Breath Of Beelzebub By LARRY STERNIG All that had been distilled from the curious vegetation of the doomed planetoid was half an ounce, a mere timbleful of blue liquor. But it was enough to drive a universe mad. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The martian servant stopped at my desk, coughed faintly to attract my attention. I looked up and he handed me a calling card on which was printed "Slane O'Graeme." It was a limp, thumb-marked and discouraged-looking emissary. "'E wishes to see Mr. Ames," the wedge-faced servant told me. The high disdain in his tone of voice revealed more clearly than words his opinion of the visitor. I shrugged and dropped the card on my desk. "Oh, well, send him in. I'll give him the brush-off." The Martian faded away and I turned back to the 1999 capitulation figures Mr. Ames wanted. I forgot about Slane O'Graeme, whoever he was, until a timid "hello" made me look up from the reports. "You're Mr. Fleming Ames?" he asked diffidently. He was an odd-looking little guy with a head like an oversize cue-ball and a narrow fringe of fuzzy graying hair that looked like a misguided halo. He wore green-tinted contact lenses that made his eyes seem unusually large and bright. "No, I'm not Fleming Ames," I told him. "I'm Bill Dineen, Mr. Ames' confidential secretary. What can I do for you?" "Uh--Mr. Ames is president of Universal Liquors, Incorporated, isn't he?" I nodded. "I have something I'd like to show him, Mr. Dineen. It's something new. I found it on Planetoid Y-145." I stared at him almost incredulously. He didn't look like a spaceman. "You mean a kind of drink? But I didn't think any of the planetoids were inhabited. How did you--" "It isn't a drink exactly, Mr. Dineen. And Planetoid Y-145 isn't inhabited--in fact, there isn't any Planetoid Y-145 any more. A meteor hit it last week, I read in the astrogation reports. Busted it to smithereens." He reached in his pocket and held up a little transpariplast vial, which held about half an ounce of a murky blue fluid. "So this is all there is anywhere, as far as I know," he revealed. "It's the juice of a kind of lichen that grew on the planetoid. I stopped there last month looking for minerals, and I took some of the lichen along just to see what it was. I didn't know then. I distilled this on the way back and threw out the lichen, so this is all--" "--there is," I finished for him, a bit impatiently. "But what is it? And if there isn't any more, what good can it do us?"