His ship, a stubby, powerful space-tug with an oversized air lock, was a used job--hard-used, too--some ten years old. She was battered, pitted, and scarred; but it should be noted here, perhaps parenthetically, that when the technicians finished their rebuilding she was actually as stanch as a battleship. His space-armor, Spalding drills, DeLameters, tractors and pressors, and "spee-gee"--torsion specific-gravity apparatus--were of the same grade. All bore unmistakable evidence of years of hard use, but all were in perfect working condition. In short, his outfit was exactly that which a successful meteor miner--even such a one as he was going to become--would be expected to own. He cut his own hair, and his whiskers, too, with ordinary shears, as was good technique. He learned the polyglot of the trade; the language which, made up of words from each of hundreds of planetary tongues, was and is the everyday speech of human or near-human meteor miners, wherever found. By "near-human" is meant a six-place classification of A A point A A A A--meaning erect, bifurcate, warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, bilaterally duo-symmetrical, and possessing eyes. For, even in meteor-mining, like has a tendency to run with, and especially to play with, like. Thus, warm-blooded oxygen-breathers find neither welcome nor enjoyment in a pleasure-resort operated by and for such a race, say, as the Trocanthers, who are cold-blooded, quasi-reptilian beings who abhor light of all kinds and who breath a gaseous mixture not only paralyzingly cold in temperature but also chemically fatal to man. Above all, he had to learn how to drink strong liquors and how to take drugs, for he knew that no drink that had ever been distilled, and no drug, with the possible exception of thionite, could enslave the mind he then had. Thionite was out, anyway. It was too scarce and too expensive for meteor miners; they simply didn't go for it. Hadive, heroin, opium, nitrolabe, bentlam--that was it, bentlam. He could get it anywhere, all over the Galaxy, and it was very much in character. Easy to take, potent in results, and not as damaging--if you didn't become a real addict--to the system as most of the others. He would become a bentlam-eater. * * * * * Bentlam, known also to the trade by such nicknames as "benny," "benweed," "happy-sleep," and others, is a shredded, moistly fibrous material of about the same consistency and texture as fine-cut chewing tobacco. Through his friends in Narcotics the Gray Lensman obtained a supply of "the clear quill, first chop, in the original tins" from a prominent bootlegger, and had it assayed for potency. The drinking problem required no thought; he would learn to drink, and apparently to like, anything and everything that would pour. Meteor miners did.