The Project Gutenberg eBook of The happiness rock
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Title: The happiness rock
Author: Albert Teichner
Illustrator: Robert Adragna
Release date: December 16, 2023 [eBook #72429]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPINESS ROCK ***
_Tired of joy pills? Liquor? The
idiot box? Try a fleck from ..._
THE HAPPINESS ROCK
By ALBERT TEICHNER
Illustrated by ADRAGNA
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories January 1964.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a particularly good asteroid, a great jagged rock roughly four
miles square on one side and two miles at its thickest. Within five
minutes of sighting it they knew that its flatter side turned away from
the sun more than seven times an Earth day. That meant they should be
able to land for mineral specimens and still be off in time to avoid
the heating phase for which they were not equipped.
"I'll go out," said Warrant Officer Cramer, a tan-skinned young man who
was peering ahead even more earnestly than usual.
"I'm Captain of this tin crate so it's up to me," said Hartley. "Right?"
"Right in a wrong sort of way, _sir_. Just two men on board and you're
pulling rank!"
For a moment Hartley looked irritated, then his blue eyes twinkled
with laughter. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't."
"I've never been on an asteroid and I've been a little nervous about
it. I don't want to keep barrelling around space with that kind of a
faze-factor bugging the back of my mind."
The great flat side had just turned into shadow and Hartley started to
ease the ship down. He said, suddenly bitter, "With all my experience
the only thing the political brass lets me captain is a two-man
scouter. Consider my rank unpulled--it's all yours Will."
Cramer gave him an appreciative glance and put on his outside gear.
"Let the Boy Scout have the dirty jobs," Hartley muttered, a nervous
sneer twisting one side of his mouth. He idly adjusted for the descent
onto the sheared stone face and, once Cramer was in the exit chamber,
exchanged a parting wave with him through the quartz window.
_Queer duck, saying a thing like that_, Cramer thought as he opened
the outer hatch. _A little too bitter about things for his own good
sometimes._
But then his foot touched solid rock and he was too busy chipping
specimens to worry about poor Nick. After each tiny chisel stroke
his body bounced slightly away and, gripping the lead rope, he had
to retrojet himself back into the circular light patch thrown by
Scout III. The stuff was hard composition but, fortunately, with many
straight stress lines so pieces slowly did come loose. One carefully
placed blow, then a whirl of stars streaming across jet blackness, then
a swing back into the light and another blow and another outward swing.
Suddenly a voice crackled in his ear. "You've been out fifty minutes,
Will."
"It can't be!"
"Asteroid time's tricky when you're busy. How many chips you have?"
"About a dozen."
"How many do you want? Don't be such a glory boy, get in right now!"
* * * * *
As he pulled himself along the line and up through the hatch he
realized that not only had he been undisturbed while on the rock but
he hadn't even considered the possibility of becoming frightened!
Pleased with himself, he closed the hatch door, raising the current
in each magnetic lock to sealing maximum. As soon as the last bolt
was sucked into place, his suit started decompressing while chamber
pressure mounted in precise compensation. For a second he thought he
saw a white speck eddy out of the specimen box attached to his belt but
another did not follow. Anyway, suit vizors had a way of clouding up on
the inside during chamber compression and that could play funny tricks.
Five minutes later, though, when he pulled off his helmet a little
swarm of white specks welled up toward the ceiling. Then they were
gone. _Funny_, he laughed to himself. "Funny, funny," he suddenly
laughed aloud, "Talcum powder from the void!"
There was Hartley's face at the window, peering anxiously at him, and,
for some inexplicable reason, that sight was even funnier. Shaking
helplessly, Cramer slapped his knee and kept pointing at the face.
_Life is so wonderfully wonderful!_ he said to himself, unable to utter
anything aloud now. _Wonderful wonderfully!_
After a while Hartley opened the door to the front cabin and helped
him to his cockpit seat. "Sorry, old man," Cramer gasped happily.
"Don't know why I did that."
It was surprising how undisturbed by the private joke Hartley looked.
He seemed to be too abstracted for that. "Feeling all right?" he
finally asked.
"Perfect!" Cramer grinned, greeting the galactic reaches with a wave of
his hand. "Isn't it a beautiful universe? I think I could count all the
visible light sources out there in ten minutes if I wanted to. No, I
don't want to count anything but my blessings, I just want to look."
"Not from here, though. This rock makes its crazy wobble into sunlight
soon and I'd rather be off it when the surface starts heating up."
Hartley eased the craft upwards, pulling her back a few dozen miles.
Then he balanced the power exhausts into hover and took the specimen
box from Cramer's belt. "You've got ecstasy of the space deeps, never
can tell when that'll strike a man out there." He studied the little
slate-blue chips inside. "You notice that white stuff, Will?"
"First thought it was just vizor clouding." He was thinking with
extraordinary clarity even though he still felt wildly elated. "Seemed
to happen after the temperature moved above water-freezing."
"Yeah. You did everything by the book, son, except the thing that
justified your excursion in the first place. When you came in you
merely forgot to seal the specimen box and set its cryogenic cell for
deep freeze. Bringing the chips into human temperature range may have
destroyed some of the specimen's value. Usually doesn't matter but in
this case I wonder--"
"Gosh, that's awful! I'd be glad to go out again."
"No, you may have stupidly done a smart thing. But you'll really boggle
it this time with the ecstasy clouding your mind."
"I'm thinking clearly, really I am."
"Can't be."
"Okay," he said, "test me. Give me some digits to multiply while you
punch them on the computer."
"All right," Hartley muttered impatiently. "38,373 times 14,621 times
322. Satisfied?"
After a few seconds, "1-8-0-6-5-8-6-2-5-8-2-6."
Hartley pulled a strand of tape from the computer. "Repeat it slowly."
Eyes widening, he followed the response on the tape. "You've got it
right!"
"Satisfied? Seriously, though, it's nothing when you know the tricks.
Old-time non-machine calculating was one of my hobbies when I was a
kid."
