But he couldn't concentrate on the paper and, after a little while, he got rid of it and took a look at his watch. Twenty to six. Forrester decided he could use a drink to brace himself and steady his nerves. Just one. On Sixth Avenue, near 34th Street, there was a bar called, for some obscure reason, the _Boat House_. Forrester headed for it, went inside and leaned against the bar. The bartender, a tall man with crew-cut reddish hair, raised his eyebrows in a questioning fashion. "What'll it be, friend?" "Vodka and ginger ale," Forrester said. "A double." It was still, he told himself uneasily, just one drink. And that was all he was going to have. The bartender brought it and Forrester sipped at it, watching his reflection in the mirror and wishing he felt easier in his mind about the whole Tower of Zeus affair. Then, very suddenly, he noticed that the man next to him was looking at him oddly. Forrester didn't like the look or, for that matter, the man himself, a raw-boned giant with deep-set eyes and a shock of dead-black hair, but so long as nobody bothered him, Forrester wasn't going to start anything. Unfortunately, somebody bothered him. The tall man leaned over and said loudly: "What's the matter with you, bud? An infidel or something?" Forrester hesitated. The accusation that he didn't believe in the practices ordained by the Gods themselves was an irritating one. But he could see the other side of the question, too. The tall man was undoubtedly a Dionysian; and, more than that, a member of a small sect inside the general _corpus_ of Bacchus/Dionysus worshippers. He held that it was wrong to distill grape or grain products "too far," until there was nothing left but the alcohol. That meant disapproval of gin and vodka on the grounds that, unlike whiskey or brandy, they'd had the "life" distilled out of them. Forrester, however, was not really fond of brandy and whiskey. He decided to explain this to the tall man, but at the same time he began to develop the sinking feeling that it wasn't going to do any good. Oh, well, there was still room for patience. "Don't fire," as Mars had said somewhere, "until you see the whites of their eyes." "No, I'm no infidel," Forrester said politely. "You see, I'm--" "_No infidel?_" the tall man roared. "Then I tell you what you do. You pour that slop out and drink a proper drink." He made a grab for Forrester's glass. Forrester jerked it back, sloshing it a little in the process--and a few drops splattered on the other's hand. "Now look here," Forrester said in a reasonable tone of voice. "I--" "You spilling that stuff on me? What the blazes are you doing that for? I got a good mind to--"