 Why did Billy-boy take Grannie Annie to the grille?
] I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the Spacemen's Club in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the shoulder. "Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to thee you in the main lounge." The Spacemen's was a sanctuary, a rest club where in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly enforced. There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning on her faded green umbrella. "Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions: "What the devil are you doing on Venus? Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what they are. But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's hat, as modern as an atomic motor. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto. Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly rolled herself a cigarette. Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. But the place was packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity that made Swamp City the frontier post it is. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the front row. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new improved pantascope panel and switchboard. For every question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand planetoles . Sharp and dear his voice echoed through the theater: " Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury? " Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her hand. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets.
 No females were allowed in the club
 He felt he needed to be polite and take her to dinner.  No females were allowed in the club  He wanted to go somewhere where no one would over hear their conversation  He wanted to inspect the book she had been writing.