"It isn't 'nothing.' Space ecstasy ruins a man's ability to think
straight for hours. Plenty of bodies are still drifting around space
because in the early days they neglected the proper safety checks."
He stared through the magnifier at the asteroid, its flat face now
glittering in sunlight. "Starting to feel the hangover headache?"
"No, just fine. Nick, I've never felt this good in my life!"
"We'll wait here an hour."
* * * * *
But after the hour was up Cramer was still grinning. "I'm ready to go
out again," he said.
Hartley stared at him. "Then it _was_ that white stuff. Man, you've
hit on something. There have been a few reports about this kind of
untroubled ecstasy reaction but nobody ever spotted that powder. We're
going back!"
When the asteroid was back in position again they dropped to the
surface. Cramer started up but Hartley held him back in his seat. "This
time I do pull rank. I'm going out myself."
Cramer shrugged. "I'm in too good a mood to offer the slightest
protest."
"Your mood's why I'm going." He put on his suit and went into the rear
chamber. A few minutes later he disappeared outside.
"Everything okay?" Cramer radioed.
"Sure thing. I'll be right back. This stuff flakes off like mica, easy
to handle when you know the angles of the fault lines."
A few minutes later he was on board again. "You sure were fast!" Cramer
exclaimed.
"Get the comp-decomp going and don't chew so much fat."
"Okay." He activated the self-compensating cycle and watched his
superior through the glass. There it was again, a few specks from the
specimen box. He, too, had forgotten the standard operating procedure!
Then later, as Hartley took off his helmet, a swarm of them ascended
like angry midges to the ceiling. In a few seconds the Captain was
laughing more relaxedly than Cramer had ever seen him laugh before.
When Hartley came into the cockpit he exclaimed, "Wonderful! There's
something like mica in these rocks and the powder's all over in
the schists." He went to a corner and pulled some things out of an
equipment cabinet but his back blocked Cramer's view. Still facing
away, he headed back into the exit chamber. "Go out again," he said.
"But, Captain, you won't know what you're doing!"
Hartley gave an airy wave. "You did, didn't you?"
"Yes but--"
"No buts, my young friend. I'll be on the line. Anything goes wrong,
you turn on the winch and I'll be wrenched right back in."
"We'll be orbiting into sunlight and--"
"Forget it, I'll be back on time. There are only two universal laws,
son--get happy and stay happy." He shut the door, put on his suit and
ordered a compression recycling. As soon as it was completed, he jetted
himself through the escape hatch.
* * * * *
Again he was back very quickly but this time, as soon as the helmet
came off, he whipped out a specimen slide from an inner pocket,
waved it gaily through the talc cloud (_again_, he had left the box
unadjusted!) and slipped the slide into a portable pocket microscope.
He gripped the scope in his eye like a monocle and stood spellbound for
five minutes until with a shout of joy he let the little electronic
cylinder drop into his hand. "I'm going back out," he said.
"But, Captain Hartley, you'll get caught on the heating surface."
"Open the cockpit door!" As soon as he came in, he sat down at the
controls and lifted the craft off. "See, Cramer, I can think straight,
too, under the influence. You were right this time and I've listened."
Then he switched to hover.
"We're not going back _again_, sir, are we?"
"Of course," Hartley grinned. "After all, I made the same mistake you
did. Twice I've let the temperature of the specimen box dekelvinise!"
Despite his continuing sense of well-being, Cramer felt uneasy, but
there was nothing he could put his finger on so he didn't protest.
Anyway, he could see Hartley would not be swayed now from whatever was
his strange purpose.
A few hours later they settled back on the asteroid and the Captain
went out once more. Cramer tried to watch what he was doing but Hartley
was too huddled over the fault he was working for much to be seen. An
hour later he came back in, and made some fix notations in his log book
as soon as his suit decompressed.
They took off immediately. "This time the box stays locked," he said,
pointing at the lid dial which showed the tiny atomic power unit inside
was keeping the core's contents at Kelvin 90. Then he radioed the
mother ship for a directional beam and locked the craft on automatic
pilot. He glanced thoughtfully at his assistant. "When we come in
_I'll_ make the report."
"But I know that's standard, Captain, I learned it the first month at
the academy."
"Just wanted to make sure you remembered. How do you feel, Will?"
"Perfect."
"No after effects! Same with me!" He thumped Cramer's back in a
hail-fellow-well-met spirit and Cramer thought, _Not such a bad guy
sometimes_.
* * * * *
But, of course, that little outburst of camaraderie had to stop short
as soon as they debarked inside the mother ship. The _Solar Pioneer_
was strictly spit-and-polish, all twelve hundred feet of it, and as
they came out of the scout craft hangar, there were brisk salutes
to be exchanged and data registration books to countersign. General
Chisholm, a natty man with brightly burnished swagger stick to match,
was personally on hand to greet them.
"Anything of interest to report, Captain?" he snapped.
"Fairly routine, sir." He gave Cramer a silencing glance.
"That's the trouble, Captain, the whole voyage has been. You're the
last craft in so we're heading back to Earth now."
Hartley held out the specimen box. "We spotted a good landing
asteroid--one side flat as a mesa. Composition fairly similar to
granite and mica."
"Nothing else?"
Cramer started to open his mouth but Hartley broke in; "Nothing, sir,"
he answered.
"The white stuff, sir," said Cramer, holding chin and stomach in.
The General glared directly at him. "You're out of order, Mister."
"Yessi--"
"Then don't say another word." He pulled out a little black book, made
a notation and looked at Hartley as if no one else were there. "What's
this about?"
"Nothing important, sir. We didn't have the specimen box set
cryogenically a few times and when the temperature went up to human
normal in the compression cycle chamber little water crystals flew out."
"Well, nothing unusual about that."
"But, sir," Cramer protested, "they couldn't have been just water."
"Silence!" Chisholm roared and two of his staff officers at the bend
of a corridor turned to watch the fun. "Consider yourself under
Probationary discipline, Mister Cramer. Informality's natural and
permissible on a front-line craft like a scouter but chain of command
has to be _absolute_ on a dreadnought, you know that."
