Thorne struggled to a seat on the edge of the bunk, unshaven, his hair brush-wild, his eyes red and rheumy, a derelict to the soles of his torn boots. Yet he did not want a drink, he whose passion had been drink, whose only joy and only thought had been drink until it had swept him from the heights to such depths that even a Martian refused longer to shelter him and sent him forth into the desert to find death.
"Maybe ye've just been numbed," suggested Fraser. "I gave ye half a glass, I told ye."
"It should have laid me out cold."
"Anyone else it would," returned Fraser, somewhat brutally. "You been lapping it up so thick you might be a little immune, ye know. I took the chance."
"It wouldn't have made any difference if I had been laid out another day or two, anyhow," Thorne returned, as brutally. "I might be getting a little thick. I could take more than I could at first. But I wanted it just as bad, or worse. Now I don't want it. Have you any left?"
"Most of the bottle."
"May I have a glass?"
Fraser snorted, his Scotch coming through almost visibly. "Don't want it, eh?" He pulled a squat, green bottle from the wall cabinet beside the bunk. "Just how big a glass, Mr. Thorne?"
"Full."
He filled the glass and handed it in stony silence to the ex-pilot. Thorne took it and looked into the turgid green depths. He smelled the sweet, cidery odor. He passed it to and fro under his nose. No reaction. Nothing.