Mayhew shrugged. "Rotten luck. I've always had rotten luck. That accident with the RG 88—it was the moisture from those busted
amphor tubes that soaked those dal bags that swelled and split the
bulkhead and started the whole thing. The 'port cargo master didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Damn it, what I did or didn't have to drink wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference!" He sniffed, and drew a sleeve across his flushed face, looking alarmingly as if he were about to weep. It was a very disturbing thing to see in a man pushing, Miles estimated, forty years of age. Mayhew took a swig from his
bottle instead, then with some dim remnant of courtesy offered it to Miles.
Miles smiled politely and took it. Should he grab this chance to
dump it out, in the interests of sobering Mayhew up? There were
drawbacks to the idea, in free fall. It would have to be dumped into something else, if he were not to spend his visit dodging flying blobs of whatever-it-was. Hard to make it look like an accident. While he mulled, he sampled it, in the interests of scientific inquiry.
He barely managed not to choke it into free fall, atomized. Thick,
green herbal, sweet as syrup—he nearly gagged on the sweetness—
perhaps 60% pure ethanol. But what was the rest of it? It burned
down his esophagus, making him feel suddenly like an animated
display of the digestive system, with all the different parts picked out in colored lights. Respectfully, he wiped the mouthpiece on his sleeve and handed the bottle to its owner, who tucked it back under his arm.
"Thanks," Miles gasped. Mayhew nodded. "So how," Miles aspirated, then cleared his throat to a more normal tone, "what are you planning to do next? What are you demanding?"
"Demanding?" said Mayhew. "Next? I don't—I'm just not going to let that cannibal Calhoun murder my ship. There isn't—there isn't any next." He rocked the box with the toggle switch on his lap, a miserable madonna. "Have you ever been red?" he asked suddenly.
Miles had a confused vision of ancient Earth political parties. "No, I'm Vor," he said, not sure if that was the right response. But it seemed not to matter. Mayhew soliloquized on.
"Red. The color red. Pure light I was, once, on the jump to some little hole of a place called Hespari II. There's no experience in life like a jump. If you've never ridden the lights in your brain—colors no man's ever put a name to—there are no words for it. Better than
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dreams, or nightmares—better than a woman—better than food or
drink or sleep or breath—and they pay us for it! Poor deluded suckers, with nothing under their skulls but protoplasm . . ." He peered blurrily at Miles. "Oh, sorry. Nothing personal. You're just not a pilot.