ITHE MAN AT THE END of the bar was very drunk. That was not, in itself, unusual. Xuerl’s Cosmobar, dangling like a leech on the drab outskirts of Mars Central, did not cater to a select clientele. It was not noted for its culture or gentility; it was famed from one end of the System to another as a place where a hard-fisted, full-pursed spaceman, newly in from the mines or out from Earth, could get a weapon or a wench, a bottle or a battle, any or all with equal celerity. And at an instant’s notice.
But the man at the end of the bar was very drunk. So drunk, indeed, that he seemed neither to notice nor to be concerned about the actions of his comrades. And they, Chip Warren thought as he watched the bleary man pour yet another jigger of green from a malevolently gleaming bottle of lisk, w
