It was after six when I got back to my hotel. I had Grogan's address, and he wasn't too far from where I was staying—but Grogan is not the sort of person on whom you make a business call after business hours.
My confidence in the defense mech hadn't grown, but I knew of another sure-fire defense, so after dinner I went to the bar to start setting it up.
But I lugged the thirty-pound portable along, anyway, wishing that it looked a little more like a briefcase instead of a typewriter or a radio.
Not that it really mattered, though. I could have carried an open bird cage with a live and screaming Calypsian grimp, odor and all, and still not have attracted any attention—because it wouldn't have been any more unusual than some of the guests at the hotel.
For a student of interplanetary biology, this would be a perfect observation post. There aren't many forms of extraterrestrial life that can accommodate themselves to Earth's conditions, but there are spots that go out of their way to provide suitable conditions for anything that comes along, and this was one of them.
In the two weeks I had been here, I had seen only one Calypsian dominant, and he didn't happen to have a grimp with him. But there were a pair of Uranian galgaque—squat, gray, midget honeymooners—who smelled just as bad. They left a few days after I got here.
Then there had been at least half a dozen flimsy, ethereal little Venusians at one time or another, dragging themselves around and looking unhappy as hell. None of them stayed more than a few days, and they spent most of their time in the water.
I noticed one or two hairy, apelike dominants from Jupiter's third moon, and a few of the snaky, scaly, six-limbed creatures from the second. In addition, there was a group of Vega VI dominants who were hard to distinguish from humans if you didn't look closely enough to notice their complete hairlessness and the absence of neck.
And of course there were the inevitable Martians—giant, big-chested, spindly-limbed, red-hued parodies of humanity; friendly, good-natured and alert. But I don't really suppose they should be classed among the oddities of the place.