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'Good grief!' said Shanks, turning to Shuckworth and Showier. 'It really is the President. It's President Gilligrass himself... Well, hello there, Mr President, sir. How are you today?'
'How many people are there in that glass capsule?' rasped the President.
'Eight,' said Shanks. 'All floating.'
'Floating?'
'We're outside the pull of gravity up here, Mr President. Everything floats. We'd be floating ourselves if we weren't strapped down. Didn't you know that?'
'Of course I knew it,' said the President. 'What else can you tell me about that glass capsule?'
'There's a bed in it,' said Shanks. 'A big double bed and that's floating too.'
'A bed!' barked the President. 'Whoever heard of a bed in a spacecraft!'
'I swear it's a bed,' said Shanks.
'You must be loopy, Shanks,' declared the President. 'You're dotty as a doughnut! Let me talk to Showier!'
'Showier here, Mr President,' said Showier, taking the mike from Shanks. 'It is a great honour to talk to you, Mr President, sir.'
'Oh, shut up!' said the President. 'Just tell me what you see.'
'It's a bed all right, Mr President. I can see it through my telescope. It's got sheets and blankets and a mattress...'
'That's not a bed, you drivelling thickwit!' yelled the President. 'Can't you understand it's a trick! It's a bomb. It's a bomb disguised as a bed!
They're going to blow up our magnificent Space Hotel!'
'Who's they, Mr President, sir?' said Showier.
'Don't talk so much and let me think,' said the President.
There were a few moments of silence. Showier waited tensely. So did Shanks and Shuckworth. So did the managers and assistant managers and desk-clerks and waitresses and bell-boys and chambermaids and pastry chefs and hall porters. And down in the huge Control Room at Houston, one hundred controllers sat motionless in front of their dials and monitors, waiting to see what orders the President would give next to the astronauts.
'I've just thought of something,' said the President. 'Don't you have a television camera up there on the front of your spacecraft, Showier?'
'Sure do, Mr President.'
'Then switch it on, you nit, and let all of us down here get a look at this object!'
'I never thought of that,' said Showier. 'No wonder you're the President. Here goes...' He reached out and switched on the TV camera in the nose of the spacecraft, and at that moment, five hundred million people all over the world who had been listening in on their radios rushed to their television sets.
On their screens they saw exactly what Shuckworth and Shanks and Showier were seeing - a weird glass box in splendid orbit around the earth, and inside the box, seen not too clearly but seen none the less, were seven grown-ups and one small boy and a big double bed, all floating. Three of the grown-ups were barelegged and wearing nightshirts. And far off in the distance, beyond the glass box, the TV watchers could see the enormous, glistening, silvery shape of Space Hotel 'U.S.A.'
But it was the sinister glass box itself that everyone was staring at, and the cargo of sinister creatures inside it - eight astronauts so tough and strong they didn't even bother to wear space-suits. Who were these people and where did they come from? And what in heaven's name was that big evil-looking thing disguised as a double bed? The President had said it was a bomb and he was probably right. But what were they going to do with it? All across America and Canada and Russia and Japan and India and China and Africa and England and France and Germany and everywhere else in the world a kind of panic began to take hold of the television watchers.
'Keep well clear of them, Showier!' ordered the President over the radio link.
'Sure will, Mr President!' Showier answered. 'I sure will?
3
The Link-Up
Inside the Great Glass Elevator there was also a good deal of excitement. Charlie and Mr Wonka and all the others could see clearly the huge silvery shape of Space Hotel 'U.S.A.' about a mile ahead of them. And behind them was the smaller (but still pretty enormous) Transport Capsule. The Great Glass Elevator (not looking at all great now beside these two monsters) was in the middle. And of course everybody, even Grandma Josephine, knew very well what was going on. They even knew that the three astronauts in charge of the Transport Capsule were called Shuckworth, Shanks and Showier. The whole world knew about these things. Newspapers and television had been shouting about almost nothing else for the past six months. Operation Space Hotel was the event of the century.
'What a load of luck!' cried Mr Wonka. 'We've landed ourselves slap in the middle of the biggest space operation of all time!'
