 What was special or impressive about Gertrude?
The Blue Behemoth By LEIGH BRACKETT Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed space-carny leased for a mysterious tour of the inner worlds. With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in Space, plastered so thick with attachments...." I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down! I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be. It has always been my desire to lighten the burden of life for those less fortunate...." He went on, quietly, "I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of toil and boredom...." "There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no entertainment of the— proper sort has been available. It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran colony on Mercury. His hands, holding the curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino. He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again." "Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude ain't happy. Beamish cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly, "Gertrude?" "She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude." Gertrude may be a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking circus than even I could stand. The extreme rarity of the animal...." It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of his own property through the sewage lock. The freaks and the green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
 She was an extreme rarity.
 Her outrageous temperment  She was an extreme rarity.  Her extraordinary size and young age  She was exceptionally talented