ing cheerfully,
"Trousers again!" and was striding around under a hat like a fur-lined
ice-cream cone and with the sleeves of his metal-stuffed candys flapping
over his hands. He waved a short sword with a heart-shaped guard at
Bruce and Erich and told them to get a move on.

Kaby was going along on the operation wearing the old-woman disguise
intended for Benson-Carter. I got a half-hearted kick out of knowing she
was going to have to cover that chest and hobble.

Bruce and Erich weren't taking orders from Mark just yet. Erich went
over and said something to Bruce at the bar, and Bruce got down and
went over with Erich to the piano, and Erich tapped Beau on the shoulder
and leaned over and said something to him, and Beau nodded and yanked
"Limehouse Blues" to a fast close and started another piece, something
slow and nostalgic.

Erich and Bruce waved to Mark and smiled, as if to show him that whether
he came over and stood with them or not, the legate and the lieutenant
and the commandant were very much together. And while Sevensee hugged
Lili with a simple enthusiasm that made me wonder why I've wasted so
much imagination on genetic treatments for him, Erich and Bruce sang:

"_To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To our brothers in the tunnels outside time,
Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and
robot-crammed,
And Commandos of the Spiders--
Here's to crime!
We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track,
Hush--hush--hush!
We've lost our now and will never get back,
Hush--hush--hush!
Change Commandos out on the spree,
Damned through all possibility,
Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we,
Hush--hush--hush!_"

While they were singing, I looked down at my charcoal skirt and over at
Maud and Lili and I thought, "Three gray hustlers for three black
hussars, that's our speed." Well, I'd never thought of myself as a
high-speed job, winning all the races--I wouldn't feel comfortable that
way. Come to think of it, we've got to lose and win all the races in the
long run, the way the course is laid out.

I fingered to Illy, "That's the picture, all right, Spider boy."

--FRITZ LEIBER

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ March and
April 1958. Extensive research did not uncov