The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

It was one thing to heave an unwanted girl out into the great black grave of space. But tough old pirate Captain Brace balked at making his own soul walk the plank with her!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

They stood, silently, side by side, in the crude shelter that passed for a bar on Titan. Its corroded metal walls rang hollowly to the boisterous, animal humor which flowed as freely as drink. Lewd sketches adorned the walls, staring down at the two men, the lewdity of five races to please the lechers of five planets. But all of this was lost on Brace. He was begotten in sin and knew no other life.

The thin-faced man beside him shifted uneasily. "Buy you a drink, Brace?"

"CAPTAIN Brace!" the ape snapped. It was too true to be funny. He looked like an ape. His face was ugly and concave, the nose flattened. His back and shoulders sloped and his arms hung slightly before his body.

"Captain Brace," the other said quickly.

Brace laid one of his paws on the bar, hairy, grotesque. He sniffed loudly and grunted, "Borl!"

The complacent bartender poured three fingers into a glass and Brace's lips quivered slightly over his protruding teeth in humorous pride. No man he knew could drink the stuff straight, this caustic liquor often used to add a poisonous garnish to the drinks of the frail men on earth.

The thin-faced man murmured, "Whiskey," and the bartender poured this with equal nonchalance.

Brace stared at the glass in his hand, prolonging the moment, for he knew many curious eyes watched him. Blood brother to sulphuric acid, someone had called it; Borl, distilled from the roots of a poisonous tree, the touch of whose leaves burned flesh through to the bone.

It was a show worth seeing--and Brace knew it. He knew it hurt, seared his throat, and made his chest ache, that once he had crushed a glass in his hand in pain afterward. It had hoarsened his voice and burned his lips and tongue so they were like the palm of a workman's hand. But no other man could do it.

He raised the glass to his lips and poured the contents down. The men who were watching drew in their breath but not all of the spectators were men. Some were aliens who expressed surprise or tension in other ways. Venusians' long-unused gill slits rustled. The armadillo-like Saturnians made crackling sounds by shifting their bodies in a slight circular motion. The Martians, almost man-like, made nasal squeaks with the second set of vocal cords behind their palates. The downy-skinned Ionians, pale white in the gloom, made little clicking sounds with their fingers like miniature castanets. Then Brace laid the empty glass on the bar and life resumed in this sump where collected the residue of five races.

The thin-faced man tossed off his whiskey in one gulp, then coughed. Brace threw back his head and roared with laughter, long and loud. The room joined him, but the thin-faced man didn't mind. He laughed too. It was safer.

* * * * *

A pair of stained curtains suddenly separated on a little raised platform and all eyes turned toward it, including Brace's bloodshot ones, still jumping from the effect of the drugging Borl. A girl came out, scantily clad, and a spotlight from somewhere centered on her. Two Ionians played rhythmic melodies on a heavy stringed instrument and the girl began to dance.

Men yelled the age-old cry, "Take it off!" And she, twirling, smiled, but her face turned pink under the cries and jests.

Followed by the thin-faced man, Brace waddled forward until he stood at the edge of the platform. There was something different here which he sensed rather than saw through the caustic fumes of the Borl. She was young, not a burned out, haggard wreck, heavily daubed, such as he always saw in places such as this. Her limbs were lithe, straight, her face was not pretty, but it was youthful and not a debauched, revolting mask.