The Altar at Midnight

The Altar at Midnight is by C. M. Kornbluth, and its tagline says that doing something for humanity may be fine, for humanity, but rough on the individual. A narrator drinking ale at a bar notices a kid with broken veins on his cheeks and funny eyes. The bartender sells the kid three scotch and waters in ten minutes, and when he tries for number four, the kid says he will tell him when he is ready for another. The kid turns to the narrator and asks what kind of a place the bar is.

At a table, Blackie Bauer is said to have been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking through the door when the train started with a jerk. Sam Fireman has palsy, and this week he is claiming he used to be a watchmaker before he began to shake, while the week before he said he was a brain surgeon. Somebody wants to know what is wrong with the kid's face, and the kid answers compression and decompression, saying you are all the time climbing into your suit and out of your suit.