"So for a while I was just inhibited against standing up, and they were inhibited against being conscious. It that it?"

"Approximately."

Grey sipped from his glass, peering over the edge of it at Joe. Precisely how much was there, he thought, hidden within the recesses of that brain? Just how much did this innocent little character have on the ball?

Joe chose this moment to become taciturn. The music was riding once more, and the place was settling down after the sudden disturbance. It took Jed Grey several more minutes and another glass to throw off the nervous tension which sat like a blanket over his shoulders. Gradually he began to relax, and the warm spot within his belly proceeded to creep up into his head.

"Tomorrow," he thought drowsily, "we will be taking off, and there will be no more of this. No more music except from cans. No more...."

Abruptly he realized that the rapport had been broken off again by the Canopans, and that at the other end of town there was the faint howl of the police siren.

"There's a brawl down the street," Joe informed Grey. "Some of our heroes back from the battle sector feel that they haven't had enough fighting."

"I bet you a pack of smokes that the guys in the fight haven't been within a light year of an actual battle," said Grey, dryly. "They're the ones who always try to make like tough heroes when they get back."

Through the Canopan's sense of perception Jed Grey could catch faint impulses of the tumult which filled the street a hundred yards away. There was a violence in the thoughts projected from that area which caused the colors of Joe's fur to shift erratically, nervously. In Grey they caused a tightening of the stomach and a heavy feeling in the chest.

"It hurts almost as much to listen in to a fight as it does to be right in the middle of it," he remarked. "Why don't you just shut it off if you can't take it?"

"As well try to shut off your sense of hearing," Joe snapped back.

The sirens down the street had wailed to a halt. Grey lit another cigarette and tried what was left in his glass. It was flat. The warm glow which had diffused through his body was gone, and in its place there was a bitter taste and a burning sensation around the eyes.

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