"I'm very sorry this happened, sir," Hartley apologized.
"When we land he's under your probationary control for the first five
days of Earth leave. It's up to you to teach him how to stay in line."
He rubbed his brush mustache thoughtfully. "To begin with, though, it
might be good to take him along to Analysis Lab just to show him how
wrong he probably is even about the specimens. Any objections to that,
Mister?"
"No sir!" he said, more hopeful now of exposing Hartley.
"A very good idea, sir," Hartley nodded unexpectedly.
They proceeded two hundred yards toward the stern where the Specimen
Analysis Laboratory was located. In one long room there was a row of
totally automatic equipment for both deepfreeze and normal temperature
breakdowns. Sommers, the chief chemist, set the specimen box in a
large, sealed chamber with one transparent side. When the inside
temperature matched that within the box itself fine robot fingers
unlocked it, withdrew samples and shifted them toward various test
compartments. Meanwhile, Chisholm explained about the crystal cloud to
the chemist.
"That must have been an exceptional batch," Sommers said, as he studied
the response dial. "_Very_ little moisture here. Nothing important to
that one way or the other, though. Matter of fact, nothing important to
these specimens in general--usual asteroid run."
Hartley impassively considered the shocked expression on Cramer's face.
"Confined to quarters for the rest of the voyage," snapped the General,
turning his back on the miscreant.
* * * * *
As Hartley led his ward to scout quarters, he kept shaking his head.
"Shouldn't make trouble like that, Cramer. See where it gets you? I
can't get ahead in this man's service so how far do you think _you_ can
go?"
"But you didn't tell him the most important thing. And the material in
the lab didn't give off _any_ whiteness even when its temperature was
raised. I don't think you put in any new chips the third time you went
out--I think you're trying to hide something!"
"Sure, right here." He pulled a pocket inside out. A few tobacco shreds
were clinging to the lining. "Go ahead, tell them more and you'll keep
getting into deeper trouble. Nobody will believe you anyway."
They stopped by the Recreation Room entrance to watch a foursome at
ping pong. It was a good game, requiring special skill since the
artificial gravity of the dreadnought-class craft varied slightly from
that of Earth, "Come along," Hartley said finally, "no human company
for you until touchdown. When we're on _terra firma_ I'll show you how
silly you've been and you can get in on the ground floor for something
really big."
Saying nothing, Cramer stepped into his little windowless cabin and
listened as his door was locked from the outside. He broke open an
emergency ration bar, munching sullenly until the idea came to him that
the asteroid experience had to involve some new kind of drug Hartley
wanted to keep to himself. He would have to convince the authorities
that the matter warranted further investigation, chain of command rules
or no rules.
Meanwhile, there was a week of isolation to be filled. There were
thirty courses on his shelf to choose from, various things he had
planned to learn when the occasion arose. Now there'd be enough time
to absorb two of them. He set up the audio-visuals and started on the
intensive twenty-four hour regimen that permitted even sleeping hours
to be pedagogically fruitful.
A week later, as the _Solar Pioneer_ settled in its magnetic cradle
near Paris, he found himself master of _Old Sanskrit_ (his eighth
language) and _Luna: History of the First Settlements_. He also found
himself once more face to face with the problem of Hartley's devious
scheming. A Probationer's badge was given him to wear before the
Captain took him off the ship. Hartley accompanied him in a RobotCab
toward the tower city twenty miles down the Seine from the ancient
arrondissements.
"That powder was a drug," Cramer said as soon as they were alone in the
cab. "You think you can turn it to private advantage but the idea's
insane--everybody knows the dangers of drugs."
"That's the beauty of it--it isn't a drug." Hartley leaned back and
crossed his legs. "There wasn't any after-effect, was there?"
"Doesn't mean a thing--drugs only do their real damage after repeated
dosages. Joy can't be this free--you have to pay for it at horribly
compounded interest when it comes this easily."
"I'm willing to wager we're going to find this stuff perfect, no side
effects at all and--"
"The cry down through the ages, Captain, all drugs have been evil but
this newest one is the exception. Until it turns out to be the same
narcotic chimera, pure hell."
[Illustration: "... all drugs have been evil but this newest one is the
exception."]
"--and, Mr. Cramer, it isn't a drug."
He threw up his hands. "A chemical working like that one did isn't a
drug!"
"Did you ever hear of a narcotic drug that was alive?"
"Alive? Did you say _alive_?"
"That's what I said," he smirked.
"But then--. You mean it's a germ?"
"Ah, getting smart at last!"
"Then we're infected and you want to corrupt other people the same way."
"Nobody can be infected." Eyes glittering, he watched the first vast
metropolitan tower grow ahead of them. "The germs die after a few
minutes of body warmth--die and _completely_ disintegrate. I saw it
through the eye-socket microscope!"
* * * * *
Cramer felt the first cold horror brush his brow like the substanceless
touch of the wings of the angel of death, but he managed to stifle his
incipient protest. It was more important than ever now that he find out
what was being planned. "That _is_ peculiar. I don't know whether it
could be called a drug or not."
"It isn't one. But a name's not important one way or the other except
sometimes for legal purposes. The important point's that here's
something without any bad side effects because the body utterly
destroys it." He pulled a cylinder from his pocket. It was the smallest
deepfreeze unit generally available. "At least 100 cc in dormant _pure_
form inside this cryogenic package."
"That's what you were doing on the asteroid, gathering your own
private stock!"
"Naturally. I saw that the powder lay in the schists and just scraped
the stuff in and sealed it up." He patted the insulating ceramic. "Now
we're going to see a friend of mine and, if I'm right, we have five
millon dollars in the palm of my hand."
"Why are you telling me this?" Cramer demanded.
"Because it's simpler to have you in on it than on the outside. Not
that you'll be able to do anything even if you remain so naively Boy
Scoutish about it. Who's going to believe your story at this stage of
the game? There's an even better reason why you'll keep quiet, though,
but I won't tell you that until later."
