Barnes started for the door and Burke got up to follow. They stepped out onto the hot clay of the street, moving their top-skins against the tight-fitting impact of the sun's rays.
"I don't want anything from them, Burke. I'm the one who should be sent home. I want to go home. Why should we go around labeled with Martian names? Barnes, Randolph, Burke, Smith—good God! And talking this jsu-twisting sutz of a language Martian of all the time speaking!"
Burke chuckled, deep in his sac. "The Psychologists dreamed it up—to make us seem less alien. We speak their sounds. And we take their names. After all, no trouble at all is better than the little they might be able to give us if they got excited."
They went down the street toward the teleport booth, two big octopoids, the sun warming their glistening brown backs.
The "Martian" was in the cool back room of the restaurant, seated before a group of his kind. This was afternoon rest period, and some freedom to congregate existed then.
A man turned from the wall slit through which he had watched the exit of Burke and Barnes.
"Those things make me sick, Burke," he said to the "Martian". "How can you get so close to them and keep your stomach? They smell."
Burke shrugged. "You get used to it, Barnes."
He bent down and lifted the lid of a box that was stamped: FIRST MARS EXPEDITION—2006. He took out a heavy proton-buster, broke the grip and examined its load of white pellets.