Hellflower (1957)

by George O. Smith

  He went first and helped her make the curve around the railing at the top. Solicitously, he steered her to the divan and fastened the seat strap.

  Then he faced Carolyn and the rest. “Speaking of retribution,” he said slowly. “I’d like you to meet a woman I know. Miss Norma Hannon. She’s a hellflower addict. Whatever she does is basically your responsibility.” He said directly to Carolyn, “You have me fairly well pegged. I couldn’t do it But I think that Miss Hannon might enjoy a bit of an emotional binge with the people who fed her the first hellflower and caused the death of her brother.” Farradyne turned and sailed across the room to Norma’s side. He reached out quietly and removed the love lotus from Norma’s hair, then recrossed the room to hurl it into the disposal chute.

  “Just sit there quietly until the effects of that thing wear off,” he told her. “I’m going to take a tour of inspection of the gewgaw they installed in my ship. I’ll be back when they decide to answer questions.”

  Farradyne dived down the stairway again. He had no idea how long it might take, especially after Norma had been literally sleeping in a smothering roomful of the things for hours. Probably long enough for them all to get the whim-whams just thinking about it, he concluded.

  He conned every stateroom on his way down. He was reasonably certain that the ruckus would have awakened them all, but he wanted to make sure that no one in them was lying doggo until he could make his bid. They were all empty, so Farradyne went on down in the Lancaster, checking the supply rooms and the galley and workshop, the other cargo lock and the storage room. He looked into the inspection cubbies and the wiring hatches until he had covered every nook and cranny that was large enough to contain a human being.

  The ship was clean.

  He stopped once more to eye the four metal cases bolted to the floor and discovered that the gentleman who had occupied the place when he and Norma tried to hide had put nuts on the bolt ends and run the cables neatly below-deck so they no longer trailed. He went up, then, all the way.

  “Any talk?” he asked brightly as he soared through the salon.

  “Farradyne, you can’t do this!” snapped Brenner.

  “Who, me?” asked Farradyne, in mock surprise. “I’m not doing anything!”

  Norma was still sitting in her seat on the divan. She had not changed position. But her face was losing its softness and her attention was no longer diverted easily. “I’m waiting,” she told him as he passed upward to the control room.

  Somehow, Farradyne believed, it would not be very long waiting.

  20

  Farradyne paid no attention to the oddness of the sky because it could tell him nothing and he had more interesting things to inspect. The little auxiliary panel was gone. The controls had been incorporated in the main panel, neatly and as if they had always been there; in such a way as to make any but a completely critical inspection pass them over. They blended with the other myriad controls, so that only the pilot of the ship would be able to find them.

  There was a small meter, calibrated arbitrarily in three sectors of colors. The needle stood high in the middle of the blue region. Below the meter was a cross-bar toggle switch and on either side of the toggle were flat buttons set flush with the panel, blue to the right and red to the left. The wiring was concealed, Farradyne found by looking under the panel that it had been neatly inserted into the main bundle of cables and wires as though it had been installed with the Lancaster’s construction.

  He considered the installation carefully.

  In the history of warfare, Farradyne had heard of no one installing a device that would blow up a whole equipment if the operator used the wrong combination. In fact, designers worked hard to make such equipment fool-proof because they knew how rattled a man can get in the heat of battle. The worst he could do was probably the blowing of a fuse if he tampered with it. On the other hand…

  So much for that, he thought, and went on to the next matter: destruction charges.

  Big prime movers like battlecraft and stationary installations seldom fell into the hands of an enemy in any condition to be reused. Either the big stuff was shot to hell before the enemy captured it and was therefore unfunctional, or there was time for the crew to render the big stuff useless long before the installation was abandoned. There were booby-traps, of course, but these were usually improvised on the spot, or at least installed from a stock closet at the time of possible capture. No thinking nation would ever install a booby-trap permanently because of the possibility of the operator punching the wrong button.

  Self-destruction devices were another item. These came shortly after the Military discovered the electron, and at a time when there were basic new designs of equipment the function of which it had been necessary to keep secret from the enemy. Countless pieces of apparatus had been equipped with self-destruction charges heavy enough to addle the insides of the gear, and possibly bulge the case a bit. But a man could sit on one of them while the charge went off and the most he would get would be a sharp kick in the pants.

  But such destruction charges were controlled from a separate panel. There could be no mistake or error; no one could hit the wrong button. Destruction must be performed with deliberation.

  And so Farradyne eyed the new installation calmly. It might hold a self-destruction charge, but the probabilities of having the control handy enough to be used in the heat of excitement were remote, especially since such a condition would leave a ship and crew marooned in the depths of interstellar space to die because someone’s finger slipped. Farradyne was even certain that not much could happen if he tinkered with the toggle, so long as they were in deep space by some light years distant from anything large and hard.

  He took the toggle bar in his right hand and pulled. It did not pull so he pushed. It did not push. He turned the cross-bar slightly and exerted effort. The bar moved downward in a wide arc and as it moved, the seat of the chair slammed upwards against the seat of his pants, and all of a sudden up was up and down was down, and the stars were all in their right places. The toggle came to a stop and the accelerometer read one gravity. The needle on the meter still read half-way into the blue.

