greatest pleasure
known to my race. And, save for the paltry drops of gin in that bottle
yesterday, I have not--let us say 'tasted'--it for some hundreds of
years!"

"_Al-kuhl?_" repeated Pinkham.

"The Arabic slips easily from my tongue after all those years," said
the thing, half to itself.

Arabic! "You weren't lying," said Pink, "when you told us you came from
Earth, then."

"I was not lying. Give me some alcohol, Captain."

"No. How do I know it won't revive you?"

"My word on it."

Pink gave the hardest and briefest bark of laughter ever heard on the
spaceways. It became silent. Finally he leaned forward to stare at it.
"Your eyes have faded," he said. "By God, I think you aren't paralyzed.
I think you're dying!"

After another silence it said, "Yes. I am dying."

"I couldn't be happier," said Pinkham viciously. "I even hope it's
painful."

"It is not. The only pain came with the passage through my molecules of
the l--" it halted abruptly.

"Ah," said Pink, hefting the Colt. "Of the lead. It had to be that, of
course; but thanks for reassuring me. Your tribe's allergic to lead in a
rather high degree."

* * * * *

The flames leaped in its eyes. "I haven't told you anything so
valuable," it said, with a kind of weak bravado. "There are too many of
us, too few of you, and not enough lead in this whole system to conquer
us. You have found the secret, but you'll never carry it back to Earth.
My people shall go there instead, when they have sucked the methods from
your broken body."

"When will you die?" he asked it. In spite of his hatred, humanity was
rising in him. It was beaten and he was too much of a man to crow for
long.

"I hear remorse in your tone," said the alien. "For the love of God,
then, give me some alcohol."

He remembered the headless corpse of Wright. He said, "No."

Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed. It began to talk to itself in a
monotone, a sort of feverish delirium.

"I never thought of it, at least not often, for I steered my mind away
from it; but once a decade or every thirty years I would remember,
perhaps one of us would say, 'Oh, to have a flagon of palm wine,' and
then the agony of desire would wrack me until I must fight my body and
tear it proton from proton so that I hurt badly and the remembrance
would leave me. _Al-kuhl, al-kuhl!_ Why in all the universe must there
be this one combination of stupid elements which drags every