s
face into an awful grin that showed his teeth. He has three of them. The
kid laughed and asked me: "What the hell did you drag me into here for?"

"Paddy says he'll buy drinks for the house the day anybody uglier than
he is comes in."

Oswiak's wife waddled over for the order and the kid asked us what we'd
have. I figured I could start drinking, so it was three double scotches.

After the second round, Paddy started blowing about how they took his
arm off without any anesthetics except a bottle of gin because the
red-ball freight he was tangled up in couldn't wait.

That brought some of the other old gimps over to the table with their
stories.

Blackie Bauer had been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking
through the door when the train started with a jerk. Wham, the door
closed. Everybody laughed at Blackie for being that dumb in the first
place, and he got mad.

Sam Fireman has palsy. This week he was claiming he used to be a
watchmaker before he began to shake. The week before, he'd said he was a
brain surgeon. A woman I didn't know, a real old Boxcar Bertha, dragged
herself over and began some kind of story about how her sister married a
Greek, but she passed out before we found out what happened.

Somebody wanted to know what was wrong with the kid's face--Bauer, I
think it was, after he came back to the table.

"Compression and decompression," the kid said. "You're all the time
climbing into your suit and out of your suit. Inboard air's thin to
start with. You get a few redlines--that's these ruptured blood
vessels--and you say the hell with the money; all you'll make is just
one more trip. But, God, it's a lot of money for anybody my age! You
keep saying that until you can't be anything but a spacer. The eyes are
hard-radiation scars."

"You like dot all ofer?" asked Oswiak's wife politely.

"All over, ma'am," the kid told her in a miserable voice. "But I'm going
to quit before I get a Bowman Head."

"I don't care," said Maggie Rorty. "I think he's cute."

"Compared with--" Paddy began, but I kicked him under the table.

* * * * *

We sang for a while, and then we told gags and recited limericks for a
while, and I noticed that the kid and Maggie had wandered into the back
room--the one with the latch on the door.

Oswiak's wife asked me, very puzzled: "Doc, w'y dey do dot flyink by
planyets?"

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

"Why not?" I sai