"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.