"Of course he doesn't," Boyd said. "Mike is a nice kid. A swell kid."
"You keep quiet," Dorothea shot at him. She turned back to Malone. "Mike never drinks at all," she said. "He says it immobilizes him—just what you said."
Somewhere in the black galactic depths of Malone's mind, a very small hot star gulped, took a deep breath and became a supernova.
The light was tremendous! It shed beams over everything, beams of a positively supernal brilliance. And in the all-pervasive brightness of that single inner light, bits of data began to fall into place with all the precision of aerial bombs, each falling neatly and exactly into its own little predetermined bomb crater.
It was beautiful. It was magnificent. Malone felt all choked up.
None of the Silent Spooks drank. He remembered Kettleman telling him that. And the Queen never touched the stuff either.
"What's wrong?" Boyd said.
"Malone, you look green."
"I feel green," Malone said. "I feel like newly sprung grass. I feel as if I had just hatched out of something. I feel wonderful."
"It's the strain," Boyd said. "That's what it is, strain. You've cracked at last."