Scouts had skragged many gaiety pods. Those black ovoid lustres linked by slideways dangled beneath over-arching vitrodur umbrellas as though these were weeping solid sooty rain. The Scouts had rushed skiddingly from one pod to the next, annihilating languid swanky drugsters, warbling liquorites, squirming orgiasts who were responding to the war in their own indulgent style, if they even heeded it at all.