'We have things analogous to those, but they prey off us. Things that hide in sewers or basements or hollow trees or holes in the ground and creep around the city at night. That is why we do not allow our children out after dark. Our streets are well lighted and patrolled, but they are often separated by wooded stretches.'

They walked through a park over a path lit with tall lamps that burned gas. Siddo was still in the transition between electricity and the older forms of energy; it was not unusual to find one area illuminated by light bulbs, the next by gaslights. Coming out of the park and onto a broad street, Hal saw other evidences of Ozagen's culture, the old and the brand new side by side. Buggies drawn by hoofed animals belonging to the same sub-phylum as Fobo and steam-driven wheeled vehicles. The animals and cars passed over a thoroughfare covered with tough short-bladed grass that resisted all efforts to wear it out.

And the buildings were so widely separated that it was difficult to think of oneself as being in a metropolis. Too bad, thought Hal. The wogs had more than enough Lebensraum now. But their expanding population made it inevitable that the wide spaces would be filled with houses and buildings; someday, Ozagen would be as crowded as Earth.

Then, he corrected himself. Crowded, yes, but not with wogglebugs. If the Gabriel carried out her planned function, human beings from the Haijac Union would replace the natives.

He felt a pang at this and also had the thought – unrealistic, of course – that such an event would be hideously wrong. What right did beings from another planet have to come here and callously murder all the inhabitants?

It was right, because the Forerunner had said so. Or was it?

Fobo said, 'Ah, there it is.'

He pointed to a building ahead of them. It was three stories high, shaped something like a ziggurat, and had arches running from the upper stories to the ground. These arches had steps on them on which the residents of the upper stories walked. Like many of the older Siddo buildings, it had no internal stairways; the residents went directly from the outside into their apartments.

However, though old, the tavern on the first story had a big electric sign blazing above the front door.

'Duroku's Happy Vale,' said Fobo, translating the ideograms.

The bar was in the basement. Hal, after stopping to shudder at the blast of liquor fumes that came up the steps, followed the wog. He paused in the entrance.

Strong odors of alcohol mingled with loud bars of a strange music and even louder talk. Wogs crowded the hexagonal-topped tables and leaned acrosss big pewter steins to shout in each other's face. Somebody waved his hands uncoordinatedly and sent a stein crashing. A waitress hurried up with a towel to mop up the mess. When she bent over, she was slapped resoundingly on the rump by a jovial, green-faced, and very fat wogglebug. His tablemates howled with laughter, their broad V-in-V lips wide open. The waitress laughed, too, and said something to the fat one that must have been witty, for those at the neighboring tables guffawed.

On a platform at one end of the room a five-piece band slammed out fast and weird notes. Hal saw three instruments that looked Terranlike: a harp, a trumpet, and a drum. A fourth musician, however, was not producing any music himself, but he was now and then prodding with a long stick a rat-sized locustoid creature in a cage. When so urged, the insect rubbed its hind wings over its back legs and gave four loud chirps followed by a long, nerve-scratching screech.

The fifth player was pumping away at a bellows connected to a bag and three short and narrow pipes. A thin squealing came out.

Fobo shouted, 'Don't think that noise is typical of our music. It's cheap, popular stuff. I'll take you to a symphony concert one of these days, and you'll hear what great music is like.'

The wog led the man to one of the curtained-off booths scattered along the walls. They sat down. A waitress came to them. Sweat ran off her forehead and down her tubular nose.

'Keep your mask on until we've gotten our drinks,' said Fobo. 'Then we can close the curtains.'

The waitress said something in Wog.

Fobo repeated in American for Hal's benefit. 'Beer, wine, or beetlejuice. Myself, I wouldn't touch the first two. They're for women and children.'

Hal didn't want to lose face. He said, with a bravado he didn't feel, 'The latter, of course.'

Fobo held up two fingers. The waitress returned quickly with two big steins. The wog leaned his nose into fumes and breathed deeply. He closed his eyes in ecstasy, lifted the stein, and drank a long time. When he put the container down, he belched loudly and then smacked his lips.

'Tastes as good coming up as going down!' he bellowed.

Hal felt queasy. He had been whipped too many times as a child for his uninhibited eructations.

'But Hal,' said Fobo, 'you are not drinking!'

Yarrow said weakly, 'Damifino,' Siddo for, 'I hope this doesn't hurt,' and he drank.

Fire ran down his throat like lava down a volcano's slope. And, like a volcano, Hal erupted. He coughed and wheezed; liquor spurted out of his mouth; his eyes shut and squeezed out big tears.

'Very good, isn't it?' said Fobo calmly.

'Yes, very good,' croaked Yarrow from a throat that seemed to be permanently scarred. Though he had spat most of the stuff out, some of it must have dropped straight through his intestines and into his legs, for he felt a hot tide down there swinging back and forth as if pulled by some invisible moon circling around and around in his head, a big moon that bulged and brushed against the inside of his skull.

