about Sid and his easy suspicions, and Erich and my black eye, and how,
as usual, I'd got left alone in the end. My men!

Bruce had explained about being an A-tech. Like a lot of us, he'd had
several widely different jobs during his first weeks in the Change World
and one of them had been as secretary to a group of the minor atomics
boys from the Manhattan-Project-Earth-Satellite days. I gathered he'd
also absorbed some of his bothersome ideas from them. I hadn't quite
decided yet what species of heroic heel he belonged to, but he was thick
with Mark and Erich again. Everybody's men!

Sid didn't have to argue with anybody; all the wild compulsions and
mighty resolves were dead now, anyway until they'd had a good long rest.
I sure could use one myself, I knew.

The party at the piano was getting wilder. Lili had been dancing the
black bottom on top of it and now she jumped down into Sid's and
Sevensee's arms, taking a long time about it. She'd been drinking a lot
and her little gray dress looked about as innocent on her as diapers
would on Nell Gwyn. She continued her dance, distributing her marks of
favor equally between Sid, Erich and the satyr. Beau didn't mind a bit,
but serenely pounded out "Tonight's the Night"--which she'd practically
shouted to him not two minutes ago.

I was glad to be out of the party. Who can compete with a highly
experienced, utterly disillusioned seventeen-year-old really throwing
herself away for the first time?

* * * * *

Something touched my hand. Illy had stretched a tentacle into a furry
wire to return me the black glove, although he ought to have known I
didn't want it. I pushed it away, privately calling Illy a washed-out
moronic tarantula, and right away I felt a little guilty. What right had
I to be critical of Illy? Would my own character have shown to advantage
if I'd been locked in with eleven octopoids a billion years away? For
that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?

Still, I was glad to be out of the party, though I kept on watching it.
Bruce was drinking alone at the bar. Once Sid had gone over to him and
they'd had one together and I'd heard Bruce reciting from Rupert Brooke
those deliberately corny lines, "For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; and Cambridgeshire, of all
England, The Shire for Men who Understand;" and I'd remembered that
Brooke too had died young in World War One