Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net _The Altar at Midnight_ By C. M. KORNBLUTH [Illustration: Illustrated by ASHMAN] _Doing something for humanity may be fine--for humanity--but rough on the individual!_ He had quite a rum-blossom on him for a kid, I thought at first. But when he moved closer to the light by the cash register to ask the bartender for a match or something, I saw it wasn't that. Not just the nose. Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes. He must have seen me look, because he slid back away from the light. The bartender shook my bottle of ale in front of me like a Swiss bell-ringer so it foamed inside the green glass. "You ready for another, sir?" he asked. I shook my head. Down the bar, he tried it on the kid--he was drinking scotch and water or something like that--and found out he could push him around. He sold him three scotch and waters in ten minutes. When he tried for number four, the kid had his courage up and said, "I'll tell _you_ when I'm ready for another, Jack." But there wasn't any trouble. It was almost nine and the place began to fill up. The manager, a real hood type, stationed himself by the door to screen out the high-school kids and give the big hello to conventioneers. The girls came hurrying in, too, with their little makeup cases and their fancy hair piled up and their frozen faces with the perfect mouths drawn on them. One of them stopped to say something to the manager, some excuse about something, and he said: "That's aw ri'; get inna dressing room." A three-piece band behind the drapes at the back of the stage began to make warm-up noises and there were two bartenders keeping busy. Mostly it was beer--a midweek crowd. I finished my ale and had to wait a couple of minutes before I could get another bottle. The bar filled up from the end near the stage because all the customers wanted a good, close look at the strippers for their fifty-cent bottles of beer. But I noticed that nobody sat down next to the kid, or, if anybody did, he didn't stay long--you go out for some fun and the bartender pushes you around and nobody wants to sit next to you. I picked up my bottle and glass and went down on the stool to his left. He turned to me right away and said: "What kind of a place is this, anyway?" The broken veins were all over his face, little ones, but so many, so close, that they made his face look something like marbled rubber. The funny look in his eyes was it--the trick contact lenses. But I tried not to stare and not to look away. "It's okay," I said. "It's a good show if you don't mind a lot of noise from--" He stuck a cigarette into his mouth and poked the pack at me. "I'm a spacer," he said, interrupting. I took one of his cigarettes and said: "Oh." He snapped a lighter for the cigarettes and said: "Venus." * * * * *