Afterword.

If you expect me to apologize for this, you little know your man. I consider a play on words the noblest form of wit, so there!

Foreword.

This is a James Bond type of story, written before I had ever heard of James Bond. Actually, those who know my writing know that I never introduce naughty motifs into my stories. You can tell that from the other stories in this volume. However, an editor- I won't mention his name-once told me he suspected that I never had love scenes in my stories because I was incapable of writing them. Naturally I repudiated that suggestion with the scorn and contumely it deserved and said with heat that it was merely my natural purity and wholesomeness that kept me from doing so. Since the expression on his lace was one of obvious disbelief, I said, 'I'll show you. I'll write a science-fiction love story, but not for publication.' But it turned out also to be a mystery, and I was so pleased with it I let it be published. Anyway, it shows I can do it if I want to. It's just that I don't want to, ordinarily.

I'm in Marsport without Hilda.

It worked itself out, to begin with, like a dream. I didn't have to make any arrangements. I didn't have to touch it. I just watched things work out. Maybe right then's when I should have smelled catastrophe.

It began with my usual month's layoff between assignments. A month on and a month off is the right and proper routine for the Galactic Service. I reached Marsport for the usual three-day layover before the short hop to Earth.

Ordinarily, Hilda, God bless her, as sweet a wife as any man ever had, would be there waiting for me and we'd have a nice sedate time of it-a nice little interlude for the two of us. The only trouble with that is that Marsport is the rowdiest hellhole in the system, and a nice little interlude isn't exactly what fits in. Only, how do I explain that to Hilda, hey?

Well, this time my mother-in-law-God bless her, for a change-got sick just two days before I reached Marsport; and the night before landing, I got a spacegram from Hilda saying she would stay on Earth with her mother and wouldn't meet me this one time.

I grammed back my loving regrets and my feverish anxiety concerning her mother; and when I landed, there I was: I was in Marsport without Hilda! That was still nothing, you understand. It was the frame of the picture, the bones of the woman. Now there was the matter of the lines and coloring inside the frame; the skin and flesh outside the bones.

So I called up Flora-Flora of certain rare episodes in the past-and for the purpose I used a video booth. Damn the expense, full speed ahead.

I was giving myself ten to one odds she'd be out, she'd be busy with her videophone disconnected, she'd be dead, even.

But she was in, with her videophone connected and shewas anything but dead.

She looked better than ever. Age cannot wither nor custom stale, as somebody or other once said, her infinite variety. And the robe she wore-or, rather, almost didn't wear-helped a lot.

Was she glad to see me? She squealed, 'Max! It's been years.'

'I know, Flora, but this is it, if you're available. Because guess what! I'm in Marsport without Hilda.'

She squealed again. 'Isn't that nice! Then come on over.'

I goggled a bit. This was too much. 'You mean you are available?' You have to understand that Flora was never available without plenty of notice. Well, she was that kind of knockout.

She said, 'Oh, I've got some quibbling little arrangement Max, but I'll take care of that. You come on over.'

'I'll come,' I said happily.

Flora was the kind of girl--Well, I tell you, she had her rooms under Martian gravity, 0-4 Earth-normal. The gadget to free her of Marsport's pseudo-grav field was expensive, of course, but I'll tell you just in passing that it was worth it, and she had no trouble paying it off. If you've ever held a girl in your arms at 0-4 gees, you need no explanation. If you haven't, explanations will do no good. I'm also sorry for you.

Talk about floating on clouds...

And mind you, the girl has to know how to handle low gravity. Flora did. I won't talk about myself, you understand, but Flora didn't howl for me to come over and start breaking previous engagements just because she was at loose ends. Her ends were never loose.

I closed connections, and only the prospect of seeing it all in the flesh-such flesh !-could have made me wipe out the image with such alacrity. I stepped out of the booth.

And at that point, that precise point, that very split instant of time, the first whiff of catastrophe nudged itself up to me.

That first whiff was the bald head of that lousy Rog Crinton of the Mars offices, gleaming over a headful of pale blue eyes, pale yellow complexion, and pale brown mustache. He was the same Rog Crinton, with some Slavic strain in his ancestry, that half the people out on field work thought had a middle name that went sunnuvabich.

