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when we were taking History I back in college I couldn’t believe it, so I checked it out. It’s true enough. Bar some piddly little things like electric signs boasting about steel production and TV commercials begging the factory hands not to get drunk in working hours, advertising just didn’t exist. But it was almost the same now, with the Veenies, and that’s why they made a shrine out of two tons of scrap metal. The big difference between the Veenies and the Russians is that after a while the Russians smartened up and joined the free confraternity of profit-loving people, while the Veenies tried their best to go the other way.
    After half an hour of climbing around the Venera I’d had about enough. The place was full of Veenie tourists, and I can get real tired of drinking my air out of a soda straw. So while Mitzi was bent over, her lips moving as she tried to make out the Cyrillic script on the nameplate, I reached behind me to the relief valve on my oxygen tank and gave it a little twist. It made a shrill squeal as the gas poured out, but I took a fit of coughing at that moment, and, anyway, the scream of the Hilsch tubes on the hills all around us drowned out most minor sounds. Then I nudged her.
    “Oh, damn it all to hell, look at this!” I cried, and showed her my oxygen gauge. It was way down into the yellow, almost touching the red danger zone—I’d cut it a little finer than I intended. “Damn Veenies sold me a half-empty tank! Well,” I said, tone reeking with resignation, “I’m sorry about this, but I’m going to have to get back inside the station. Then maybe we should think about heading home.”
    Mitzi gave me a funny look. She didn’t say anything, just turned and started back up the slope. I had no doubt that she had checked the tank gauge when she paid for it, but it wasn’t likely she would be sure she had. To take the sting out of it, while we were trudging back I caught up with her, took the tube out of my mouth and suggested, “How about a drink in the lounge before we catch the tram?” It’s true that I can’t stand Veenie food—it’s the C0 2 in the air, it makes things grow real fast, and besides the Veenies eat everything fresh, so you never get that good flash-frozen tang. But liquor is liquor, anywhere in the solar system! And besides, eighteen months of dating Mitzi had taught me that she was always a lot more fun with a couple of drinks in her. She brightened right away, and as soon as we’d ditched the tanks—I persuaded her not to make a fuss about the light load in mine—we headed for the stairs to the lounge.
    The tram station was typical Veenie construction—it wouldn’t have passed muster for a Consumer-level comfort station back home. No vending machines, no games, no educational displays of new products and services. It was hollowed out of the solid rock, and about all they’d done to beautify it was to slap some paint on the walls and plant some flowers and things. The tramline came in through a tunnel at one end. They’d blasted and dug a space for the tram platforms and a waiting room and things like that. They hadn’t wanted to spoil the capital-N-Natural capital-B-Beauty of the park, see, so they hid the station inside the hill.
    The worst thing about it, I thought at first, was the noise. When a tram barreled into that hard-surfaced echo chamber it was like demolition day in a scrap-iron plant. I almost changed my mind about the drink, but I didn’t want to disappoint Mitzi. Then, when we got settled in at a table in the upper-deck lounge, I found out what was even worse. “Look at this,” I said in disgust, turning the menu card so we could both read it. It was more of that sickening Veenie “candor,” of course:
    All cocktails are canned premixes, and they taste like it.
    The red wine is corky and not a good year. The white is a little better.
    If you want anything to eat you’d do better to go downstairs and bring it up for