  Farradyne chuckled aloud. He had it now. If the traffic lights flared blue-green for “GO” and red-orange for “STOP” he had this combination as well. Start your spacecraft and punch the blue button for start. That was the beginning and the warm-up and nothing could happen until the meter read into the blue section of its scale. Then the toggle controlled the action of whatever generator of force was used, more or less as the toggle was advanced or depressed. The equipment stayed in readiness all the time. The red button was undoubtedly the cut-off button to close the gear down once the flight was completed.

  It was as simple as that. Farradyne had spent many an hour in spacemen’s bars up and down the solar system in spacemen’s happy arguments regarding the complexities of exotic equipment, so he could theorize on both sides. The pro side was a matter of insisting that electromechanical principles were universal and therefore an alien bit of gear would function in a recognizable manner. The con side considered the fruitless arguments that something new might be discovered or that the evolution of instruments from the original principles would follow the normal dexterity of the alien life-form involved. But Farradyne knew that buttons are buttons and therefore meant to be pushed, not pulled; and similarly, D’Arsonval had invented the same kind of galvanometer as Ugthrybb, on Vega, with a moving coil between the poles of a magnet, and just because one race was right-handed and the other left, the principle did not change.

  Then, being of a practical frame of mind, Farradyne forgot the subject and began to wonder about his position and what he was going to do about it. He squinted into the point-of-drive telescope and caught sight of a tiny yellow star on the cross-hairs. That must be Sol, distant, small, and far weaker than Sol as seen from Pluto. It was a true stellar point from here.

  Then he looked through the point-of-departure periscope and
automatically cut the drive so that the flare would not blind him.

  Behind was the constellation of Lyra and on the crosshairs was another star of no particular consequence. No more important than Sol. He got out the Spaceman’s Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the listings were a number of the F, G, and K classifications, and one of them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol was listed for the right position in the constellation. Farradyne grunted; it meant nothing to him. It was merely Lyra.

  The sound of a whimper cut into his thought and he remembered the possibilities of the scene in the salon. He waited. He snapped on the intercom and listened, wondering whether he could 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.

  “Charles, come down here and take this madwoman away!” cried Carolyn.

  Farradyne sauntered down the stairs. Norma stood before the bound Carolyn. Her eyes were glassy, her face cold. In one hand she held a small bottle of acid from Farradyne’s workshop, in the other a small, pointed brush. As he came down the stairs, Norma dipped the brush in the acid and approached Carolyn, holding the brush as she would a pencil.

  Farradyne held her hand. “Wait!” he said.

  Norma looked at him with a trace of anger in her eyes. “Don’t stop me,” she said. “I’m going to write ‘Hellflower’ across that alabaster forehead—among other words.”

  Farradyne shuddered. His imagination had stopped working at the point of removing fingernails and applying lighted cigarettes to the skin. Now it leaped forward again and he could see the outcome of this assault upon the woman’s pride and beauty. A formerly flawless skin covered with scar-tissue lettering of accusals, viciousness and probably lewdness.

  “Take her away!” said Carolyn. “There is no point in this.”

  “Why not? Or are you ready to talk?”

  “I’ll talk. I’ll talk because you will never get a chance to use it.”

  “You talk and I’ll take my chances on that. Give me the works.”

  Norma struggled a bit. “Please, Farradyne?”

  “Maybe later,” he said soothingly. “Sit down now, and wait.”

  Angrily, Norma turned and headed for the divan. He turned to Carolyn. “What the hell is going on and why?”

  “This is war,” she said.

  “Like hell it’s war. This is backstabbing. But it’ll be war as soon as we can fight back.”

  “It is war,” she repeated. “Let it go at that. The process should not be unfamiliar to you; you’ve done it yourselves time and again. First you weaken the enemy by undermining his resources, lowering his resistance, by turning his efforts toward advancement against some stumbling block. Then—”

  “I presume that doping the women of a race is a right and honorable practice?” sneered Farradyne.

  “It is better than dropping a mercurite bomb. Face the fact, Charles. We got to interstellar space first and met another people as racially jealous as we are. We could have made a landing openly, but if we had, the warfare you are threatening would have been here and done with 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.”

  “You can say this knowing that no Solan has the barest notion of how this doodad in the hold can permit us to travel faster than light?”

  Carolyn looked at him with pity. “I’ll tell you what would happen,” she said. “You’d greet us with cheers and invite us in—long enough to steal our warp-generator. You’d trade us your medical science for our chemistry and your electronics for our gravities, and then you’d meet us face to face to prove to yourselves that even though you got a second-place start, you could move faster and hit harder than we could. You’d carry your war to us, and we’d carry our war to you, and there would be cause and effect and attack and retaliation with each blow a bit more vicious until your people would be planting mercurite at the same time we were. And then, as I say, the next interstellar race to visit this section of the sky would find the radioactive remains of two cultures. I know because our people come of the same stock.”

