"Gin, please." He peeled a ten off the roll Grinnel had given him. When the girl poured his gin he looked at her and found her fair. In all innocence, he asked her a question, as he might have asked a barmaid back home. She could have answered, "Yes," "No," "Maybe," or "What's in it for me?" Instead she called him a lousy bastard, picked up a beer mug and was about to shatter it on his head when a hand caught her and a voice warned: "Hold it, Mabel! This guy's off my ship. "He's just out of the States; he doesn't know any better. You know what it's like over there." Mabel snarled: "You better wise him up, then, friend. He can't go around talking like that to decent women." She slapped down another glass, poured gin and flounced down the bar. Charles gulped his gin and turned shakily to his deliverer, a little reactor specialist he had seen on the sub once or twice. "Thanks," he said feeling inadequate. "Maybe you better wise me up. All I said was, 'Darling, do you--'" The reactor man held up his hand. "That's enough," he said. "You don't talk that way over here unless you want your scalp parted." Charles, buzzing a little with the gin, protested hotly: "But what's the harm? All she had to say was no; I wasn't going to throw her down on the floor!" It was all very confusing. A shrug. "I heard about things in the States--Wyman, isn't it? I guess I didn't really believe it. You mean I could go up to any woman and just ask her how's about it?" "Within reason, yes." "And _do_ they?" "Some do, some don't--like here." "Like hell, like here! Last liberty--" and the reactor man told him a long, confusing story about how he had picked up this pig, how she had dangled it in front of him for one solid week while he managed to spend three hundred and eighty-six dollars on her, and how finally she had bawled that she couldn't, she just hated herself but she couldn't do anything like _that_ and bang went the door in his face, leaving him to finish out the evening in a notch joint. "Good God!" Charles said, appalled. "Was she out of her mind?" "No," the reactor man said glumly, "but I must have been. I should of got her drunk and raped her the first night." Charles was fully conscious that values were different here. Choking down something like nausea, he asked carefully: "Is there much rape?" The little man signalled for another gin and downed it. "I guess so. Once when I was a kid a dame gave me this line about her cousin raped her when she was little so she was frigid. I had more ambition then, so I said: 'Then this won't be anything new to you, baby,' I popped her on the button--" "I've got to go now," Charles said, walking straight out of the saloon. He was beginning to understand the sloppy beasts in the windows of the notch joint and why men could bring themselves to settle for nothing better. He was also overwhelmed by a great wave of home sickness.