Hey, who wants to hear some tunes on the way to the death pits?

Opening paragraph:

On Lodi, a crossroad station of the space lanes, the Outworld Traders Base had been set up to accommodate transient servicemen on their way to and from assignments. It had the calculated comfort of a leave post, combined with the impersonality of a space port caravansary, that very impersonality a goad to flight if one had an uneasy conscience.

You forget that the art is often the best part of these books.