He turned his gaze back to the Martian. That didn't help either. Most Martians are lean and brown and ugly. This one was that, and more. What had once been clothes were tattered and spattered with swamp mud. The hair was a wisp, the teeth only a memory. The skin was tight and leathery across the bony structure of the face, the eyes distended and yellow, the unmistakable sign of a tsith hound. Latham grimaced, managed to grind out: "Do I look as bad as you?" "Worse," the little Martian was matter-of-fact. "I believe you." He looked long and hard at the Martian. "I remember you now. Name's Kueelo. You were with me last night--" Kueelo grinned, showing the stumps of yellowish teeth. "Correction. Four nights ago. That's when it began." Latham climbed to his feet. The reaction was going away but there was still a dull apathy about his brain. Just to think was an aching effort. "Four days," he muttered. "How'd I come here?" "So you don't remember that? You came on the pleasure yacht. The one from Turibek." * * * * * "Turibek--" Latham was remembering now. Turibek, capital city of Venus, far on the other side of the planet. He'd had a small stake and was lucky at the gaming tables. Before that it was Callisto, where he had struck it rich in the iridium fields; anyway, rich enough to keep him supplied with tsith for a year. Before Callisto it had been Mars. He had worked the rocket rooms of Jovian freighters, he had served as tourist guide in the dark little streets of Ganymede City, and when fortune was lowest he had begged in those streets and done worse things than begging. Before that he couldn't remember. He went wherever whim and fortune took him, but the whims were short-lived and the fortune invariably ended at the bottom of a glass. The deadly tsith twisted his brain awry and took its toll and drove him on. He had been "on the beach" on half a dozen planets. Earth he shunned. He hadn't set foot there in more years than he could remember. At first it was because he was ashamed, but even that was gone now. Only a cold sickness was left in the soul of Joel Latham. He stared at this fellow tsith hound, this shell of a Martian, and said, "What happened last night?" "What always happens," Kueelo said wearily. "We used up all our credit. Penger kicked us out." It took Joel Latham a full minute to absorb that piece of information. Mixed up with the agony in his eyes was a pensive look, but no resentment; his need just now was too dire for resentment. He stared across the swamp at the outpost's straggling street. Jake Penger was the law here, and he owned the only supply of tsith. Latham recalled him vaguely, a huge man, inscrutable, uncompromising. "Penger," he muttered. "That's it. I knew there was something I was going to do." "What were you going to do?" Kueelo moved in closer, a sudden light of interest in his eyes. "See Penger, of course." "Why?"