After listening for quite a while to a repertoire of apparently ribald songs, most of them too local in humor for Winstead to follow, the traveler was led by Callahan to a sort of restaurant just down the street.
Winstead thought later that he had eaten something there, but what it might have been he forgot as soon as they returned to the cocktail lounge, for a bottle-swinging brawl broke out almost immediately in a far corner. After a form of order had been restored, there was a girl who danced; and presently Callahan was shaking him up and down on a spine-stiffening bed in a small, darkened room.
Winstead promptly discovered that he had, indeed, eaten. When he recovered, he followed Callahan out on wobbly legs to seek a remedy. It was a bright, sunny day, but he could not even guess at the local time. A little while after they had been successful in finding the remedy, he forgot about it.
"Take care of Bobby Winstead for me a little while, George," he heard Callahan say to someone. "I gotta stop out at the port to check a ship for him. Be right back."
The hospitality shown him shamed Winstead into inquiring where he might cash a traveler's check. With the proceeds, he was permitted to buy about one round in a dozen, and to join in the singing. He was eagerly pumped between stops along the street for the latest news of Terra. His least little knowledge was of interest to those he encountered.
At one point, he came to himself in the midst of drawing a current dress design on the bar for one of the girls. Callahan, whose return he had missed, dissuaded the lady from taking his charge home with her as a gesture of pure gratitude. He declared that Winstead had just enough time for a nap.
Winstead's next awakening was in the echo of a terrified scream.
A light was turned on and he discovered that the man-eating vine which had been strangling him was in reality an acceleration net. The face that floated before him was clean-shaven and anxious.
With considerable mental effort, Winstead deduced that the face was inquiring as to his health.