I was feeling high, with enough _krin-krin_ burning in me to make a Martian _srith_-dog sit up and talk Esperanto. And by the time I'd been blotting up _krin-krin_ for a few hours, any space bum thinking to push me around was crazy. So the big yellow skinned Martian with the green eyes was crazy for trying to drag this breed tavern girl away from my table. Crazy first, then dead. I'd seen plenty of dead men before, and I knew the look. I knew I'd hit him too hard as soon as he stretched on the bright green stones of Jelahn's tavern, and didn't try to get up. Standing there looking down at him, I knew he'd never get up by himself. The whole tavern had dried up like a scab. The place was so quiet you could hear the Martian's blood trickling from his mouth onto the floor. "You certainly lowered that poor, poor Marty," somebody whispered. I swung around fiercely, but the speaker eased away from me. "What in a blasted jet's the use of hitting a man, if you don't hit him right?" I yelled. I was drunk, and I was getting sick; I'd never liked the sight or smell of dead men. Nobody said anything. Everybody looked at the dead Marty. The blood stopped running. I prodded him with my foot. Oh, he had the look all right, the kind a man only gets once and for always. People stared. Even on Mars, death isn't so common that it isn't interesting. I could hear myself breathing in the silence. I was sick. I'd never been the kind of space tough one of those Martian Colonial Administrator's women would invite to a Double Moon tea, but just the same everyone doesn't like to kill. My record wasn't too bad; brawls, drunks, a few killings in self defense. Born in the asteroids, father a prospector, me a prospector. At twenty-three, I'd hit a strike a month ago, and cushioned into the big port at Sanskran to unload, get more machinery and return to that meteorite where I'd hit "heavy" beryllium, paired-atom stuff worth twice its weight in platinum to the Atomician boys on Earth. The breed girl, the cause of the trouble, cried, "He's dead!" Nobody moved. Then the girl came at me; the few jewels, which was all she wore, flashed as red as her eyes and her clawing nails. "You killed him!" she screamed. I pushed in her face with my flat hand, and sent her sprawling beside the dead guy she was so nuts about. The _krin-krin_ went out of me. The place was hot and somebody said the cops were coming. There was no time for talking or thinking or feeling sorry; I measured my chances and ran for the door. I knocked two guys out of the way and went through the blue stone doors into the street. Up the red stone street like it was swimming in blood, a black jetcar was coming fast under the shine of the Deimos.