He wanted to walk it off, but was not convinced that he could make it out of the chair without stumbling. He did not mind looking comical; he did mind looking ridiculous.
There was a sudden hush around him and he wondered whether it was the effect of the drugs or the . . . what had he been drinking anyway?
Rusty stared down at his glass, seeing a thin film of some amber fluid coating its bottom. He picked it up, studied it in the reflected light for a moment, and then sniffed it. There was the pungent aroma of aged . . . something, but nothing that told him what it might have been. He could ask the bartender, but was like admitting defeat.
He then realized that the stillness had continued, but he could clearly hear the faint creaking of his chair beneath him. He looked up, and then toward the bar. There he saw the attention of the few people present fixed on the images being displayed on the saloon’s badly calibrated holographic screen.
At first, he could not be certain that it was not yet another rebroadcast of some old fictional drama set in outer space. The eyes of those watching the screen, however, lacked that vacant, wandering stare. Rusty squinted, trying to get a clearer look through the shifting prisms of unbalanced colors. When that failed, he forced himself to rise from the chair. He moved forward, avoiding a small mound of spilled nuts in his path without looking down at them.
He rapped his thick knuckles against the side of the projector. The image skittered for a moment and then reformed. It was still out of phase, but at least now he could make out some of the details.
It was a scene from orbit of a green and gray world. It might have been blue and silver, or green and beige. It was difficult to tell for certain with constant shifting of the holograph’s color spectrum. Whatever colors it might be, the planet was not faring well against the onslaught of three of the largest space cruisers that he had ever seen.
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