“Neither Here Nor There” is a pretty rough sort of a bar deep in outer space, between the Andromeda Galaxy and ours. One dark night (all nights are dark in those parts, as are the days, of course) VrrkTh of Cctxibb was downing the odd drink with those two ruffians Wffmp and Xq^rp when they were joined by Ydd and Zkggh. What a bunch: a prospector, a mercenary, a full-time gambler, a robot master and the other one who was everything in general and nothing in particular. As the night wore on, talk turned to their home planets and to the grand old days when space pirates were really space pirates and intergalactic bars served real drinks, not this watered-down…

“Hey, bartender, another round!”

“Certainly, sir. Let’s see, it was: one black hole, one nebula, a white dwarf on the rocks, a warp-five, and…”

“And a supernova, damn you! @%$!**ing Andromedan robots: nothing but scrap iron between the input ports!”

Now Xq^rp, the roboticist has known the “other one”, the one of no particular occupation, since they were cadets together on the latter’s home planet of Edrrgh.

Zkggh has come a long way since his past as a respectable citizen. Respectable? – look at him now! Well, at least he doesn’t drink white dwarf these days.

Ydd, who drank the supernova, comes from a planet whose name is one earlier in the alphabet than that of the warp-five drinker.

The prospector hails neither from Dph nor from Bcqei, the black hole drinker’s planet. The gambler from Akk would never drink a nebula, of course.

Who drinks what, comes from where and does what for a living?