How come you know about them?"

The eyes regarded him with drunken cunning.

"You'd have to do something for me. Couldn't give you information like that out of the goodness of my heart."

"Of course," agreed West. "Anything that you would like. You just name it."

"You got to take Annabelle out of here," the man told him. "Take her back where she belongs. It isn't any place for a girl like her. No fit life for her to lead. Living with a sodden wreck like me. Used to be a great man once ... yes, sir, a great man. It all came of looking for a bottle. One particular bottle. Had to sample all of them. Every last one. And when I sampled them, there was nothing else to do but drink them up. They'd spoil for sure if you let them stand around. And who wants a lot of spoiled liquor cluttering up the place?"

He took another shot.

"Been at it ever since," he explained. "Almost got them now. Ain't many of them left. Used to think that I'd find the right bottle before it was too late and then everything would be all right. Wouldn't do me no good to find it now, because I'm going to die. Enough left to last me, though. Aim to die plastered. Happy way to die."

"But what about those people on Pluto?" demanded West.

The whiskers snickered. "I fooled them. They gave me my choice. Take anything you want, they said. Big-hearted, you understand. Pals to the very last. So I took the whisky. Cases of it. They didn't know, you see. I tricked them."

"I'm sure you did," said West. Tiny, icy feet ran up and down his spine. For there was madness here, he knew, but madness with a pattern. Somewhere, somehow, this twisted talk would fall into a pattern that would make sense.

"But something went wrong," the man declared. "Something went wrong."

Silence whistled in the room.

"You see, Mr. Best," the man declared. "I—"

"West," said West. "Not Best. West."

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