I didn't bother getting on all fours and beating my forehead against the ground because my vacation had started the minute I had gotten off the ship.

I said with only normal politeness, 'What the hell do you want and I'm in a hurry. I've got an appointment.'

He said, 'You've got an appointment with me. I've got a little job for you.'

I laughed and told him in all necessary anatomical detail where he could put the little job, and offered to get him a mallet to help. I said, 'It's my month off, friend.'

He said, 'Red emergency alert, friend.'

Which meant, no vacation, just like that. I couldn't believe it. I said, 'Nuts, Rog. Have a heart. I got an emergency alert of my own.'

'Nothing like this.'

'Rog,' I pleaded, 'can't you get someone else? Anyone else?'

'You're the only Class A agent on Mars.'

'Send to Earth, then. They stack agents like micropile units at Headquarters.'

This has got to be done before 11 p.m. What's the matter ? You haven't got three hours ?'

I grabbed my head. The boy just didn't know. I said. 'Let me make a call, will you?'

I stepped back in the booth, glared at him, and said, 'Private!'

Flora shone on the screen again, like a mirage on an asteroid. She said, 'Something wrong, Max ? Don't say something's wrong. I canceled my other engagement.'

I said, 'Flora, baby, I'll be there. I'll be there. But something's come up.' .

She asked the natural question in a hurt tone of voice and I said, 'No. Not another girl. With you in the same town they don't make any other girls. Females, maybe. Not girls. Baby! Honey! It's business. Just hold on. It won't take long.'

She said, 'All right,' but she said it kind of like it was just enough not all right so that I got the shivers.

I stepped out of the booth and said, 'All right, Rog Sunnuvabich, what kind of mess have you cooked up for me?'

We went into the spaceport bar and got us an insulated booth. He said, 'The An tores Giant is coming in from Sirius in exactly half an hour, at 8 p.m. local time.'

'Okay.'

'Three men will get out, among others, and will wait for the Space Eater coming in from Earth at 11 p.m. and leaving for Capella some time thereafter. The three men will get on the Space Eater and will then be out of our jurisdiction.'

'So.'

'So between eight and eleven, they will be in a special waiting room and you will be with them. I have a trimensional image of each for you so you'll know who they are and which is which. You have between eight and eleven to decide which one is carrying contraband.'

'What kind of contraband?'

The worst kind. Altered Spaceoline.'

'Altered Spaceoline?'

He had thrown me. I knew what Spaceoline was. If you've been on a space hop you know too. And in case you're Earthbound yourself the bare fact is that everyone needs it on the first space trip; almost everybody needs it for the first dozen trips; lots need it every trip. Without it, there is vertigo associated with free fall, screaming terrors, semipermanent psychoses. With it, there is nothing; you don't mind a thing. And it isn't habit-forming; it has no adverse side effects. Spaceoline is ideal, essential, unsubstitutable. When in doubt, take Spaceoline.

Rog said, That's right, altered Spaceoline. It can be changed chemically, by a simple reaction that can be conducted in anyone's basement, into a drug that will give one giant-size charge and become your baby-blue habit the first time. It is on a par with the most dangerous alkaloids we know.'

'And we just found out about it?'

'No. The Service has known about it for years, and we've kept others from knowing by squashing every discovery flat. Now, however, the discovery has gone too far.'

'In what way?'

'One of the men who will be stopping over at this spaceport is carrying some of the altered Spaceoline on his person. Chemists in the Capellan system, which is outside the Federation, will analyze it and set up ways of synthesizing more. After that, it's either fight the worst drug menace we've ever seen or suppress the matter by suppressing the source.'

'You mean Spaceoline.'

'Right. And if we suppress Spaceoline, we suppress space travel.'

I decided to put my finger on the point. 'Which one of the three has it?'

Rog smiled nastily. 'If we knew, would we need you? You're to find out which of the three.'

'You're calling on me for a lousy frisk job?'

Touch the wrong one at the risk of a haircut down to the larynx. Every one of the three is a big man on his own planet. One is Edward Harponaster; one is Joaquin Lipsky; and one is Andiamo Ferrucci. Well ?'

