The music started once more, and it brought to Grey the thought that it was curious how the Canopans had taken to American Jazz and cigarettes and had intensified their effects to a degree previously unknown. What a group of characters they were. They could go on an intellectual jag from a Bach Fugue as quickly as they could go on a nicotine binge. Their entire psychology was geared to the obtaining of pleasure from sensations of many different kinds.
"The Terrans do likewise, you know," Joe transmitted to him.
Grey grinned back at Joe. You couldn't keep a stray thought-wave away from the guy.
"It's different the way you do it," he replied. "You don't get blind stinkin' drunk when you go on a jag. You do it for exhilaration, for an uplift."
"The process of getting stinking is ..." Joe broke off suddenly.
Simultaneously, Grey could sense that the other Canopans had shifted their attentions, that the music, although it kept playing, echoed hollowly between the walls, unsupported by the listeners.
Grey caught the faint jar of a commotion outside the door. A roar of voices and heavy footsteps crescendoed suddenly as a mob in blue uniforms burst into the place. As it seemed to Grey in the first violent moment, each had a bottle in one hand and a brightly-painted female in the other. There seemed to be a squadron of them. It turned out, finally, that there were perhaps ten altogether.
From the insignia on their uniforms, Grey guessed that these were combat men on their way back from the battle sector, ready to tear up the first town that they hit on the first night out.
"Cripes! The place is full of snakes!" one of them shouted. "What're snakes doing here when there's some good ol' earthmen lookin' for a place to sit down?"
One of the girls pulled back. "Let's get out of here, Jack," she whispered, nervously. "I'm afraid of them snakes."