It is one thing to scare people who have no chestnuts in the fire that frightens them; it is quite another to scare people who have. The Fly by Night had barely settled itself on its anti-grav jacks when a ground car came skimming across the spacestrip and drew up before the cargo dock. Out of the car stepped Thaddeus P. Terringer, president of Dernier Cri Garments, Dorrel Numan, vice president of Dernier Cri Garments, and the mayor of New Paris, who had his finger in the pie à la mode somewhere but exactly where not even the IRS troopers had been able to find out. Nathaniel Drake did not keep his visitors waiting, but donned his anti-grav belt, opened the ventral lock, and came drifting down to the dock. He had not shaved in two weeks, his unkempt hair hung over his forehead, and he was as translucent as tissue paper. They gaped.
The dock, rising as it did some five feet above the spacestrip, gave him an eminence of sorts, and the eminence, in turn, gave him confidence. "First time I ever rated a welcoming party," he said. "Where's the red carpet?"
Thaddeus P. Terringer was the first of the tongue-tied trio to recover his voice. He was a tall portly man, and he was attired as were his companions in the latest of Dernier Cri Garments' creations for the modern male: a pink tophat, a green, form-fitting suit of hand-twilled thrip fuzz, and high-heeled plastigator shoes. "Drake," he said, "you're drunk."
"No I'm not—I'm disintegrated."
Terringer took a backward step. So did Dorrel Numan and the mayor. "You went through a Lambda-Xi field!" Numan exclaimed.
"That's about the size of it."
"Nonsense," Terringer said. "No one could survive Lambda-Xi bombardment."
"You call this survival?" Drake asked.
"The cargo," groaned the mayor. "What about the cargo?"
Drake answered him. "With a little luck, it might make good wrapping material for invisible bread. Put on your belt and go up and take a look."