"Still off the stuff?" he asked. "Off that stuff," I said. "That stuff is nowhere." "You sound like you're somewhere else. Did The Man make it for you on the _yage_ kick?" "_Yage's_ over the rainbow," I told him. "_Uru_ is here and now." "_Uru._ Is that what Jones serves? Never heard of it. Mind if I shoot a little old-fashioned horse here? I got trouble finding a vein lately. Maybe you'll help me." He rolled up his sleeve and took out his equipment. He tied a handkerchief around his arm to make the veins stand out and I helped him locate one. I cooked up the stuff and shot it home for him. He cleaned out the needle under the faucet and we sat down and had cigarets. "So tell me about this _uru_," Rollo said. "It's truly the most, man," I said. But I couldn't go on. Rollo was a lush-worker, a cheap hood. I'd feel self-conscious trying to describe how it was. Telling him would be like dirtying it up. So I generalized. "It's a real bang," I said. "A speedball with a jet assist. It's gone, brother. It takes you there, but _there_." "You sound like a teahead," he said. "Is that what it is, tea?" So I told him that was about right and he went away feeling superior. He used the white stuff and I was only a viper. So he thought. Let him think what he wanted. I'd been with it; I knew, and that was enough. It was like being one of the elite. The phone rang and sweat came out in my palms as I picked it up. It was Jones, asking if I wanted to travel with him again. Travel. That was a new one. But it certainly described it. I told him yes, trying not to let him know how eager I was. But I had the feeling he understood, even over the phone. And it didn't matter. I didn't have anything to hide from him. He was my friend. I went over to his place, prepared to travel. * * * * * It was the same thing again, to start with. The cigaret in the jade-green holder and lying down on the bed and relaxing. But this time I seemed to reach the glittering worlds a lot sooner. Then one of the worlds spun closer. It loomed bigger and its surface separated into oceans and continents. Unfamiliar ones. There was a rushing, roaring sensation as I turned over and over, and then I was walking along a lane in a peaceful countryside, with Jones beside me. "Do you like it?" he asked, without speaking the words. My mind answered, "It's beautiful. This isn't our world." "This is Uru," he said. "It is my world." Then I noticed that he wasn't dressed the same. Instead of the black suit and the blue shirt and white tie, he was wearing knee-length shorts, blue, topped by a wide belt of metallic-looking leather. He wore a thin circlet of the same material around his head. It held in the center of his forehead a heraldic device, as if it were a mark of rank. Except for sandals he wore nothing else. His body was a light tan. I noticed then that I was dressed similarly, except that there was no circlet around my head.