George O. Smith

“ Farradyne waved a hand sidewise and it shut her up. "Stop making like a fishwife and think! You have a good mind—for God's sake, use it!"
She looked at him calculatingly. "Just what do you expect me to assume?"
"Let's assume that I'm what I said I was," he said. "And let's assume we're fighting an undeclared war against a powerful enemy. An enemy that is running down the moral fiber of our race so they can walk in and take over without an open battle. Does that make sense?"
Norma considered it a moment. "Of course. Nobody wins a shooting-war. But which side are you on, Farradyne?" ”

“ Farradyne's nerves leaped. He knew his spacemen. A louse they could ignore, but a dope runner—
Their faces changed from deliberate dis-recognition of him to cold and calculated hatred, not so much of Farradyne as of what he represented in their minds. Farradyne knew that he had better get out of here quickly or he would leave most of his skin on the floor.
Something touched him on the shoulder, hard. He snapped his head around. The bartender had rapped him on the shoulder with the muzzle of a double-barrelled shotgun. ”

“ Farradyne looked at Carolyn with a cynical smile. "We demand unconditional surrender," he said bitterly. "Then we move in and number off your people. With a careful tally of our own losses, we choose a similar number from a fish-bowl. So many men to be cold-bloodedly murdered. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives left without husbands, and so many husbands left without wives. Children to such-and-such a number left homeless, and a certain quantity made to stand in the street so that automobiles can run them down." ”

“ Farradyne's voice rose to an angry pitch. "The mold grows on your hide and under your nails and in your hair and you forget what it's like to be clean and you lose hope and ambition because you're kicked off the bottom of the ladder, but you still dream of someday being able to show the whole damned solar system that you're not the louse they made you. ”

“ He said softly, "Who did it, Norma?"
Her eyes changed. "I loved him," she breathed in a voice that was both soft and heavy with another kind of anger than the violence she had shown just a moment before. This was the resentment against the past, while her previous flare of anger had been against the physical present. "I loved him," she repeated. "I loved the flat-brained animal, enough to lead him into the bedroom if that's what he wanted. ”

“ He waved a hand at the registry clerk and went out into the dark of the spaceport.
Rimming the edge of the field were three distant globs of neon, all indicating bars. One was as good as the next, so Farradyne headed towards the nearest. He entered it with the air of a man who had every right to land his ship anywhere he pleased and then hit the nearest bar. He waggled a finger at the barkeep, called for White Star Trail, and dropped a ten-spot on the bar with an air that indicated that he might be there long enough for a second. ”

“ Ping! Ping! Ping!
Farradyne looked above and saw the sky-trails of jet bombers, making ghostly patterns in the night sky. There came another flash of the searchbeam against the antenna. Ping! Get through, wherever you are!
Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook the big ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water oozed through the sealing of the astrodome. ”

“ It was the girl in the over-tired cocktail dress. Her glazed eyes were wide and glittering, her face hard and thin-lipped.
"You're Charles Farradyne?" she asked in a flat voice. Beneath a tone of distrust and hatred the voice had what might have been a pleasant throatiness if it had not been strained. ”

“ All he could grasp of it was that the gadget the alien race had must be some sort of force-field generator that worked independently of the basic reaction motor and therefore could be turned off or on at will. He gave up trying to theorize and began to consider the more personal problem of his location and what he could do.
He cracked the scuttlebutt and found that the ship was a-planet. He listened and heard nothing, not even the familiar sounds of a ship in warm-up. He cracked the hatch of his cubby and looked out. The small corridor was as dark as the grave, and as silent. ”

“ He snapped on the intercom and listened, wondering whether he could actually sit there and let Norma go to work on Carolyn. Man's inhumanity to man was a pale and insignificant affair compared to the animal ferocity of a woman about to settle up a long-standing account with another woman.
His curiosity got the better of him. He sauntered down the stairs. Norma stood before the bound Carolyn, her eyes glassy and her face impersonal. In one hand she held a small bottle of acid from Farradyne's workshop and in the other hand she held a little pointed glass-bristle brush. ”

“ But listen, Farradyne. In the past twelve years we have carefully besmirched the names and reputations of six men, hoping that they could get on the inside. For our pains we have lost all six of them one way or another. The enemy seems to have a good espionage system. Our men roam up and down the solar system making like big time operators and get nowhere. The love-lotus operators seem to be able to tell a phony louse when they see one. ”

“ Farradyne nodded. "I see. And there is no cure?"
"Some doctors believe that a long period of peace and quiet under conditions where only the mildest of stimuli are available may bring the addict back. I am of the opinion that such a place does not exist. They fasten onto hate as an emotion that cuts through their burned-out emotions and if you should place them among completely bland surroundings they would find it possible to hate those that incarcerated them. It becomes almost paranoiac; anything you do is wrong." ”

“ Farradyne sounded bitter once more, "they suspended me and took away my license. They wouldn't even let me near a spacer; maybe they thought I might steal one, forgetting that there's no place to hide. Maybe they thought I'd steal Mars, too. So if I want a drink they ask me if it's true that jungle juice gives a man hallucinations. If I light a cigarette I'm asked if it is real laughing grass. If I ask for a job they want to know how hard I'll work for my liquor. ”