Cramer was still considering how he might snatch the capsule away when
the Captain dropped it back into a self-locking pocket of his suit. The
cab had stopped before the sleekest tower on Boulevard Radial. Hartley
jumped out, waving for Cramer to follow.
The elevator had several other people in it, all of whom eyed the
Probationary badge with distaste. Any attempt to subdue Hartley would
receive no support from these super-respectables.
The two of them got off at the eighty-seventh floor and were ushered
into a vast, luxuriously-decorated chamber. About a dozen men and women
were scattered about the room, boredly watching a color symphony unfold
on one wall. They were all dressed in the sort of highest fashion
glitter which evoked as much disgust as amusement among most space
workers. But Hartley was obviously not typical of his breed; he enjoyed
coming among these people, livening up as soon as he saw them.
A tall, blonde man came slowly toward them, wearily rejoicing. "So glad
to see you, Hartley. Ah, a Probationary in tow--well, any Probationary
is a fellow friend in the kingdom of chaos."
Hartley perfunctorily introduced them, then glanced around. "Drinking
nectar?"
"It kills time, can't do any damage and--I know what you're going to
say," he grinned, "it's a bore!"
"Well, it is, you should be on to something stronger."
"You gone space gaga?"
"Not at all, Neilson."
"Who would bother with what isn't safe? Everyone knows down to the last
nerve tremor the consequences of really good stimulants. We've seen it,
smella- and feela-visioned it through social indoctrination procedures
to the point where no one would dare. All we can do is stick to the
legally permissible alkaloid-heightened caffein derivatives."
"Suppose I told you there is something new, something perfect _and_
safe?"
"I'd say gaga again, sheer lunacy!"
"All right, just listen." He recounted their experiences on the
asteroid and, despite himself, Neilson began to show real interest.
"And you have a capsule?"
"Yes, want to try a fleck? That's all you need, I think."
"Oh no!" Neilson exclaimed. "Not until I've run the tests."
"Well, that's what I'm here for. You're a biochemist, you have all the
equipment."
* * * * *
Cramer looked disdainfully at the man. The type was common
enough--probably knew next to nothing about his specialty. But--and
this was what made it doubly revolting--he didn't have to know in
order to be an expert. Good equipment could do _all_ the work in most
cases.
Neilson waved languidly toward his other guests, mumbling, "See you
shortly," and let the pair through a series of golden rooms to his
Analyzer Laboratory. There he took the capsule from Hartley and placed
it in a cryogenic tester similar to the one aboard the _Solar Pioneer_.
After temperature adjustments were made, tiny filament hands began
lifting out specimen flecks and shifting them to various test sections.
"Odd stuff," murmured Neilson as he surveyed the preliminary sheet
punched out by the reporting machine. "It's a living organism and--and
it's _silicon_-based! That's a real weird one. Its biological action
in the human body wouldn't be like any narcotic, completely new. Can't
read the next stuff--ah, here's the translation--heightened hormone
discharges, not one of which is detrimental. Metabolic cycle of
bacteria somewhere between three and four hours."
"The spin period for the asteroid! This stuff's likely to be available
hundreds of places in the asteroid belt, wherever the spin period's in
that range. Might have an endless supply because in its native habitat
it reappears after the heating phase even though something in the
human body destroys it permanently."
Now summaries were being pumped out more rapidly and Neilson was
scanning them with unwonted speed. "Fleck dose too small for _any_
endocrine upset. None for musculature either. Gastro-intestinal
negative. Bone Marrow negative. Ten minutes after entering the body
this stuff dissolves completely into _lower_ elements! Physiologically
non-habit-forming. Hartley, if this gives all the pleasure you claim
it's the answer to our wildest prayers. I will try a fleck."
As soon as he inhaled the infinitesimal dosage he began grinning at the
pair in speechless wonder. Hartley joined him and offered to set a bit
up for Cramer.
"No," Cramer said, "I don't care what the analyzers say. You can't get
something for nothing."
"This is beyond price," Neilson sighed contentedly. He moved to a wall
mirror. "Not even a little retinal contraction. The dosage is so small
the silicon base couldn't hurt you even if you took one an hour for the
rest of your life. And there can't be any hangover."
"No law on the books against it and I don't think the public would
tolerate a prohibition. This stuff is actually _good_ for you!" Hartley
exulted.
"And we are the only ones on Earth who have it for at least the next
few weeks!" He jotted down some calculations. "Figure a hundred
thousand doses in the capsule and at least fifty dollars a microscopic
flake slice, seventy-five dollars, more probably. Anybody can lay his
hands on cryogenic capsules--they're all over the place. We'd only
need a few dozen runners and I can get them easily enough. Are we in
business, Hartley?"
"Let's give a free sample to your friends first."
"Fair enough, they're going to be among our best customers."
Cramer watched in horrified disgust as the others were summoned and
willingly passed over into the fully-conscious ecstasy. But why the
horror? Why the disgust? he demanded of himself. Why condemn something
that even the Specimen Analyzer showed to be wholly beneficial? He
couldn't find the tangible reason but that didn't matter; there had to
be something wrong somewhere.
"Still not with it?" Hartley asked after a while.
"I'd just as soon not bother quite yet."
"Well, you do know what you're missing," shrugged the Captain. "My
Probationary rights don't give the privilege to insist on this. As I
told you, complaining to authority wouldn't change anything but now
I'll give you the biggest reason why. Even in the highly unlikely case
of their believing your story, they couldn't move against me because
they'd know it wouldn't matter. First I'd see to it that word got out
about germ-joy. There are hundreds of craft on the Mars run that can
detour into the asteroid belt and pick up a supply once they know what
to look for. Look at all the freighters that do a little bootlegging on
the side now--there'd be no way to seal off that supply."
"I can see that," Cramer agreed. "I'm not interested in reforming
anything. I just don't want to be personally involved."
"Perfectly all right," Hartley said thoughtfully. "Each man to his own
tastes." Then he moved away to discuss business arrangements with his
host.
