"I'm glad it is," said Grey.
Yes, it had to be a good night, because the last one had to be good.
There had to be that much to remember out there a thousand light-years
away.
The music started once more, and it brought to Grey the thought that it
was curious how the Canopans had taken to American Jazz and cigarettes
and had intensified their effects to a degree previously unknown. What
a group of characters they were. They could go on an intellectual jag
from a Bach Fugue as quickly as they could go on a nicotine binge.
Their entire psychology was geared to the obtaining of pleasure from
sensations of many different kinds.
"The Terrans do likewise, you know," Joe transmitted to him.
Grey grinned back at Joe. You couldn't keep a stray thought-wave away
from the guy.
"It's different the way you do it," he replied. "You don't get blind
stinkin' drunk when you go on a jag. You do it for exhilaration, for an
uplift."
"The process of getting stinking is ..." Joe broke off suddenly.
Simultaneously, Grey could sense that the other Canopans had shifted
their attentions, that the music, although it kept playing, echoed
hollowly between the walls, unsupported by the listeners.
Grey caught the faint jar of a commotion outside the door. A roar
of voices and heavy footsteps crescendoed suddenly as a mob in blue
uniforms burst into the place. As it seemed to Grey in the first
violent moment, each had a bottle in one hand and a brightly-painted
female in the other. There seemed to be a squadron of them. It turned
out, finally, that there were perhaps ten altogether.
From the insignia on their uniforms, Grey guessed that these were
combat men on their way back from the battle sector, ready to tear up
the first town that they hit on the first night out.
"Cripes! The place is full of snakes!" one of them shouted. "What're
snakes doing here when there's some good ol' earthmen lookin' for a
place to sit down?"
One of the girls pulled back. "Let's get out of here, Jack," she
whispered, nervously. "I'm afraid of them snakes."
"They ain't gonna hurt you, honey," Jack told her, hoarsely. "I always
wondered if them snakes grew together if you pulled them apart."
He walked a few paces inside the door. "If you snakes can read my mind,
you know what I'm gonna do if you don't clear outta here pronto. An'
readin' my mind ain't gonna help you against my good right arm."
* * * * *
Grey felt sick. A brawl on the last night.... There was a stray thought
in his mind that he and Joe would make a good fighting team if the two
of them could coordinate fast enough.
"No," Joe's reply came to him instantly. "This isn't your fight. We'll
handle this."
"The hell you say!" Grey attempted to stand--found himself limp as a
rag. He could suddenly smell his own perspiration as he strained to
move, and as he looked about the room he saw that the other Terrans at
the tables were remaining there, their expressions startled and anxious.
The Canopans had risen, and were slowly making their way between the
tables to the front of the room. The band was still playing a slightly
mad background to the picture which consisted of the smoky room with
the dim lights, the Terrans sitting paralyzed at their tables, the
Canopans moving in on the Fleetmen at the door ... who stared in
disbelief, began to swing their bottles, and collapsed quietly on the
floor.
The girls, without time to shriek, collapsed just as quietly, and lay
there in an unmoving heap.
Grey abruptly was stone cold sober. He wanted out, as fast as possible.
The idea of going up for murder appealed to him not at all.
"Forget it," Joe flashed at him. "They're not dead. But we'll have to
get rid of them. We'll be back in a minute."
The Canopans silently carried the bodies outside the door, leaving Grey
sitting still at his table, performing a great quantity of furious
thinking.
[Illustration: _The Canopans silently carried the bodies outside._]
Joe was back quickly. He anticipated Grey's questions.
"They'll wake up, and they'll think somebody slipped them a Mickey. But
they won't remember what happened."
He hesitated, sat down, and lit another smoke. "You're okay, now, by
the way."
Grey tried, and found that the nervous impulses now went where they
were supposed to go. He stood up, shakily. Then he sat down again.
While he was searching for words to say something, Joe interrupted.
"Look," he transmitted. "This has to be kept under cover. Things are
bad enough for us without this sort of thing getting around. I didn't
even want you to know, but that couldn't be helped. I didn't feel like
getting bashed."
Grey accepted another glass gratefully from Elby Jones.
"Sure," he said. "I don't talk to anybody, anyway. But you have to tell
me. How much _can_ you do?"
Joe considered for a moment before replying.
