Free Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell by Harry Harrison

and chintz and tobacco, but of sweat and talc and spandex.
    Bill blinked at how bright it was. His astonishment turned to alarm. In any situation of panic, and if there is alcohol close by, a good Trooper knows what to do. Finish your drink.
    Bill grabbed the glass in front of him and drank liberally of its contents....
    And spit it out, gasping.
    It was some strange combination of fruit and yogurt and the Devil knew what else. Bill had heard of this kind of nonalcoholic and disgusting libation before — but he'd never let it close to his lips.
    He wiped his mouth free of it on a sleeve. He'd just drunk (gasp!) a health shake!
    What had happened to his beer?
    He looked to Uncle Nancy for explanation, and was startled to see that the bartender no longer wore a dress. Rather, he was wearing a dark blue sweat suit, open at the neck to let part of his plethora of salt-and-pepper chest hair out. Bill looked down and saw that he was no longer wearing a dress, nor was Elliot Methadrine. They both sported bright green and red gym shorts and T-shirts.
    Grunts brought Bill's attention over to the far side of the room, where mammothly muscled males were in the process of lifting weights.
    “This isn't Barworld anymore,” said Elliot, without a shred of his previous tentativeness. “It's turned to Barbellworld!”
    “My dress!” a man cried. And another plaint: “What happened to my lovely dress!”
    “The hippie!” said Elliot, snapping his fingers. He pointed toward the Men's Room. “That bathroom wouldn't happen to be the location of the Time/Space Resonation Nexus?”
    Uncle Nancy blinked. “Well, yeah, maybe — I mean, all the bars use Time/Space Plumbing system — I don't know about no nexus.”
    “That's it, Bill! That must be it!” Elliot intoned loudly. He pulled off his bright purple bandana and threw it onto the floor in disgust. “What we were looking for was right under our noses, and we didn't even notice. You were so insistent upon getting your stupid booze!”
    “What's wrong with that?” Bill whined defensively. “It is Barworld. Or it was, anyway.” He cast a doubtful and blurry eye toward the men working out with weights. On the far wall were posters depicting Mr. Planetary and Mr. Nebula and Mr. Light-speed, flexing muscles like mutated melons.
    “My books!” cried Uncle Nancy.
    “What — are they gone?”
    “No — but look, they've ... they've changed.”
    Bill looked down. Sure enough, they had changed. At first he didn't see it, but when he looked more closely, he saw exactly how they had altered.
    What had once been DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens was now PECS GALORE by I. Liftem, while WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy had become BICEPS AND TRICEPS by Bod Builder.
    “My books. My great literature!” cried Uncle Nancy, even more disturbed over this than the loss of his dress. “It's all been changed into muscled moron crapola!”
    “I smell a time-changer at work!” intoned Elliot Methadrine. “Definitely the work of that crazed hippie who just left — but how did he do it? I haven't got the faintest idea.”
    Bill didn't have the faintest idea, either. He was too busy undergoing, first, shock, then the distinct beginnings of an anxiety attack. Imagine — a lifelong search for the Fountain of Youth (well, the Fountain of Vermouth, anyway) only to have that luscious flow yanked untimely from one's mouth. Horrors! He'd found Barworld and yet all that there was to drink was — he shuddered at the thought — health shakes?
    “What.... What could that bowbhead hippie possibly have done?” he queried incoherently, his jaw flapping like a bar door in the wind.
    “I'll tell you what he did!” Elliot intoned grotesquely. “I mean, really, are you that dense? He's gone back to the past and, changed history.”
    Uncle Nancy looked despairingly at his books, tearing out handfuls of hair from his rapidly balding head.
    “Does this mean — we've failed?” Bill mumbled, losing track of