Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no use. Kapper whispered, "_Cansin_. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back." "Where is it, Sam?" I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table. Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew. "Heart?" said Beamish finally. "Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam." I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap. "Keep this guy here till I get back," I said. Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked over to the bar. I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the place. At first glance they looked okay--a hard-faced, muscular bunch of miners in dirty shirts and high boots. Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else. The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy. I leaned on the bar. "_Lhak_," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a green bottle. I reached for it, casually. "That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?" "_Selak_," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know." I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing behind me. And I remembered him, then. * * * * * Circus people get around a lot, and the Law supplies us with Wanted sheets. I remembered this guy from the last batch they handed us on Mars. Melak Thompson was his name, and he had a reputation. He had a face you wouldn't forget. Dark and kind of handsome, with the Dry-lander blood showing in the heavy bones and the tilted green eyes. His mouth was smiling and brutal. He nodded at the booth. "Let's take a walk," he said. We took a walk. The men sitting at the dirty tables were still silent, and still not miners. I began to sweat. The booth was a little crowded with us all in there. I sat jammed up against Sam Kapper's body. Bucky Shannon's grey-green eyes were sleepy, and there was a vein beating on his forehead. Beamish said to Melak, "Kapper's dead. Dead, without talking." "That's tough." Melak shook his dark head. "We was gentle with him." "Yeah," I said. Kapper had been a good guy, and I was mad. "Feed anybody enough _selak_, and you can afford to be. It's a dirty death."