Zeke swung his long, stick-like arms, or appendages, whatever one chose to call them, in long arcs like pendulums, back and forth and to and fro. His three eyes spread wider and wider in an expression of such intense and gigantic astonishment that Stromberg and Hinton bent over and held their stomachs with uncontrollable laughter.
The flicker of unease in Johnson's stomach flamed a little stronger. The trouble was that Zeke's culture was so serious, so old and wise and serious, there seemed to be absolutely no sense of humor in it. At least none of any human kind that Johnson had been able to discover.
To Zeke, this being an object of humor had no meaning. Zeke could understand, however, the meaning of ridicule, derision and insults and sadness in their actual and realistic sense, divorced from the necessity of contrast that connected these things with laughter, gags, jokes in the human psychology.
So Johnson had never explained to Zeke that he was being laughed at, nor what it would mean if he did know he was being an object of laughter. Somehow now, Johnson wished he hadn't lied, that he hadn't explained to Zeke about Stromberg's and Hinton's laughter: "Well, Zeke, that's a kind of appreciation humans express to each other. It means they accept you. A form of politeness, a social amenity."
Zeke was saying in the peculiar slurred, high-pitched Martian speech. "It is over-powering, so many of you humans! Even in our most ancient records there is no account of there ever having been so many of us as I see of your kind out there!"
"That's only a small percent of the world's population," Johnson said. He took hold of one of Zeke's boneless, spongy arms. "Come on. We go on up now to the air-lock doors. In a few minutes we'll be out of here and you'll be presented to the world."
They were inside the Garden now, the rocket being moved by a giant crane to a position beside the speakers' platform. A ramp was connecting the two. The doors started to open and Stromberg and Hinton stood with stiff, glowing expectancy.
Johnson stood behind them, holding on to Zeke whose eight-foot body slumped with its own peculiar kind of expectancy. In all his 32 years Johnson had never been exactly a social animal. Devoted largely to field work, he had accustomed himself either by choice or necessity or both to an extraordinary degree of isolation. The two years in space hadn't bothered him. He was somewhat anxious to see his friends, but not overly so.
In fact the sight of those countless gaping faces, the packed masses of humanity, had frightened him a little. It had been so utterly peaceful out there in space, and on the high, cold plateaus of Mars.