Zeke was there standing beside him. Johnson stepped aside. Zeke stood there in his place. Johnson's knees got weak. He felt the sweat running down his face then, and the cold shivery feeling as though he'd suddenly contracted a high fever. The laughter was starting. It was starting around the platform as the big spotlights caught Zeke full, and it spread backward and upward, growing and expanding.
Zeke, in his alien way talked, and he gestured with his entire body as he talked sincerely, with deep feeling, about how he felt about this first visit to Earth. The laughter rose higher and more voluminous until Johnson's body began to quiver as though from some physical assault. The trouble was a complete misunderstanding of Zeke, his grotesqueness, the fact that no one had any idea what he was really saying. What his gestures meant. All that—and whatever it was in human beings that made them laugh.
Zeke leaned toward Johnson, yelled in his ear. "Look, they are all doing it now."
"Yes," Johnson managed to scream. "They like you. They're all stirred up with excitement. Think nothing of it. They're expressing their extreme excitement and appreciation—"
The twistings of Zeke's body, his facial distortions as he sought to express himself in the best and most intelligible manner, grew more intense. Laughter became a sweeping thunder. No one could hear Johnson's interpretation. He stopped interpreting.
Zeke came back away from the cameras and microphones. No one but Johnson realized his growing panic. Johnson said to someone, "The air's bad for the Martian here. I'm taking him back inside the rocket. You say something."
The man who happened to be a highly important figure in the United Nations Supreme Court, an Englishman named Gordon Humphreys, nodded. He was grinning, yet Johnson seemed to see a glint of understanding in Humphreys' eyes.
The rocket held out most of the thunder. Zeke sat in the corner. His eyes were frightened, confused. "They certainly do appreciate me a great deal, do they not."
"Yes," whispered Johnson. "They certainly do."