_How do I get out of here?_ Cramer wondered. _And how do I get anybody
to listen, to believe such a wild story from a Probationary? Or would
it be best to string along with them and see what happens?_
* * * * *
Trying all the while to hide his anxiety, he struggled with a dozen
problems that seemed to have no solution, that might not even deserve
a solution if the stuff were as harmless as it had shown itself to be
so far. For the present, he had to appear to be one of them; just
before going in to dinner, he asked for a fleck and there was a patter
of applause from everyone with jovial cries of "For he's a jolly good
fellow!" and "Now you're talking!"
There was no denying the renewed sense of youthful cleanliness it gave
him, as if every nerve of his body had been gently washed down to dawn
of life freshness.
The main course consisted of yeast snow nectar laced with rare
confectionery spices that broke evanescently on the palate and then
subtly vanished to make way for the next clearly distinct sensation.
Behind his own mask of laughter Cramer drowsily watched all the other
chattering faces. After a while there only seemed to be the glitter of
eyeballs and silver and perfectly-spaced teeth sinking into nectar, and
he got up with the assistance of Hartley and Neilson to accompany them
sleepily, oh so yawn-sleepily! away to another room....
He saw himself floating from afar toward the asteroid, its rougher
side glowing in the sun, the flatter one a sable blank. He moved
slowly through a viscous atmosphere, one joint stickily shifting after
the other. An enormous flake of whiteness settled on his face and he
inhaled. To be _this_ happy, _this_ content! And again the movement
around the surface as gradual as the turning of the asteroid itself.
Over and over again, never an end to it, while another flake drifted
inexorably toward his upturned face. And again that final happiness.
He swung imperceptibly, across the surface of his new home as it
streamed in an arcing line along the invisible orbit of the asteroid
belt. And always at the right interval another floating flake.
When the voices came to him they were hardly wanted and totally
unneeded but, although he did not listen, he heard them and even
identified their owners.
"He's hooked now," Hartley was saying.
"I guess so," Neilson answered. "But it's not physiological."
"Who cares about that? _Psychologically_ he's going to want the stuff
from now on--any sensible person would. You know, we're actually doing
him a favor, destroying his inhibitions against something so harmless."
"Which doesn't concern me one way or the other."
"Well, maybe it would have been neater just to get rid of him but
Probationers have to report to HQ at the end of their punishment
periods. If he doesn't go in today there'll be an investigation and,
believe me, Neilson, they'd trace down my every movement and get an
electronic hold on me that I couldn't shake. The whole thing would come
out."
"A lot of good spilling our beans would do the government. Someone else
would just bring in the happy germs."
"Yeah, but this next month's the time when _we_ make our killing. Hey,
I think he's starting to wake up."
"No, prob--"
Neilson's answer mumbled itself away and he found himself floating
across the flat face of the asteroid, waiting for the next huge flake
to descend.
... And then he was really awake. He discovered that he was leaning
against the back of a heavily-padded chair, alone in a guest bedroom.
Approaching footsteps told him the pair was returning and he hastily
shut his eyes. This had to be carefully managed.
"Ought to be waking up about now," said Neilson.
Cramer started stretching, then rubbed his lids and blinked at the
light. "Give me a fleck," he pleaded. "Just a little bit."
The two of them nodded to one another and Hartley leaned forward.
"Takes a little while to get it out of the freezer, Will."
"I want it now," he said petulantly.
Hartley gave his shoulder a comradely squeeze. "One of the gang now,
eh? Come along and you'll get it. You have to report to HQ."
"I have five days Probationary." He got up and followed them a little
unsteadily to the cryogenic freezer in another room.
"Five days are up," Hartley explained. "You've been doing a lot of
sleeping, even were sleepy when you got up to eat."
"Don't understand."
"I'll tell you after you get our sniff."
"Yes, that's what I want now."
* * * * *
One tiny fleck came out on a holder the size of a fingernail paring. It
was frightening how quickly they had developed techniques for handling
the stuff.
"Take it fast!" Neilson shouted. "That germ colony's worth eighty
dollars and it's breaking down fast. You won't get another."
Cramer leaned forward to quickly breath it in. By the time he exhaled
it was already working its magic. He straightened up and smiled with
hangdog gratitude. "Oh, that's good!"
"Had to get you used to it," Hartley said. "Only reason why we kept you
sleepy--you'll thank us some day."
"Some day? I thank you _now_!"
Neilson gave him a friendly handshake but his eyes were coolly
observant. "Okay," he nodded for Hartley's benefit.
Hartley glanced at his watch. "The stuff's all gone by now. They can't
find a thing even if they do give you a checkup."
"But the silicon--"
"Not a trace," Neilson said. "This thing even breaks up on the atomic
level, takes a little longer than the germ death but inside an hour no
silicon."
"But the fission breakdown--"
"Don't ask me," Neilson shrugged, "it doesn't work that way. Must have
something to do with the beautiful energy charge you get from germ-joy."
"Feeling clear-headed?" Hartley asked.
"Sure, I'll be right back for some more after I report."
He went out, grinning inwardly. They were right about one thing--it
wasn't physiologically habit-forming. And he just did not have the kind
of psychological defect for it to be habit-forming any other way.
When he reached Space Pioneer HQ he handed in his card at the
Probationary desk. The Major in charge looked him up and down in stony
silence, then suddenly barked, "Anything to say, Mister?"
"Yes sir. I want to register a complaint with General Chisholm
personally."
"What!" His face turned beet red. "Look, soldier, we're not strictly
GI in this outfit out of love of red tape. This is a dangerous service.
You have to follow the chain of command every time." He entered a black
mark on the card. "Tell your immediate superior."
"He's the one I'm complaining against, sir."
"Then go see the Inspector General!"
"The time lag, sir, it would take too long to reach General Chisholm."
The Major violently punched another mark on the card. "Wipe the grin
off your face, Mister. What's so funny?"
"That's part of my complaint, sir. I've been drugged to joy."
"I really ought to call the General. You'd make a perfect punishment
example."
"Just as long as I get to talk to the General, sir," he said,
confidence in his success gone even if the evil stuff kept him feeling
so good.
"Wait in the outside room." He reached for a phone. "Who's your
immediate superior?"