'Have another.'

The second drink he managed better – outwardly, at least, for he did not cough or sputter. But inwardly he was not so unconcerned. His belly writhed, and he was sure he would disgrace himself. After a few deep breaths, he thought he would keep the liquor down. Then, he belched. The lava got as far as his throat before he manage to stop it.

'Pardon me,' he said, blushing.

'Why?' said Fobo.

Hal thought that was one of the funniest retorts he had ever heard. He laughed loudly and sipped at the stein. If he could empty it swiftly and then buy a quart for Jeannette, he could get back before the night was completely wasted.

When the liquor had receded halfway down the stein, Hal heard Fobo, dimly and far-off as if he were at the end of a long tunnel, ask him if he cared to see where the alcohol was made.

'Shib,' Hal said.

He rose but had to put a hand on the table to steady himself. The wog told him to put his mask back on.

'Earthmen are still objects of curiosity. We don't want to waste all evening answering questions. Or drinking drinks that'll be forced on us.'

They threaded through the noisy crowd to a back room. There Fobo gestured and said, 'Behold! The kesarubu! '

Hal looked. If he had not had some of his inhibitions washed away in the liquorish flood, he might have been overwhelmingly repulsed. As it was, he was curious.

The thing sitting on a chair by the table might, at first glance, have been taken for a wogglebug. It had the blond fuzz, the bald pate, the nose, and the V-shaped mouth. It also had the round body and enormous paunch of some of the Ozagens.

But a second look in the bright light from the unshaded bulb overhead showed a creature whose body was sheathed in a hard and light green tinted chitin. And, though it wore a long cloak, the legs and arms were naked. They were not smooth-skinned but were ring segmented with the edges of armor-sections, like stove pipes.

Fobo spoke to it. Yarrow understood some of th words; the others, he was able to fill in.

'Ducko, this is Mr. Yarrow. Say hello to Mr. Yarrow Ducko.'

The big blue eyes looked at Hal. There was nothin about them to distinguish them from a wog's, yet the seemed inhuman, thoroughly arthropodal.

'Hello, Mr. Yarrow,' Ducko said in a parrot's voice.

'Tell Mr. Yarrow what a fine night it is.'

'It's a fine night, Mr. Yarrow.'

'Tell him Ducko is happy to see him.'

'Ducko is happy to see you.'

'And serve him.'

'And serve you.'

'Show Mr. Yarrow how you make beetlejuice.'

A wog standing by the table glanced at his wristwatch. He spoke in rapid Ozagen. Fobo translated.

'He says Ducko ate a half hour ago. He should be read to serve. These creatures eat a big meal every half hou and then they – watch!'

Duroku set on the table a huge earthenware bowl. Ducko leaned over it until a half-inch-long tube projecting from his chest was poised above the edge of the bowl. The projection, thought Hal, was probably a modified tracheal opening. From the tube a clear liquid shot into the bowl until it was filled to the brim. Duroku grabbed the bowl and carried it off. An Ozagen came from the kitchen with a plate of what Hal later found out was highly sugared spaghetti. He set it down, and Ducko began eating from it with a big spoon.

Hal's brain was by then not working very fast, but he began to see what was going on. Frantically, he looked around for a place to vomit. Fobo shoved a drink under his nose. For lack of anything better to do, he swallowed some. Whole hog or none. Surprisingly, the fiery stuff settled his stomach. Or else burned away the rising tide.

'Exactly,' replied Fobo to Hal's strangled question. 'These creatures are a superb example of parasitical mimicry. Though quasi-insectal, they look much like us. They live among us and earn their room and board by furnishing us with a cheap and smooth alcoholic drink. You noticed its enormous belly, shib? It is there that they so rapidly manufacture the alcohol and so easily upchuck it. Simple and natural, yes? Duroku has two others working for him, but it is their night off, and doubtless they are in some neighborhood tavern, getting drunk. A sailor's holiday–'

Hal burst out, 'Can't we buy a quart and get out? I feel sick. It must be the closeness of the air. Or something.'

'Something, probably.' Fobo murmured.

He sent a waitress after two quarts. While they were waiting for her, they saw a short wog in a mask and blue cloak enter. The newcomer stood in the door way, black boots widespread and the long tubular projection of the mask pointing this way and that like a sub's periscope peering for prey.

Hal gasped and said, 'Pornsen! I can see his uniform under the cloak!'

'Shib,' replied Fobo. 'That drooping shoulder and the black boots also give him away. Who does he think he's fooling?'

Hal looked wildly around. 'I've got to get out of here!'

The waitress returned with the bottles. Fobo paid her and gave one to Hal, who automatically put it in the inside pocket of his cloak.