  He looked at her cynically. “Is that so? Where I come from it takes three people to sing a trio, Carolyn. How do you explain that?”

  “That’s a recessive mutation.”

  “All right,” he snapped. “So you’ve justified your own actions to yourself.”

  “Of course. Everybody is self-justified.”

  “And you justify the doping of our race by calling it better than meeting us face to face.”

  “Remember your own history. Even before the First Atomic War everybody realized that warfare was a bankrupt measure to be undertaken after all else had failed. You conducted your conflicts undercover, by boring from within, by undermining the moral fiber and lowering resistance. So, when your people have lost the ability to fight back, we’ll move in quietly and make an asset of you instead of a vicious enemy; ultimately a ruined structure that must be rebuilt completely before it is of any use to us.”

  “Got it all figured out, haven’t you?” sneered Farradyne. “All except a few of us who happen to catch on. Then what —if we don’t exactly cotton to the idea?”

  There was a yelp from behind him and he turned just in time to intercept Norma. She was advancing on Brenner with her acid-brush poised. “Don’t, Norma,” he said gently, turning her aside.

  “But you said—”

  “Later.” He gave her a gentle shove toward the side of the room and she went reluctantly. “Brenner,” he said sharply, “I want information.”

  “Ask,” replied Brenner. “What can we lose?”

  “Navigational data,” said Farradyne, ignoring the question. “Where are we and how fast does that gizmo run us?”

  “I’d guess about six light years out from Sol. The warp generator permits a top speed of about two light years per hour in Terran figures. So go ahead and drive this can somewhere so we can get this fool rigmarole over with. But take the dame aloft with you. I don’t want my face lettered like a washroom wall.”

  “Somehow it seems appropriate,” chuckled Farradyne, but he took Norma by the hand and led her up the stairs. She followed like an automaton until they were out of sight, and then she came alive.

  Visibly she relaxed. The granite set to her face faded and became soft. Her lips curved gently and her eyes were animated. She walked briskly across the control room, and turned down the outgoing gain before she turned to face Farradyne.

  “Charles, that was the hardest acting job I’ve ever done.”

  She snapped her acid bottle into one of the spring-containers so that it wouldn’t float all over the place under weightlessness and then she went to the co-pilot’s seat and dropped into it casually. She relaxed with her head leaned back.

  “How long after a sniff of hellflower does the effect last?” asked Farradyne.

  “Depends. I could feel the euphoria fading shortly after you took mine out of my hair. The odd part of it was that it seemed different, somehow. I feel so odd. Dizzy and weak and somehow frightened. I’d like to be held, gently, and caressed like a kitten.” She sat up and half turned to look over the back of the co-pilot’s seat. “This is honest, Charles. I know, I can feel it; it’s true and it’s good, Charles. Oh, yes,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice, “I remember everything. This isn’t an act, Charles. This is the real thing. I’ve seemed to regain my feelings again. Actually, I can almost feel sorry for them, you know?” Her voice ended on an upward note.

  Farradyne looked at her. Bemused, he said, “Could it be the hair of the dog?”

  “Hair of the dog?” she repeated automatically.

  “The one that bit you,” he said. “You were in an awful overload dose, Norma; maybe the overload burned the dross out, like fire cleansing a wound. Maybe—”

  Norma blushed. “You were very gentle.” she
said.

  He realized what she meant. He recalled the stories he had heard of sophisticates who took their hellflowers to heighten the emotional thrill of a symphony or a dinner; of men who had enough love for their women to let them plumb the depths of emotion without using the exhilarant as the cold means to a crude end. He had been with her through her emotional binge and he bad seen her through it quietly. The fact that he had not wanted her, in fact repulsed her, had helped. She had not been burned by piling passion a-top a heightened emotional response.

  He looked into her eyes critically. They were alive and soft. Could it be that an overdose of the same devilish stuff could cure the effects of its own?

  “How do you feel?” he asked gently.

  “Weak, washed out, but I can go on and on,” she said confidently. She didn’t look it, but maybe she could, be thought. Excitement would carry a person through a lot of trials. He looked at her again and understood that he was right. She would go on and on, until the strain was over and then she would probably come completely unglued for some time.

  Farradyne put out a hand and stroked her check. She sighed against his hand and moved her head from side to side. She reached up and pulled his face down to kiss him on the lips. It was brief but warmly satisfying.

  She laid back in the co-pilot’s seat, relaxed. “It’s all there again,” she said dreamily. “That same fast pulse and the tingle —and the rather interesting feeling of danger. I’m a woman again, Charles: just a very little bit concerned about being marooned in a spacecraft with you. Let’s get back home where I can enjoy my feelings. Please?”

  Farradyne gave her hand a squeeze. “Done!” he glowed. Silently he wondered whether she were really cured. He looked at her, at the glow in her eyes and at the blush on her face, and he hoped so.

  He slipped over the back of the pilot’s seat and pushed down hard on the toggle bar. The weightlessness came, and the compressed springs of their seats tossed them up against the restraining straps. From below there came a moan, but beside him, Norma relaxed in full confidence and watched him work the controls with interest.