himself, however, till the night he was deposited in a field outside of Ensenada, broke but happy, with two other itinerant types. They separated in San Diego, and it was not long before Pembroke was explaining to the police how he had drifted far from the scene of the sinking of the Elena Mia on a piece of wreckage, and had been picked up by a Chilean trawler. How he had then made his way, with much suffering, up the coast to California. Two days later, his identity established and his circumstances again solvent, he was headed for Los Angeles to begin his save-Earth campaign.