A glimpse was coming to him.

Another glimpse, vaguely connected to the ones of the holocaust, but now—like a strip of film running backward—he saw himself entering a bar.

There were words in twisting neon outside, and repeated again on the small dark-glass window. The words said: THE NITE OWL. He saw himself in his blue suit, and he knew the money was in his pocket. There was a woman at the bar.

Her hair was faintly auburn in the dim light of the bar. She sat on the bar stool, her long legs gracefully crossed, revealing a laced edge of slip. Her face was held at an odd angle, half-up toward the concealed streamer of light over the bar mirror. He could see the dark eyes and the heavy makeup that somehow did not detract from the sharp, unrelieved lines of her face. It was a hard face, but the lips were full, and not thinned. She was staring at nothing.

Then, as abruptly as it had come, the vision passed, and his mouth was filled with the slippery vileness of nausea.

He got to his feet and flipped open the toilet. Then he was thoroughly sick, but not messy. Afterward, he went back to the office and found the yellow pages of the phone book. He turned to “Bars” and ran his finger down the column till he came to “The Nite Owl” on Morrison and 58th Streets. He went home especially to freshen up…to get into his blue suit.

She was there. The long legs in the same position, the edge of slip showing, the head at that strange angle, the hair and eyes as he had seen them.

It was almost as though he was reliving a dramatic part he had once played; he walked up to her, and slid onto the empty stool. “May I, may I buy you a drink, Miss?”

She only acknowledged his presence and his question with a half-nod and soft grunt. He motioned to the black-tied bartender and said, “I’d like a glass of ginger ale. Give the young lady whatever she, uh, she wants please.”

The woman quirked an eyebrow and mumbled, “Bourbon and water, Ned.” The bartender moved away.

They sat silently till he returned with the drinks. Then the girl said, “Thanks.” Arthur nodded, and moved the glass around in its own circle of moisture. “I like ginger ale. Never really got to like alcohol, I guess. You don’t mind?” Then she turned, and stared at him. She was really quite attractive, with little lines in her neck, around her mouth and eyes. “Why the hell should I care if you drink ginger ale? You could drink goat’s milk and I couldn’t care less.” She turned back.

Arthur hurriedly answered, “Oh, I didn’t mean any offense. I was only—”

“Forget it.”

“But I—”

She looked at him with vehemence. “Look Mac, you on the make, or what? You got a pitch? Come on, it’s late.”

Now, confronted with it, Arthur found himself terrified. He wanted to cry. It wasn’t the way he had thought it would be. His throat had a choke lost in it. “I—I, why I—”

“Oh, Jeezus, wouldn’t ‘cha know it. A freak. My luck, always my luck.” She bolted the rest of her drink and slid off the stool. She smoothed the miniskirt over her thighs and backside as she moved toward the door of the bar.

Arthur felt panic rising in him. This was the last chance, and it was important, terribly important! He spun on the stool and called after her, “Miss—”

She stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“I thought we might, uh, could I speak to you?”

She seemed to sense his difficulty, and a wise look came across her features. She came back and stopped very close to him. “What now, what is it?”

“Are you, uh, are you do, doing anything this evening?”

Her sly look became businesslike. “It’ll cost you fifteen. You got that much?”

Arthur was petrified. He could not answer. But as though it realized the time had come for action, his hand dipped into his jacket pocket and came up with the four thousand dollars. Eight five hundred dollar bills, crackling and fresh. He held them out for her to see, then the hand returned them to the pocket. The hand was the businessman, himself merely the bystander.

“Wow,” she murmured, her eyes bright. “You’re not as bad as I thought, fella. You got a place?”

They went to the big, silent house, and he undressed in the bathroom, for it was the first time, and he held a granite chunk of fear in his chest.

When it was over, and he lay there warm and happy, she rose from the bed and moved to his jacket. He stared at her, and there was a strange feeling in him. He knew it for what it was, for he had felt a distant relative to it, in his feelings for Mother. Arthur Fulbright knew love, of a sort, and he watched her as she fished out the bills. “Jesus,” she murmured, touching the money reverently.

“Take it,” he said softly.

“What? How much?”

“All of it. It doesn’t mean anything.” Then he added, as if it was the highest compliment he could summon:

“You are a very good woman.”

“Why, thanks, honey.”

She held the money tightly. Four thousand dollars. What a simple little bastard. There he lay in the bed, and with nothing to show for it. But his face held such a strange light, as though he had something very important, as though he owned the world.

She chuckled softly, standing there by the window, the faint pink glow of midnight bathing her naked, moist body, and she knew what counted. She held it in her hand.

The pink glow turned rosy, then red, then blood crimson.

Arthur Fulbright lay on the bed, and there was a peace deep as the ocean in him. The woman stared at the money, knowing what really counted.

The money turned to ash a scant instant before her hand did the same. Arthur Fulbright’s eyes closed slowly.

While outside, the world turned so red and hot, and that was all.

Battlefield

The first needle of the “day” came over Copernicus Sector at 0545…and seven seconds. The battery commander on White’s line was an eager-beaver. His bombardment cut short the coffee-pause Black’s men had planned to enjoy till at least 0550. When the hi-fi in the ready dome screeched—a vocal transformation of the sonorad blip indicating a projectile coming through—the Black men looked at one another in undisguised annoyance, and banged their bulbs onto file counters.

Someone muttered, “Spoil sport!” and his companions looked at him and laughed; obviously a repple officer, fresh from the Academy.

One of the veterans, who had been with the outfit when Black had been Black One and Black Two—before the service merger—chuckled deep in his throat. He began to dog down the bubble of the pressure suit. But before the plasteel bowl was settled in place, he gibed, “Cookie-boy, you shoulda been up here when White rung in a fullblooded Cherokee named Grindbones or somethin’. You’da been on the line a’reddy at 0500. He was lobbin’ ‘em in solid by this time…had a hell of a job get tin’ him croaked.” He chuckled again, and several other officers nodded in remembrance.