“ An upsurge of pressure told Farradyne that the enemy pilot had started to take off from the lake bottom. Flashes of bursting explosive winked at the ports; then the blasts came less shockingly loud as the Lancaster hiked into the open air.
Farradyne fought himself awake. "Let him escape and we—"
Carolyn's shrill laugh drowned his weak voice.
The radio went on, as accursedly unanswerable as always:
"Farradyne's spacecraft has been trapped and fired upon, and now has been flushed from cover. The criminal is hoping to flee through the most thorough sky-cover that has ever been assembled. ”

“ Norma Hannon was at that stage in the addiction where bloody murderous butchery would thrill her about to the same degree as a normal woman being kissed good-night at her front door. "I've got it now," she said and her voice rang out through the barroom. "The only kind of a rascal that could dump a spacer and kill thirty-three people and then turn up with another spacer is a big-time operator. You louse!" she screamed at him. Then she turned to the rest of the room, calling:
"Fellows, meet Charles Farradyne, the big-time hellflower operator!" ”

“ One moment we have a well-bred young woman with ideals and ambition and feelings and the next moment—"
"It is a rather quick thing," said Lawson. "The love lotus is vicious and swift. I've studied early cases. They all seem to have the same pattern. And oddly enough, love lotus is not an addictive drug in every case. It is not only an aphrodisiac; it also heightens the physical senses so that a good drink tastes better and a good play becomes superb. The touch of a man's hand becomes a magnificent thrill. And here is the point where addiction begins, Mr. Farradyne. ”

“ Y'know, if you doped up enough women with hellflowers, the birth-rate would take a decline that would alarm a concrete statue."
"That's a hard thing to think about," nodded Clevis.
"Of course, I've never seen a woman just after she has taken her first sniff, so I don't know how long after it a woman's libido is still capable of being excited. But by the time they get to Norma's state, a love lotus only changes their scar-tissued emotional system to something barely normal whose only desire is to sniff the flower." Farradyne shook his head angrily. ”

“ As she left again, Farradyne turned to Cahill and asked, "How can a man tell a love lotus from a gardenia?"
"That takes experience. You'll learn."
"The thing that stops me," said Farradyne, "is that the Sandmen have been trying to stamp out the things for about forty years and they can't even tell where they come from."
"They'll never find out," said Cahill. "Maybe you won't either."
"But I—"
"Better you shouldn't. Just enjoy living off the edges. It's safer that way." ”

“ There's enough money in the strong-locker to keep you going for a long time on no pickups at all, and you'll get regular payment for the Pluto run. Just remember, no shenanigans."
"No games," promised Farradyne.
Clevis stood up. "I hope you mean that," he said earnestly. "If nothing else, remember that your—er—misfortune on Venus four years ago may have put you in a position to be a benefactor to the same mankind you hate. I hope you'll find that they are as quick to applaud a hero as to condemn a louse. ”

“ He knew the breed—spacemen, a strange mixture of high intelligence and hard roughness. Farradyne knew that to a man they understood that the most damaging thing they could do was to deny him the physical satisfaction of a fight. ”

“ Hello; this is John Bundy. Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar, and radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the Northwoods for the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to the point of Farradyne's operations, according to the information given us by the arrested truck driver. ”

“ As a character of questionable background, your attitude must be that of a man caught in a bad show and forced to undergo visible suffering long enough for the public to forget, before you can resume your role of professional louse. Got this straight?"
Farradyne looked at Clevis; gaunt has-been looking at success. The window was dark now, but there were no stars visible from the surface of Venus; only Terra and Jupiter and Sirius and Vega and a couple of others that haloed through the haze. The call of the free blackness of space pulled at Farradyne. ”

“ Then instead of getting a chance, a man comes to you and offers you a job because he needs a professional bastard with a bad record—and its damned small consolation, but I'll take it just to show you and everybody else that I'm not the hot-rock that I've been called."
Farradyne sniffed at the glass and then threw it into the dirty sink with a derisive gesture. "I'll ask for a lot of things," he said, quietly now. "The first thing is for enough money to buy White Star Trail instead of this rotgut." ”

“ Then—"
"I presume that doping the women of a race with hellflowers is an honorable practise?" sneered Farradyne.
"It is better than dropping a mercurite bomb. We got to interstellar space first and met another people as racially jealous as we are: your people. We could have made a landing openly, but if we had, the warfare you're threatening would have happened long ago. And there would be nothing left of either of our people but smouldering planets to mark the meeting-place of two stellar peoples." ”

“ Farradyne squeezed her hand gently and said, "Relax, Norma. It's all over."
"You're sure?"
"As sure as any man can be. There's been a batch of meetings and conferences, and lots and lots of gold braid and striped trousers. I got strictly left behind when the top-level boys moved in. So now all you have to do is get well."
Her eyes were large and hurt-animal luminous. "I know. It's not the excitement. It's the cure. I had to hang on to my nervous system too long after being freed, they tell me. It's left me washed-out—but I'll be all right, Charles." ”

