He countered with a gesture at the nearly empty brandy glass. I got
the idea. I signaled autoservice--a conditioned reflex developed over
years of pumping material out of spacemen--and slipped my ID into the
check slot of the robot as it rolled up beside us and waited, humming
expectantly.
"Rum," the spaceman said. "Demerara, four ounces."
"You are cautioned, sir," the autoservice said in a flat mechanical
voice. "Demerara rum is one hundred fifty proof and is not meant to be
ingested by terrestrial life-forms without prior dilution."
"Shut up and serve," I said.
The robot clicked disapprovingly, gurgled briefly inside its cubical
interior and extruded a pony glass of brownish liquid. "Sir, you will
undoubtedly end up in a drunkard's grave, dead of hepatic cirrhosis,"
it informed me virtuously as it returned my ID card. I glared as I
pushed the glass across the table.
"Robots," I said contemptuously. It was lost on that metallic
monstrosity. It was already rolling away toward another table.
The spaceman poured the pony glass into his Napoleon, sniffed
appreciatively, sipped delicately and extended a meaty hand. "My name's
Halsey," he said. "Captain Roger Halsey. I skipper the _Two Two Four_."
"The Bureau ship that landed this morning?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I'm one of the Bureau's brave boys." There was a
faint sneer in his voice. "The good old Bureau of Extraterrestrial
Exploration. The busy BEE." He failed to pronounce the individual
letters. "You're a reporter, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.
"How'd you guess?"
"That little trick of not answering an introduction. Most of you sludge
pumpers do it, but I never knew why."
"Libel and personal privacy laws," I said. "If you don't know who we
are, you can't sue."
He grinned. "Okay. I don't care. Keep your privacy. All I want is
someone to talk to."