Edmond Orlov lurched into them as they made their way back to the bar. He clutched at Amersy, barely stopping himself from falling. His smile was beatific. "Hey, Corp, Sarge, how you doing? Ain't this the coolest place? Apart from the heat, that is."

He started giggling wildly. Lawrence hadn't really been paying attention, but he thought Orlov had just come out of the toilets.

"You know, it's still pretty early," Amersy said. "You've got to learn to pace yourself, man."

"Sure thing." Edmond threw a salute, almost missing his head. "You got it, Corp. But don't you worry. I'm on it." He tottered over to the jukebox, and after squinting, managed to slide his credit coin in the slot. A spiral video grid twisted up inside the juke's cylindrical pane. Edmond started muttering: "Oh yeah" and "you, baby, you" to the AS as his finger waved at various grids. "Gimme some of that. Oh brother, I want me a piece of that, too." Ska calypso music started to pound out of the overhead speakers. Edmond backed away from the juke, eyes closed, arms waving in a rhythm that didn't quite correspond to anything being played.

All of the locals were nudging each other and smirking at the solitary, swaying figure. His own platoon mates and several of the other platoons laughed and clapped as he began to speed up.

"I gotta have that beer," Amersy said, and broke for the bar.

Lawrence took a last backward glance at Edmond. Something was going to have to be done about him. But not tonight. "Pain level's too high," he whispered as he went after Amersy.

Hal was still on his prominent stool at the middle of the counter. His smile flicked on at every girl who walked in. It never lasted long. The girls who arrived in groups checked him out immediately, then giggled among themselves as they found an empty section of the bar away from him. He earned himself some hard warning stares from boyfriends. Single girls had seemingly all perfected the same dismissive sneer.

"I've been ripped off," Hal whined to Amersy as the corporal leaned on the counter and tried to attract one of the barmen. "Can we employ lawyers to sue people here?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Amersy asked.

"This," Hal grunted. He flicked his glance downward.

Amersy peered at the trooper's feet. "Your shoes don't fit?"

"No! Not that!"

"What's happening?" Lawrence asked. "Hal, you still here? I thought you'd have scored by now."

"I've been sold a dud," Hal told them through clenched teeth. He held his left arm up. There was a slim black band round his wrist. "I haven't got a bleep out of it all evening. Eighty goddamn credits that son of a bitch took off me."

Lawrence had to forcibly hold back his laughter. "Is that what I think it is, Hal?"

"It's not illegal, Sarge," Hal protested. "The guy in the shop swore everyone here uses PSAs."

"Okay. Maybe there's just no one here with your... preference."

"There has to be." Hal lowered his voice to a desperate plaint. "I keyed in an open acceptance. That's like anything these girls are into, I'll go with it. The fucking thing still doesn't work."

Amersy finally managed to get in an order for some more bottles of Bluesaucer.

"Give it time," Lawrence advised.

"I've been here over an hour already. And Edmond told me about this place."

"What about it?"

"They like—" Hal swiveled his head from side to side, making sure no one was listening, then lowered his voice. "They're into threesomes here."

Lawrence groaned. He might have guessed his men would grab the wrong end of that local legend. "That's trimarriage, Hal. It's different."

"Yeah, but they've got to get used to it first, try it out."

Lawrence put a friendly arm round Hal's shoulder. "Listen, take my advice, kid, forget the bracelet and the threesomes for tonight, okay? Just be yourself. There must be a dozen girls in here. Go over and ask one of them if she wants a dance." He gestured at the dance floor, which probably wasn't the best illustration. Two squaddies were prancing around an oblivious Edmond, imitating his crazed movements with grotesque exaggeration. They were both holding on to their beer bottles, with the foaming liquid sloshing out. Their audience was cheering them on. "Or a quiet drink," Lawrence added quickly. "It doesn't matter what you say to them, as long as you say something. Trust me on this one."

"I suppose," Hal grunted sullenly. He glared at the PSA bracelet, willing its electronics to flicker into Technicolor life. The little display panel remained stubbornly dark.

"Good man." Lawrence and Amersy collected their beer and fled back out onto the patio.

After an hour, Jones Johnson had just about got the pool table figured out One of the middle pockets had a worn cushion that you had to watch when you were shooting from the top, and there was a definite slope away from the bottom left corner. Now that he knew all that, he could maybe start hustling a little credit. Certainly from their fellow platoons, and if he got lucky from a local who thought he was king of the skewed table.

Most of his own platoon hung around as the evening wore on, cheering him, or groaning in sympathy as the balls refused to drop. The Junk Buoy began to fill up after sunset. Platoons who'd been here last night reported that the locals had stayed away. Not tonight. The pool games went on. Three wins. Two losses (one strategic). Karl and Odel and Dennis ordered them all some surf 'n turf. They dug into the big platters, chugging down the too-sweet horse piss that passed for beer in Memu Bay, keeping their cue on the table.

After a couple of hours, Edmond's fix was depressurizing. He packed up the dance floor and slumped in a chair, arms hugging his chest and shivering as if the night had brought a front of arctic air in off the water. Jones was kind of pleased about that. Edmond's dancing was always embarrassing, but stoked up, someone had to watch him. And they'd all seen Lawrence give him the eye—before the sarge and Amersy settled down to get seriously hammered together. Not that it mattered; they all looked out for each other in here as much as out on patrol. That's what platoon membership was about.

Even the kid, who was now drunk enough to venture around the girls. Nobody could quite hear what his lines were, but he kept pointing at a black bracelet on his wrist as he staggered from one to the next. All the girls he talked to waved him on or turned their backs to him. The dance floor was heaving with people. And now that his cue aim was wavering from the drink, Jones quite fancied his chances out there among the sweaty strutting bodies. The Junk Buoy's DJ had taken over from the jukebox, and the mood of the crowd was already up and going higher. There were some seriously good-looking pieces of skirt out there, too. And the can-time had stretched on for way too long since they'd left Cairns.