“ And if you cut a dido and get pinned for it, there you'll be with a forged license and a spacer that will have some very odd-looking registration papers so far as the Master Log runs. And no one is going to admit that they know you. Certainly the SAND office won't. And furthermore if you do claim any connection at any time for any reason whatsoever, we'll haul you in for attempting to impersonate one of us. You're a decoy, a sitting duck with both feet in the mud, Farradyne, and no damned good to anybody until you get mired deeper in the same stinking mud. ”

“ One button to start the equipment for warm-up period; the toggle to control its functioning; and the other button to cut the gear off when the flight was concluded. It was as simple as that, and although Farradyne had sat in many a spaceman's bar and heard arguments as to the possibilities of exotic operation of alien equipment, he knew that mechanical and electrical principles are universal and that their exploitation would most likely lead toward universal simplification. ”

“ Hughes was a very remarkable fellow.
Farradyne watched the truck bringing out his shipment of refined thorium ore, with a sneer directed at himself. Outpointed and outsmarted—the evidence he had was very meager. Evidence? It was more of a belief than evidence.
What did he have to fit together? A common pattern of love-lotus background. A man who died with a discordant moan. A man who grunted in a polytonal when surprised by a woman, and who could take a paralyzing dose of marcoleptine and then walk out jauntily. ”

“ If Cahill admitted to hellblossom running, it was for a purpose, too, Niles."
"Please. Mister Niles. I'm a bit your senior, Farradyne."
"All right. Mr. Niles. I've learned one thing so far: I can tell a love lotus operator from the rest of the system."
"How?" They all leaned forward eagerly.
"Because it is the real operators that take an amused view of my alleged machinations. They know the facts."
"Very sage. You are a bit brighter than you appeared a moment ago."
"May I ask why you let me cool my heels for almost a month before you hauled me in?" He looked at Carolyn with a wry smile. ”

“ Nothing like fresh vegetables."
Farradyne nodded. "No matter how well we convert the planets to Terra-condition, nothing grows like on earth."
"Ever enjoy lying on your back in the sun in a field of flowers with nothing to do but get sunburned?"
"Not for a long time."
"Funny how a guy gets out of his kid-habits," mused Cahill. "And even funnier how he wants to go and do it all over again, but it's never quite the same."
"Yeah."
"Farradyne, you're not sold-up on this next jaunt to Terra, are you?"
"Just one passenger going to Denver."
"Mind if I buy a stateroom?" ”

“ Farradyne took the Lancaster up and set the course to Terra. As soon as he could spare time to think of anything but handling the ship, he began to wonder about Norma and Mike Cahill. She had not been visible when they arrived, but no doubt by now she had made her presence known. It bothered him a bit because he was as certain as a man can be that Cahill was a hellflower operator, and he did not want the man to get cold feet because Farradyne was connected with an addict, if even for a short hop. ”

“ Indications are that Hughes or Morgan (also known occasionally as Carl Brenner) has turned state's evidence and is willing to inform on his racket-boss Farradyne."
"Hah!" said Carolyn nastily.
"Did you a lot of good, didn't it, Farradyne?" snarled Morgan.
Farradyne ignored Morgan and spoke to Carolyn. "Unless Norma is being tended by someone of your gang, this is the end, baby."
She eyed him superciliously. "How long will they believe her after they discover she's a love-lotus addict herself?"
"She isn't. She's cured, remember?"
Carolyn laughed. "Everybody knows there is no cure." ”

“ Any change in the last hundred years has been for taller buildings, more people, and a higher general velocity of humanity."
"But—"
"I know, the way I put it sounds a bit harsh. But anybody can find anything they want somewhere in New York if he has the money to buy it."
She smiled calmly. "I'll show you that Cinnabar is not an inhospitable place," she said. "You may take me to dinner if you wish."
"I wish," he chuckled. "And since we haven't a mutual friend to introduce us, I'm Charles Farradyne."
"How do you do?" she said solemnly, putting a lithe hand in his. "I'm Carolyn Niles." ”

“ They blamed it on Hot-Rock Farradyne, the spur-wearing spaceman." His voice came back, and he was half-roaring. "I've seen the results of love lotus! A wrecked personality that might have been a brilliant and gracious woman. I've seen a man plugged through the middle, to die at my feet. And on top of that, I've seen a family prosper and calmly make its place in society by dealing in the stinking things that bring ruin and death! ”

“ Then she turned from the panel and faced Farradyne with the beginning of a soft smile on her face.
"That was the hardest job I've ever had," she breathed.
Visibly, she relaxed. An aliveness came around her eyes and her mouth spread into a brief smile. She snapped her bottle of acid into one of the many spring-holds in the control room. Then she walked over to the co-pilot's seat and dropped into it. She rested, with her head tilted back.
Farradyne watched with puzzlement. "Norma," he asked, "how long after a sniff of love lotus does the effect last?"
"Seldom more than an hour. ”