They pressed in close to the starship, running their hands over the slick metal surface.
"Boy, what a prop! Bet it cost a million bucks. What ya sellin', mister?"
"Sanity!" Boswellister shouted from the rear.
His men tried to hold their ranks, but the crowd broke the lines, jerking the medals off their chests for souvenirs.
Boswellister was almost babbling by the time the commander and his men battled their way to him.
"You saw it all! You know!" Boswellister protested. "That Blond Terror and his harem darlings, and those violence-avid ruffians in the audience! Dodie, the stripper, with her lip-licking ogglers! That Calsobisidine pitchman, oozing allure and implied invitation! My equation! My precious equation, buried under a mass of pills, lotions, toys, food, clothes and everything sold with a bump and grind!"
They fought to the ship with him, while the crowd opposed each step, yelling for entertainment, for TV cameras, for samples of anything.
"How could I have missed it?" Boswellister moaned. "I should have sold them with sex, right from the beginning."
"What do you do, handsome? Sing?" A bundle-clutching housewife breathed into his face, stepping on the commander's foot as she shoved in close to Boswellister.