The happiness rock
Date: 2023-12-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Asteroids -- Fiction; Drugs -- Fiction

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

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."

"... 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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