"Scout Captain Hartley, sir." He went out and sat down on the edge of a
chair. No, it wasn't going to work, he could just see it wasn't.
Then the Major was striding out and shouting, "Follow me, the General
actually wants to break you in person!"
Cramer sighed and followed him up an escalator, then past two
receptionists and two private secretaries. The Major pointed at a small
door. "You go in on your own, soldier."
* * * * *
He turned the knob and stepped nervously into a room which was bare
except for a glass-topped desk behind which General Chisholm was seated
and a few wrought-iron chairs facing the desk. The General stared
at him as if he weren't there but would materialize under prolonged
scrutiny. "Sit down and tell me what this is all about," Chisholm said,
raising one index finger from the desk.
Cramer sucked in his breath and the story came pouring out, faster
and faster all the time as if he were racing against the moment when
Chisholm would bark for silence and bring him crashing down. But the
General said nothing, studying first one cuticle, then the speaker's
face, then back to the next cuticle.
Suddenly he slammed on an intercom and said, "Get Dr. Jonas and tell
him to bring a portable blood test rig."
"Then you _believe_ me, sir?" Cramer was too stunned to remain safely
silent.
"Of course I don't, Mister, but there's too much smoke for no fire."
"The silicon trace may not show up now--"
A smile flashed up Chisholm's face, then disappeared. "Those are the
chances you take when you tell sensational stories."
Cramer's heart sank once more. "Yes, sir."
The specialist arrived with his test machine rolling behind him like an
obedient, lumbering mastiff. When he reached the center of the room he
turned a dial on his signet ring and the machine stopped.
"This young warrant officer has given me an interesting account of his
recent experiences which, he would have us believe, included being
drugged into sleep and semi-sleep," said Chisholm. "I want you to test
blood samples for silicon traces, in fact the whole gamut of tests."
Dr. Jonas' pointed chin sank toward his chest, then rose. "Yes, General
Chisholm." He pulled up Cramer's left sleeve and applied a blood-sucker
tube which clicked off drops until it reached fifty and stopped. The
doctor set the fractionating apparatus on automatic and approached his
superior's chair to say, "I hardly think a person could be sedated with
a silicon compound, sir."
Chisholm gestured for Cramer to remain silent. "All right, while
we're waiting for your machine to complete its run, here's a purely
hypothetical problem. Imagine a silicon-based _bacteria_--"
"_What?_" Dr. Jonas exclaimed.
"I said a silicon-based bacteria. It raises human metabolism when
absorbed into the blood stream in the form of a tiny frost flake, a
flake whose very _atomic_ structure breaks down the elements scale
without the explosive force of nuclear fission or any other kind of
serious disruption."
"I'd say the whole thing's impossible, sir!"
"But let's just suppose it is not."
"Then I'd have to proceed on the assumption that the life cycle of
the hypothetical form permits it to reach a high threshold of energy
storage, part of which energy is smoothly released while the rest
achieves a new balance as the silicon transmutes into elements of
lesser weight."
"Sounds like a reasonable explanation for something unreasonable,
doctor," he stiffly observed. "Your tests should be ready now."
* * * * *
Dr. Jonas looked satisfied as he pulled the tape from the machine. "No
silicon." He stopped, frowning. "But there is indication of massive
barbiturate dosages. This man _has_ been drugged! There shouldn't be
any lasting damage--he's a healthy specimen all right--but whoever did
this wasn't worrying about his welfare, General."
"Thank you, Dr. Jonas, you may go now." He casually leaned back in his
chair. "This is Top Secret for the present. I will be consulting you
later on this matter."
"Yes, sir."
But as soon as Jonas and his equipment were gone the General sprang
into frantic action. "You're under arrest, Mister."
"Sir!"
"_Protective_ arrest--although it won't be announced that way. No time
for explanations right now. Give me the precise reading and time for
that asteroid."
When he had the information he activated a keyboard at one side of his
desk which fed the orrery computer several miles away. A few seconds
after he punched in the data, the reply came back with the exact
present location of the asteroid. He immediately threw a switch which
lowered the lights and simultaneously splashed a map of the solar
system on all of one blank wall. The map carried the caption _Pioneer
Logistic_ and showed a dozen labelled points scattered throughout the
system's inner and median reaches. A few were moving very slowly while
others appeared to be at rest.
After a minute's careful scrutiny the General leaped to his feet,
muttering, "Good, good, Hazelton can get there in four hours." Starting
his sender, he brought on Message Center and commanded: "Get me
Admiral Hazelton on the _Star-Seeker_. Top Priority Instant Action
Field Officer Line."
Cramer, accustomed to slower transmission channels, was startled by the
speed with which Hazelton's voice came into the room. "Standing by,
General."
"Admiral, have your daily code book handy?"
"Right here."
"Put her on today's complete garble in precisely ten seconds." He
set his own coder and waited. "Okay. Hazelton, are you receiving me
clearly?"
"Perfectly, Chisholm."
"All right, now nobody else can follow what I'm going to tell you.
Immediately shift course for 325.83.21 in asteroid quadrant, subsection
38." A protesting squawk came hurtling across space. "First give your
people my orders, then I'm going to tell you why."
Cramer gaped as he heard his superior start to repeat his story. The
General _must_ have believed it!
Ten minutes later Hazelton broke in with a final "Oh, my God!" For a
while only his heavy breathing could be heard, then he said, "Chisholm,
if there's anything to this it's the worst social catastrophe of the
century!"
"I know it. Contact me as soon as you have a sample analyzed. You
should be able to manage in six hours or so--this line'll be open at
all times from now on. Off."
Chisholm came back to the desk and looked steadily at Cramer. "You sure
have me going far out on a prestige limb."
"I never expected anybody to believe me, sir," he replied, all
gratitude.
"I still don't but we can't take any chances. I know something has
to be going on. You see, Captain Hartley resigned from the service
yesterday."
"But he's still under your command for three months, isn't he?"
"No, he's a free agent. He entered a Categorical Resignation. That
means he's giving up all benefits accruing to a man of 25 years
standing but his resignation is immediately effective."
