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"SHADRACH"
Once, in Bible times, three men were cast into a fiery furnace--and lived! Now, on far-off, frozen Titania, three space-bitten Shadrachs faced the same awful test of godship.
The man at the end of the bar was very drunk. That was not, in itself, unusual. Xuerl's Cosmobar, dangling like a leech on the drab outskirts of Mars Central, did not cater to a select clientele. It was not noted for its culture or gentility; it was famed from one end of the System to another as a place where a hard-fisted, full-pursed spaceman, newly in from the mines or out from Earth, could get a weapon or a wench, a bottle or a battle, any or all with equal celerity. And at an instant's notice.
"A Venusian," he mused, "a greenie, a runt--and an Earthman. Like bugs in a rug...."
"Trink?" piped a thin, reedy voice at Chip's elbow. "Trink, ssor?"
Chip shook his head in reply to the Martian barman's query. Damned chrysanthemum! he thought. Damned squeaking, upright chrysanthemum! He would never, so long as he lived, get used to hearing English speech emanating from the curled petals that served as a Redlander's head. Martians tried to look like Earthlings. They braced their soft, pallid bodies in steel uprights, they underwent serious and probably painful operations to give themselves a humanoid appearance, but they still looked--and always would to Chip--like ungainly flowers of madness.
"No," he said. "Not just now, thanks. Later." He returned his gaze to the group at the end of the bar. A new member had joined the quartet. Another Earthman. Warren's eyes became more speculative as the newcomer drew the Jovian aside, queried him briefly, then moved to the drunken man's shoulder.
"Trink?" piped the persistent voice of the barman.
The gasp broke unbidden from his lips. In the din and confusion of Xuerl's Cosmobar it went unnoticed, even as had gone unnoticed by everyone else the momentary byplay he had glimpsed.
Four figures reacted immediately, violently, eagerly. The Venusian, the Uranian, the Jovian--like four minds with but a single thought they formed a wall of flesh around the drunken one. The other Earthman's hand leaped out greedily to catch the bouncing blob on the rebound. But in vain. The drunk had retrieved the object, shoved it into a pocket.
But Chip Warren knew what the object was. It was a ball of ekalastron!
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