Tee Ormond sat morosely at the spaceport bar, and alternately wiped his forehead with a soggy handkerchief, and sipped at his frosted rainbow, careful not to disturb the varicolored layers of liquid in the tall narrow glass. Every now and then he nervously ran his fingers through his straight black hair, which lay damply plastered to his head. His jacket was faded and worn, and above the left pocket was emblazoned the meteor insignia of the spaceman. A dark patch on his back showed where the perspiration had seeped through. He blinked and rubbed the corner of his eye as a drop of perspiration ran down and settled there. A casual look would have classified him as a very average looking pilot such as could be found at the bar of any spaceport; i.e. if space pilots can ever be classified as average. Spacemen are the last true adventurers in an age where the debilitating culture of a highly mechanized civilization has pushed to the very borders of the galaxy. While most men are fearful and indecisive outside their narrow specialties the spacemen must at all times be ready to deal with the unexpected and the unusual. The expression--"Steady as a spaceman's nerves"--had a very real origin. A closer look at Tee would have revealed the error of a quick classification. He gripped his drink too tightly, and his eyes darted restlessly from side to side, as though searching, searching; yet dreading to find the object of their search. His expressive face contorted in a nervous tic each time his eyes swept by the clock hanging behind the bar. He glanced dispiritedly out the window at the perpetually cloudy sky and idly watched a rivulet of water race down the dirty pane. He loosened his collar and futilely mopped at his neck with the soggy handkerchief, then irritably flung it to the floor. "Hey, Jo," he yelled to the bartender. "What's the matter with the air-conditioning? I'm burning up." "Take it easy," soothed the bartender, consulting a thermometer on the wall behind him, "it's eighty-five in here. That's as low as the law allows. Can't have too much difference in the temperature or all my customers'd pass out when they go outside. Why don't you go into town? They keep it comfortable under the dome." "Don't this planet _ever_ cool off?" asked Tee. The bartender chuckled. "I see you don't know too much about Thymis. Sometimes it drops to ninety at night, but not too often. You ought to be here sometime when the clouds part for a minute. If you're caught outside then, it's third-degree burns for sure." He glanced down at the nearly empty glass. "How about another rainbow? If you get enough of them in you, you won't notice the heat--you won't notice anything." He laughed uproariously at the hoary joke. * * * * *