. Their greenish
skins shimmered iridescently. The sad-faced Venusian musicians on the
band-stand waved their graceful, spatulated fingers over their curious,
boxlike askarins, producing changing tones and overtones by the altered
capacitance. A rocketman in the black and silver uniform of the Space
Force was trying to stumble drunkenly out on to the floor with the
dancers and his friends were holding him back. There was much laughter
about the whole thing. The Venusian girls kept dancing and didn't change
their flat, almost lifeless expressions.

Ciel looked up without smiling when he got to the booth. She had a
half-finished glass of meth before her.

He tried a smile anyway. "Hello, baby." He sat down.

She said, "I didn't really think you'd get here. I could have had dates
with exactly eleven spacemen. I kept count."

"You have been faithful to me, Cynara, in your fashion. I need a drink
and don't want to wait for the waitress. Mind?" He took her half glass
of meth and tossed it down. He felt the wonderful illusion of an
explosion in his skull, and it seemed to him that his body was suddenly
the strongest in the world and that he could whip everybody in the joint
with one arm tied behind his back. He said, "Wow."

Ciel tried a smile now. "It does that to you when you're not used to
it."

The first effect passed and he felt only the warmth of the drink. He
signaled a waitress and ordered a couple more. "Don't forget to remind
me to take a hangover pill before I go to work in the morning," he told
Ciel.

"You--you are going to work in the morning, then?"

"Afraid I can't get out of it."

"And the moon trip's off?"

"Not off, just postponed. We'll get to it, don't worry."

"Dick."

"Yes?"

"I can take it just so long, putting our vacation off and off and off."
Her eyes were earnest, liquid and opaque. "I've been thinking about it.
Trying to arrive at something. I'm beginning to wonder, Dick, if maybe
we hadn't just better, well--call it quits, or something."

He stared at her. "Baby, what are you saying?"

* * * * *

A sudden, fanfare-like blast from the orchestra interrupted. They looked
at the dance floor. There was a flash of light, a swirling of mist, and
within the space of a second the Venusian girls suddenly disappeared and
their place was taken by a tall, hawk-nosed, dark-eyed man with a cloak
slung dramatically over one shoulder. The audience applauded.

"T