With dinner over and with Monty gone somewhere into the crowd, he found himself in the bar, sitting on a stool and nursing a drink that the Kimonian bartender had recommended as being something special.
The girl came out of nowhere and floated up to the stool beside him, and she said:
"What's that you're drinking, friend?"
"I don't know," said Bishop. He made a thumb toward the man behind the bar. "Ask him to make you one."
The bartender heard and got busy with the bottles and the shaker.
"You're fresh from Earth," said the girl.
" Fresh is the word," said Bishop.
"It's not so bad," she said. "That is, if you don't think about it."
"I won't think about it," Bishop promised. "I won't think of anything."
"Of course, you do get used to it," she said. "After a while, you don't mind the faint amusement. You think, what the hell, let them laugh all they want to so long as I have it good. But the day will come - "