d. "They got the Bowman Drive, why the hell shouldn't
they use it? Serves 'em right." I had a double scotch and added: "Twenty
years of it and they found out a few things they didn't know. Redlines
are only one of them. Twenty years more, maybe they'll find out a few
more things they didn't know. Maybe by the time there's a bathtub in
every American home and an alcoholism clinic in every American town,
they'll find out a whole _lot_ of things they didn't know. And every
American boy will be a pop-eyed, blood-raddled wreck, like our friend
here, from riding the Bowman Drive."

"It's the damn govermint," Sam Fireman repeated.

"And what the hell did you mean by that remark about alcoholism?" Paddy
said, real sore. "Personally, I can take it or leave it alone."

So we got to talking about that and everybody there turned out to be
people who could take it or leave it alone.

* * * * *

It was maybe midnight when the kid showed at the table again, looking
kind of dazed. I was drunker than I ought to be by midnight, so I said I
was going for a walk. He tagged along and we wound up on a bench at
Screwball Square. The soap-boxers were still going strong. Like I said,
it was a nice night. After a while, a pot-bellied old auntie who didn't
give a damn about the face sat down and tried to talk the kid into going
to see some etchings. The kid didn't get it and I led him over to hear
the soap-boxers before there was trouble.

One of the orators was a mush-mouthed evangelist. "And, oh, my friends,"
he said, "when I looked through the porthole of the spaceship and beheld
the wonder of the Firmament--"

"You're a stinkin' Yankee liar!" the kid yelled at him. "You say one
damn more word about can-shootin' and I'll ram your spaceship down your
lyin' throat! Wheah's your redlines if you're such a hot spacer?"

The crowd didn't know what he was talking about, but "wheah's your
redlines" sounded good to them, so they heckled mush-mouth off his box
with it.

I got the kid to a bench. The liquor was working in him all of a sudden.
He simmered down after a while and asked: "Doc, should I've given Miz
Rorty some money? I asked her afterward and she said she'd admire to
have something to remember me by, so I gave her my lighter. She seem' to
be real pleased with it. But I was wondering if maybe I embarrassed her
by asking her right out. Like I tol' you, back in Covington, Kentucky,
we don't have places li