He was right. I'd heard of every one of them. Chances are you have too. Important, very important people, and not one was touchable without proof in advance. I said, 'Would one of them touch a dirty deal like--'

There are trillions involved,' said Rog, 'which means any one of the three would. And one of them has, because Jack Hawk got that far before he was killed--'

'Jack Hawk's dead?' 'Right, and one of those guys arranged the killing. Now you find out which. You put the finger on the right one before eleven and there's a promotion, a raise in pay, a payback for poor Jack Hawk, and a rescue of the Galaxy. You put the finger on the wrong one and there'll be a nasty interstellar situation and you'll be out on your ear and also on every blacklist from here to Antares and back.'

I said, 'Suppose I don't finger anybody?'

That would be like fingering the wrong one as far as the Service is concerned.'

'I've got to finger someone, but only the right one, or my head's handed to me?'

'In thin slices. You're beginning to understand me, Max.'

In a long lifetime of looking ugly, Rog Crinton had never looked uglier. The only comfort I got out of staring at him was the realization that he was married too, and that he lived with his wife at Marsport all year round. And does he deserve that! Maybe I'm hard on him, but he deserves it.

I put in a quick call to Flora, as soon as Rog was out of sight.

She said, 'Well?' The magnetic seams on her robe were opened just right and her voice sounded as thrillingly soft as she looked.

I said, 'Baby, honey, it's something I can't talk about, but I've got to do it, see ? Now you hang on, I'll get it over with if I have to swim the Grand Canal to the icecap in my underwear, see ? If I have to claw Phobos out of the sky. If I have to cut myself in pieces and mail myself parcel post.'

'Gee,' she said, 'if I thought I was going to have to wait...'

I winced. She just wasn't the type to respond to poetry. Actually, she was a simple creature of action ... but after all, if I were going to be drifting through low gravity in a sea of jasmine perfume with Flora, poetry response is not the type of qualification I would consider most indispensable.

I said urgently, 'Just hold on, Flora. I won't be any time at all. I'll make it up to you.'

I was annoyed, sure, but I wasn't worried as yet. Rog hadn't more than left me when I figured out exactly how I was going to tell the guilty man from the others.

It was easy. I should have called Rog back and told him, but there's no law against wanting egg in your beer and oxygen in your air. It would take me five minutes and then off I would go to Flora; a little late, maybe, but with a promotion, a raise, and a slobbering kiss from the Service on each cheek.

You see, it's like this. Big industrialists don't go space hopping much; they use transvideo reception. When they do go to some ultra-high interstellar conference, as these three were probably going, they took Spaceoline. For one thing, they didn't have enough hops under their belt to risk doing without. For another, Spaceoline was the expensive way of doing it and industrialists did things the expensive way. I know their psychology.

Now that would hold for two of them. The one who carried contraband, however, couldn't risk Spaceoline-even at the price of risking space sickness. Under Spaceoline influence, he could throw the drug away, or give it away, or talk gibberish about it. He would have to stay in control of himself.

It was as simple as that.

The Antares Giant was on time. They brought in Lipsky first. He had thick, ruddy lips, rounded jowls, very dark eyebrows, and hair just beginning to show gray. He just looked at me and sat down. Nothing. He was under Spaceoline.

I said, 'Good evening, sir.'

He said, in a dreamy voice. 'Surrealismus of Panamy hearts in three-quarter time for a cup of coffeedom of speech.'

That was Spaceoline all the way. The buttons in the human mind were set free-swinging. Each syllable suggests the next in free association.

Andiamo Ferrucci came in next. Black mustache, long and waxed, olive complexion, pock-marked face. He sat down.

I said, 'Nice trip ?'

He said, Trip the light fantastic lock the clock is Growings on the bird.'

Lipsky said, 'Bird to the wise guyed book to all places everybody.'

I grinned. That left Harponaster. I had my needle gun neatly palmed and out of sight and the magnetic coil ready to grip him.

An then Harponaster came in. He was thin, leathery, and, though near-bald, considerably younger than he seemed in his trimensional image. And he was Spaceolined to the gills.

I said, 'Damn!'

Harponaster said, 'Damyankee note speech to his last time I saw wood you say so.'

Ferrucci said, 'Sow the seed the territory under dispute do well to come-along long road tonightingale.'