carrying mouthfuls of steam

+.New Age.
+.Psychedelic Space.
+.Desert rock.

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+

+

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Shepley nodded, watching his reflection in the gold finger-bowl. Traxel sat at the head of the tilting table, his high-collared velvet jacket unbuttoned. Surrounded by the battered gold plate filched from the tombs, red wine spilling across the table from Bridges’ tankard, he looked more like a Renaissance princeling than a cashiered PhD. Once Traxel had been a Professor of Semantics, and Shepley wondered what scandal had brought him to Vergil. Now, like a grave-rat, he hunted the time-tombs with Bridges, selling the tapes to the Psycho-History Museums at a dollar a foot. Shepley found it impossible to come to terms with the tall, aloof man. By contrast Bridges, who was just a thug, had a streak of blunt good humour that made him tolerable, but with Traxel he could never relax. Perhaps his coldly abrupt manner represented authority, the high-faced, stern-eyed interrogators who still pursued Shepley in his dreams. Bridges kicked back his chair and lurched away around the table, pounding Shepley across the shoulders. ‘You come with us, kid. Tonight we’ll find a megatape.’ Ballard, J. G.