"You could still arrange for his arrest through the civil channels."
"I doubt whether any continental president would care for that idea, I
know I don't. Your former Captain's a very shrewd man, he knew we'd see
how helpless we are--I only hope that you're lying through your teeth!"
"If I don't return soon, General Chisholm, he'll suspect something."
"Again, it doesn't matter very much." He sat down and rubbed his chin.
"If we let you go back, do you think he'd let you see how they're
organizing their operation? True, it would be more convenient for him
if, for a few more days, we wouldn't be investigating him--that's why
he took the chance of letting you report back here and avoided the
Probationary hunt. To his way of thinking, chances are that you'll want
further dosages and keep quiet. But why should we expose you further to
that stuff when the possible sacrifice involved won't give us any more
information?"
"Then you're just going to surrender the point, let him realize you
know and won't do anything about it?"
"Not exactly. The best we can do is keep him uncertain about you.
Officially, you've been arrested for insubordinate behavior by a
martinet General who's decided to make a horrible example of you.
Someone looking like you is going to be seen entering a punishment
craft heading for a monotony run to check the automatic satellites
around Uranus. That's the stupid best we can do--we're over a barrel."
His sharp eyes suddenly dug into Cramer's. "You'll be in isolation
quarters for the next few hours. I only hope that you'll deserve to
stay there, that your story is all malicious nonsense!"
* * * * *
Cramer was escorted to a small cell where there were no audio-visuals,
only old-fashioned printed books. He picked up a few of them, stared at
the title pages without knowing what he was reading, then began to pace
his cell.
What if they didn't find a germ sample? After all, nobody had ever
spotted the stuff before.
No, they knew what to look for now and that made a difference.
But maybe it didn't in this case.
And what made them feel so helpless? What gave Hartley that much of an
advantage over a General of the Space Deeps?
Nothing added up and it seemed he had been shuffling the crazy pieces
for a week when they came to take him back to Chisholm's office. The
clock, though, told him only eight hours had passed.
Another man was in Chisholm's office now and he recognized him as soon
as he came in--Shelby Johnson, President of North America. The newcomer
nodded grimly as they were introduced to each other.
"President Johnson is here incognito, came by a private entrance,"
Chisholm explained. "You're not to mention this anywhere."
"A real mess!" Johnson exclaimed. "But at least there was someone
decent enough to give us forewarning. This stuff's supposed to be so
effective, no hangover, no known damage to the system--why didn't you
go along with Hartley's reasoning?"
"There has to be some bad long-range effect, nothing comes that cheap."
"I only hope you're right." Johnson's grey eyes seemed to be focussed
far off. "Otherwise the social damage will be terrible."
"_Everything_ you told me has been confirmed," said Chisholm. "Scouts
had no trouble finding a batch and the tests confirm that it's
seemingly harmless, breaks down completely."
"Then why don't you arrest Hartley?"
"That would just spread knowledge of this even faster. He's probably
seen to it that will happen and can hold it over our heads."
"Counter the thing with a propaganda offensive, highlighting the evils."
"What evils? Young man," the President broke in, "Who's going to be
scared off from something that sounds so harmless? Two things are
working against us--the supply's easily replenishable _and_ testing
equipment's much too common for us to put over any white lies."
"Still hard for you to understand, isn't it?" Chisholm sighed.
"Cramer, a terribly big percentage of the population has become passive
and bored, just looking for some easy diversion. We have all we can do
just to keep this social cancer from spreading without germ-joy. _With_
it, matters can get out of hand. And I don't care how automated and
wealthy a society is it can't get by if we develop _that_ big a burden
of non-thinking freeloaders."
"General Chisholm isn't wholeheartedly with the plan I've adopted but--"
"But I haven't a thing better to suggest, Mr. President," the General
conceded.
"Who does? Well, the plan for the next few weeks is this, to keep very
close surveillance of Hartley's activities without openly conceding we
know what he's up to. We have to hope that some defect will show up in
a user even though the first report says no one sees how it can happen."
Cramer protested. "You're going to let him get away with it!"
"For the present," President Johnson nodded. "We're not interested
in punishing a particular man. We have to give him all the joy-rope
he needs and hope that he, as the longest-run user, suffers the
consequences."
"I could keep taking it myself if you need a guinea pig."
"The rasher section of the public will supply enough guinea pigs," said
the General. "You'll stay here at HQ, looking over all the reports that
come in, Mr. Cramer, maybe your experience will help somewhere along
the line. If, after a few weeks, nothing shows up, we will crack down
on Hartley anyway."
"Not that it will do much good," said the President. "But we, too, need
our moments of purely personal satisfaction."
* * * * *
The following day Cramer was given a robot-run suite high in HQ Tower.
His human contacts were restricted to a few total security clears who
occasionally brought him messages too delicate for transmission on
the building's internal net. Inured to the isolation-training of the
spacenaut, he was not disturbed by the lack of company.
But within two days a message arrived that did disturb him. The
_Star-Seeker_, returning with its precious capsules of asteroid
bacteria, was still a week from Earth base and already one scout who
had somehow sampled germ-joy was under forcible restraint for trying
to get additional dosages. Medical analysis showed no physiological
addiction but it did indicate some purely psychological craving
triggered by merely one dose. The scout was not moved by the warnings
of the frost flake's possible danger since there was no binding proof
of it.
Chisholm had scribbled across the bottom of the document: 'This is
likely to become the classic form of our difficulty, the refusal to see
horror unless it can be shown. And here again it's happening to a Space
Service man!'
Cramer shuddered at that. The Service contained the cream of Earth's
manpower. If germ-joy could bring out their psychological weaknesses,
how much worse the effect was bound to be among the listless, bored
masses!
As the days went by there were occasional reports on Hartley's
activities. With Neilson's help his agents had smoothly eased into many
sectors of the scientific underground and huge quantities of money were
moving up through the distribution hierarchy. There were even spy reels
for him to run off on his projector, reels which showed the ex-Captain
looking fantastically youthful and self-satisfied.