"I don't know, really. Terran nervous systems are not like ours. We
have had only a short time to discover what we can do and what we
can't do. We don't have real control--although there are certain
possibilities with a modified hypnotic suggestion. At present we are
only able to introduce resistances temporarily in certain nerve paths,
so that inhibitions are produced."
"So for a while I was just inhibited against standing up, and they were
inhibited against being conscious. It that it?"
"Approximately."
Grey sipped from his glass, peering over the edge of it at Joe.
Precisely how much was there, he thought, hidden within the recesses of
that brain? Just how much did this innocent little character have on
the ball?
* * * * *
Joe chose this moment to become taciturn. The music was riding once
more, and the place was settling down after the sudden disturbance. It
took Jed Grey several more minutes and another glass to throw off the
nervous tension which sat like a blanket over his shoulders. Gradually
he began to relax, and the warm spot within his belly proceeded to
creep up into his head.
"Tomorrow," he thought drowsily, "we will be taking off, and there will
be no more of this. No more music except from cans. No more...."
Abruptly he realized that the rapport had been broken off again by the
Canopans, and that at the other end of town there was the faint howl of
the police siren.
"There's a brawl down the street," Joe informed Grey. "Some of our
heroes back from the battle sector feel that they haven't had enough
fighting."
"I bet you a pack of smokes that the guys in the fight haven't been
within a light year of an actual battle," said Grey, dryly. "They're
the ones who always try to make like tough heroes when they get back."
Through the Canopan's sense of perception Jed Grey could catch faint
impulses of the tumult which filled the street a hundred yards away.
There was a violence in the thoughts projected from that area which
caused the colors of Joe's fur to shift erratically, nervously. In Grey
they caused a tightening of the stomach and a heavy feeling in the
chest.
"It hurts almost as much to listen in to a fight as it does to be right
in the middle of it," he remarked. "Why don't you just shut it off if
you can't take it?"
"As well try to shut off your sense of hearing," Joe snapped back.
The sirens down the street had wailed to a halt. Grey lit another
cigarette and tried what was left in his glass. It was flat. The warm
glow which had diffused through his body was gone, and in its place
there was a bitter taste and a burning sensation around the eyes.
Abruptly he mashed out his cigarette and stood up.
"The night's washed up," he growled. "Let's get out of here."
Joe, with a thought of regret, assented, and the two of them left.
It was bitter to end the last night upon such an uncompleted note.
* * * * *
The two of them strolled back in the direction of the bus station. The
fresh night, bright with the blaze of stars and saloon signs, should
have exhilarated them; but the mental tension which filled the street
pressed hard on Joe's receptors, and, through him, against Grey.
A pair of police cars squatted at the corner. Fleet Police milled
through the crowds, shock sticks in hand. An ambulance helicopter
roaring in from the Fleet Base settled down in the center of the street.
The fight was over, but so keyed up were the Fleetmen in town that for
Grey and the Canopan to walk through the street was to walk through a
sticky, obscene glue of malevolence.
Joe's fur colors had faded to a dismal blue. Grey glanced at this with
alarm.
The thoughts in the crowd around them had been impersonal ones--fight
thoughts, pleasure thoughts, passion thoughts--violent and unnerving
to the pair who had to thread their way through this tumult, but yet
impersonal.
It began to change.
They began again with the snake thoughts and the thoughts about the
Terran who walked with the damn snake. They looked at the pair who
walked in their midst, and in their state of excitement with violence
not yet out of their minds, there was a redirection of passion from
the recent fight to the new center of attention.
Grey gasped as the force of this new agitation struck them.
The pair of Fleet Police ahead of them changed their direction of
motion and started walking towards them. Grey's face twitched as he
felt the increased tension within Joe's nervous system.
"Hold it, son," he cautioned. "Remember we're supposed to be tough.
Remember the nerves of steel we're supposed to have, like it says in
the books."
Joe's grip on Grey's arm tightened, and then relaxed.
"I thought I could take anything. Tonight has been almost too much."
The Fleet Police were directly in front of them. The one on the right
pointed at Grey with his stick and began to say something.
The door of the adjacent saloon swung open and a giant of a bearded
Fleetman roared out. The girl hanging to his arm caught a sudden sight
of Joe, and a burst of fright exploded in her empty little head,
shocking Joe with its intensity.