He looked at her. His vision was a bit blurred by now, he could see just enough background to wonder how the devil they'd got to this closed-in-looking drinking place. But Baya's face was clear enough. She was crying. "Now, Baya, honey, it's not that--it's not that at all." "Then why can't I go with you to Earth?" "Because--listen, Baya, can you keep a secret?" He laughed, and his own laughter sounded blurred too. "Promise?" "Promise." "I--" * * * * * Dead stop. The words rattled on his tongue, but remained unspoken. Why? Was it because of Baya's eyes, that wept tears but had no sorrow in them? He could see them quite clearly, and they were not sorrowful at all, but avid. "I promised, Lloyd. You can tell me." There was a table under his hands, with an exotically patterned cloth on it. He had no memory of having sat down at it. There was a wall of plasticoid cement covered with a crude mural in bright primaries. There was a low, vaulted ceiling, also painted. There were no windows. "How did we get here?" Durham asked stupidly. "It's underground." "It's just a place," Baya said impatiently. And then she said sharply, "What's the matter with you?" Blood and fumes hammered together in his bulging temples, and his back felt cold. "Where's the men's room, Baya?" Her mouth set in anger and disgust. She called, "Varnik!" A tall powerful man with a very long neck and skin the color of a ripe plum came up to the table. He wore an apron. Baya said, "Better take him there, Varnik." The plum colored man took him and ran him to a door and put him through it. From there a servall took over. It was very efficient. "Are you through, sir?" "God, no. Not nearly." One more word and you would have been through. Forever. Drunken blabbermouth Durham, smart aleck Durham, would-be big shot Durham, ready to babble out his secret and blow his last chance of a comeback. But why did Baya have to be so insistently curious? Why, indeed? He began to feel both sick and scared. After a time he made it to the row of basins and splashed cold water on his face and head. There was a mirror above the basin. He looked into it. "Hello, bum," he said. Face it, Durham. You're a drunken bum. You are exactly what Willa Paulsen said you were, what Susan Hawtree said you were, what they all said you were. You get a second chance, and you go right out and get drunk and blow it. Or, almost. Another minute and you'd have blabbed everything you know to Baya. Baya, who cried because he wouldn't tell her; who had brought him to this rathole. He took a clearer look at it when he went shakily out of the men's room. The place was almost empty, and it had a close, smothery feeling. Durham had never liked these underground streets, this vaguely unsavory demi-world that wound itself around the foundations of the city. It was considered smart to go slumming here, but this place was somehow wrong.