* * *

There was a joint down in the Mexican section of San Diego which Diaz remembered was fun. So they caught a giro outside the Hotel Kennedy, where the spacemen were staying—they could afford swank, and felt they owed it to the Corps—and where they had bought their girls dinner. Diaz punched the cantina’s name. The autopilot searched its directory and swung the cab onto the Embarcadero-Balboa skyrail.

Sharon sighed and snuggled into the curve of his arm. “How beautiful,” she said. “How nice of you to show me this.” He felt she meant a little more than polite banality. The view through the bubble really was great tonight. The city winked and blazed, a god’s hoard of jewels, from horizon to horizon. Only in one direction was there anything but light: westward, where the ocean lay aglow. A nearly full moon stood high in the sky. He pointed out a tiny glitter on its dark edge.

“Vladimir Base.”

“Ugh,” said Sharon. “Unasians.” She stiffened a trifle.

“Oh, they’re decent fellows,” Bailey said from the rear seat.

“How do you know?” asked his own date, Naomi, a serious-looking girl and quick on the uptake.

“I’ve visited them a time or two,” he shrugged.

“What?” Sharon exclaimed. “When we’re at war?”

“Why not?” Diaz said. “The ambassador of United Asia gave a party for our President just yesterday. I watched on the newscreen. Big social event.”

“But that’s different,” Sharon protested. “The war goes on in space, not on Earth, and—”

“We don’t blow up each other’s Lunar bases, either,” Bailey said. “Too close to home. So once in a while we have occasion to, uh, parley is the official word. Actually, the last time I went over—couple years ago now—it was to return a crater-bug we’d borrowed and bring some alga-blight antibiotic they needed. They poured me full of excellent vodka.”

‘‘I’m surprised you admit this so openly,” said Naomi.

“No secret, my dear,” purred Diaz in his best grandee manner, twirling an imaginary mustache. “The newscreens simply don’t mention it. Wouldn’t be popular, I suppose.”

“Oh, people wouldn’t care, seeing it was the Corps,” Sharon said.

“That’s right,” Naomi smiled. “The Corps can do no wrong.”

“Why, thankee kindly.” Diaz grinned at Sharon, chucked her under the chin and kissed her. She held back an instant, having met him only this afternoon. But of course she knew what a date with a Corpsman usually meant, and he knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew, so before long she relaxed and enjoyed it.

The giro stopped those proceedings by descending to the street and rolling three blocks to the cantina. They entered a low, noisy room hung with bullfight posters and dense with smoke. Diaz threw a glance around and wrinkled his nose. “Sanamabiche!” he muttered. “The tourists have discovered it.”

“Uh-huh,” Bailey answered in the same disappointed sotto voce. “Loud tunics, lard faces, 3V, and a juke wall. But let’s have a couple drinks, at least, seeing we’re here.”