. I want to
feel like it's a party."

Her throat was rigid as she poured it. She helped him get the tumbler to
his mouth. The liquor seared his throat, and he gagged a little as the
fumes clogged his nose. Good whiskey, the best--but he couldn't take it
any more. He eyed the green stamp on the neck of the bottle on the
bed-table and grinned. He hadn't had whiskey like that since his
space-days. Couldn't afford it now, not on a blastman's pension.

* * * * *

He remembered how he and Caid used to smuggle a couple of fifths aboard
for the moon-run. If they caught you, it meant suspension, but there was
no harm in it, not for the blastroom men who had nothing much to do from
the time the ship acquired enough velocity for the long, long coaster
ride until they started the rockets again for Lunar landing. You could
drink a fifth, jettison the bottle through the trash lock, and sober up
before you were needed again. It was the only way to pass the time in
the cramped cubicle, unless you ruined your eyes trying to read by the
glow-lamps. Old Donegal chuckled. If he and Caid had stayed on the run,
Earth would have a ring by now, like Saturn--a ring of Old Granddad
bottles.

"You said it, Donny-boy," said the misty man by the billowing curtains.
"Who else knows the gegenschein is broken glass?"

Donegal laughed. Then he wondered what the man was doing there. The man
was lounging against the window, and his unzipped space rig draped about
him in an old familiar way. Loose plug-in connections and hose-ends
dangled about his lean body. He was freckled and grinning.

"Caid," Old Donegal breathed softly.

"What did you say, Donny?" Martha answered.

Old Donegal blinked hard and shook his head. Something let go with a
soggy snap, and the misty man was gone. I'd better take it easy on the
whiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal, old lush, until Nora and
Ken get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone, or you might get
them mixed up with memories like Caid's.

Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window.

"Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry."

Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered down toward the
sidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices and
occasional laughter, with group-footsteps milling about on the sidewalk.
Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window.

"Leave it open," he sa