Project Gutenberg's Show Business, by William C. Boyd and Lyle G. Boyd

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Title: Show Business

Author: William C. Boyd
Lyle G. Boyd

Illustrator: Mel Hunter

Release Date: October 6, 2009 [EBook #30189]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Here's the behind-the-scenes lowdown on Luna City life and a
promoter of Martian dancing girls, vaudeville, and--other things.
But remember: stop us if you've heard this one!_

SHOW BUSINESS

By Boyd Ellanby

Illustrated by Mel Hunter

Except for old Dworken, Kotha's bar was deserted when I dropped in
shortly after midnight. The ship from Earth was still two days away, and
the Martian flagship would get in next morning, with seven hundred
passengers for Earth on it. Dworken must have been waiting in Luna City
a whole week--at six thousand credits a day. That's as steep to me as it
is to you, but money never seemed to worry Dworken.

He raised the heavy green lids from his protruding brown eyes as I came
in. He waved his tail.

"Sit down and join me," he invited, in his guttural voice. "It is not
good for a man to drink alone. But I haf no combany in dis
by-de-gods-deserted hole. A man must somet'ing be doing, what?"

I sat down in the booth across from my Venusian friend, and stared at
him while he punched a new order into the drinkboard.

"For me, another _shchikh_," he announced. "And for you? De same?"

Against my better judgment, for I knew I'd have plenty to do handling
that mob of tourists--the first crowd of the season is always the
roughest--tomorrow, I consented. Dworken had already consumed six of the
explosive things, as the empty glasses on the table showed, but he
exhibited no effects. I made a mental note, as I'd so often done before,
that this time I would not exceed the safe terrestrial limit of two.

"You must be in the money again, drinking imported _shchikh_," I
remarked. "What are you doing in Luna City this time?"

He merely lifted his heavy eyelids and stared at