"Oh, hell," yawned Flip. "And I didn't bring my bathing suit." He joined Charlie in a drink.
The thirty-eighth century Haliburton and the Black Swamp Bacchus were doing nicely with the sixteenth verse of Lulu Drank Loku on Pluto when one of the more technical gestures necessary to the famous ditty caused the bottle to be overturned.
"Now look what you've done," said Flip. "We've got only enough left for thirty-nine days."
"Sho shorry," said Charlie.
Flip felt in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and found the ill-starred map which had brought him here. The lines were blurred with sweat but he could still make out the circle designating the mainland port, the crow's feet designating the swamp, the large X in the upper left where the xanite was. He didn't need the map any more; for the location was stark in his mind. In fact he wished he could forget it.
"Ah, well," he said. He opened the tube-light, held the map over the hissing jet. It turned brown, then black and he crumbled the ashes in his fingers. "I sometimes wonder what'll happen to me next...."
He heard something above the wind at the door; probably a stray veedle, one of the mud-mice which infested the swamp. Then he noticed Charlie's eyes. They were very big and slowly his mouth fell open. He's gone loku loco, thought Flip. Charlie was staring past him, over his shoulder. Flip whirled around.
A woman stood in the door.
Flip dropped his glass. Behind the woman stood three men. The woman said something in Venusian. Flip couldn't understand and there was a dumb pause as he stared with eyes that grew wider. The woman wore hip-high swamp boots, two guns on her belt, a filmy shirt open at the throat. Her hair, uncovered and flowing, was golden, vaporous as the mist. Flip heard Charlie replying in the native language. The woman stepped into the room. Eyes flicking into every corner, the three men followed her. In the hand of each was an .03 pistol.