Latham grimaced, managed to grind out: "Do I look as bad as you?"
"Worse," the little Martian was matter-of-fact.
"I believe you." He looked long and hard at the Martian. "I remember you now. Name's Kueelo. You were with me last night—"
Kueelo grinned, showing the stumps of yellowish teeth. "Correction. Four nights ago. That's when it began."
Latham climbed to his feet. The reaction was going away but there was still a dull apathy about his brain. Just to think was an aching effort.
"Four days," he muttered. "How'd I come here?"
"So you don't remember that? You came on the pleasure yacht. The one from Turibek."
uribek—" Latham was remembering now. Turibek, capital city of Venus, far on the other side of the planet. He'd had a small stake and was lucky at the gaming tables. Before that it was Callisto, where he had struck it rich in the iridium fields; anyway, rich enough to keep him supplied with tsith for a year. Before Callisto it had been Mars. He had worked the rocket rooms of Jovian freighters, he had served as tourist guide in the dark little streets of Ganymede City, and when fortune was lowest he had begged in those streets and done worse things than begging. Before that he couldn't remember. He went wherever whim and fortune took him, but the whims were short-lived and the fortune invariably ended at the bottom of a glass. The deadly tsith twisted his brain awry and took its toll and drove him on. He had been "on the beach" on half a dozen planets. Earth he shunned. He hadn't set foot there in more years than he could remember. At first it was because he was ashamed, but even that was gone now. Only a cold sickness was left in the soul of Joel Latham.