Once in a while the bitterly ironic thought came to Cramer that maybe
Hartley was inadvertently on the right side. Suppose, just suppose that
germ-joy was actually _good_ for humanity! More than ever he longed
for some evil effect to become manifest even if it meant he, himself,
should be stricken by it.
Eventually he was summoned to Chisholm's office where several
scientists were gathered. The feed lines for a Medical Computer had
been set up there and he was put through another rigorous checkup. At
the end of a half-hour Dr. Jonas threw up his hands and said, "You're
in perfect health. Still no after effects--I don't think there'll ever
be any. How could there be?"
Chisholm considered Cramer almost resentfully. "You're too damned
healthy for our own good! Dr. Phillips here has equally bad news--he's
a biophysicist."
Phillips, a skinny, dark-haired man, tried to smile through his look
of bewilderment. "We've absolutely run through the testing gamut on
the stuff _Star-Seeker_ brought back. Ultra-high microscopy shows
no RNA or DNA in our frozen samples, in fact nothing to carry the
genetic pattern--yet we know it's alive! We've no way of coping with
something so radically different, something that breaks all the way
down the atomic scale so peacefully. It can only be controlled by some
_sub_-atomic patterns unknown to us."
"There's no way to probe it sub-atomically?" asked Cramer.
"Not at this fine a level. What methods we have show nothing
exceptional there after the silicon breaks down." He frowned in a
dreamy sort of way. "A lot of the tiniest subatomic bits are still a
total mystery, too small for our analytic tools to grapple with. If
this stuff would reappear in some analyzable form now we could learn an
awful lot about those unknown interactions. Fat chance of that, though!"
"We'll wait another week," said Chisholm, "then, if nothing's happened,
we'll pull Hartley and his crew in and hope the public won't end up in
his corner. There are probably several thousand regular users already.
We already have a few _scientists_ saying the stuff's all right, that
we should _encourage_ its use!"
"Idiocy," observed Phillips sadly, "is no respecter of high IQ's."
* * * * *
The week went by more and more slowly in Cramer's tower suite and all
the reports only confirmed the General's forebodings about the spread
of germ-joy's appeal. Someone else had somehow brought in a batch and
was distributing it through a new, completely independent set-up. And
everywhere there were vague rumors of a beneficial substance that
'they', the eternally conspiratorial 'they' of undefinable higher
authority, were keeping from popular use.
Then, on the seventh day, Cramer had the rash.
It encircled only the wrist of his left hand but the red splotches
itched so violently that he immediately called in the medical team. By
the time the doctors arrived it was already subsiding. A sample from
the splotch area, though, showed a significant trace of silicon but
none of the bacteria.
"Somehow the element reformed!" Phillips exclaimed. "We're approaching
the breakthrough!"
Cramer watched the splotches shrink into themselves, fearfully
wondering what the next phase would be. But, an hour later, this turned
out to be bitterly anti-climactic for the assembled group. A urinalysis
showed that his body had thrown off an amount of silicon roughly
equivalent to the amount he must have taken in through the flakes.
"Looks like you've passed through your crisis," Jonas said. "You're in
perfect shape again."
The scientists all looked crushed but their mood changed to annoyance
when they saw Cramer's enthusiastic grin. "Don't you see?" he said. "If
this happened to me, it should be happening to Hartley too. He got his
first sniff only a little while after I did, so the incubation period's
the same for him!"
"Unless the large amount he's taken in since then actually confers
immunity," Phillips muttered.
Cramer's face fell but he persisted. "We have to find out one way or
the other, don't we?"
"No doubt about that!" Phillips called Chisholm's office and explained
what had happened.
"Then the operation's on," the General told him, happy to be acting at
last. "Hartley's at Neilson's place and we have to get him. Bring along
all the test equipment you'll need."
* * * * *
When they broke into the vast penthouse apartment they found nobody
around. As they went through one empty chamber after another, they
became increasingly nervous. "The building's been thoroughly staked
out," Chisholm fumed. "We know he hasn't left this floor."
Then, in the last chamber, they found him. He was lying on a silken
couch, breathing heavily, and when they came closer they saw that all
visible parts of his body were covered with angry splotches.
"Get the cameras going," barked the General.
"No, do something for me," Hartley gasped, staring in horror at his
hands as if waiting for something to appear there. "All ran away, all
of them."
As they watched, the splotches on the back of each hand exploded into
running sores. While an assistant took a sample from one of the evil,
flowering things, Jonas held an anaesthetic bottle to the sinking
man's nostrils. But it had no effect and he only groaned the louder,
demanding surcease.
More sores opened up on the neck while most of the team frenziedly
attended to the Analyzer. One of them came up to the foot of the
couch where Cramer was standing with Chisholm and Jonas and whispered
to them: "Now it's a silicon _virus_ and it's inducing massive
flash-cancers!"
Phillips was too absorbed in some abstruse calculation to look toward
the couch any more. "What a breakthrough!" he suddenly exclaimed.
"We'll be able to extrapolate the interactions now!"
"Any danger of catching anything from him?" Chisholm asked, looking at
the pullulating mass.
Jonas glanced at a report tape that had been handed to him. "No, you
don't pick up carcinomas that way. And we know from Cramer's experience
today that the victim only erupts into this when a certain critical
intake has been exceeded."
There was one final gasp and Hartley lie dead, his mouth the only
remaining recognizable feature. Chisholm steeled himself to look at the
human wreckage with the objectivity of the nearby camera. "Horrible,
but it would have been worse if it hadn't happened, if we didn't have
this proof. A different kind of horror, social and slow, but even
worse. This way only a few die, not the race."
Cramer heard the General pick up a phone and ask for President Johnson,
and all about him there was the clamor of excited researchers getting
on with their jobs. But he could not turn away from the ugly spectacle
of this death quite yet, nor could he feel any exultation before
it even though he knew this outcome was the most desirable of all
available possibilities. When you had sailed across the farther deeps
with one comrade you had to remember him for whatever had been best in
him, not worst.
THE END
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