He said bitterly, "You're the addict now and I'm cured." She stopped smiling and said quietly, "Jim, listen to me. You're wrong, completely wrong. I didn't give you the antidote, and you didn't give me the drug." "I put it in your wineglass myself." She shook her head. "That was a tablet I substituted for yours. It's an anti-virus dose from our medicine chest. You took one of the same things. That's why you feel so depressed. You're not under the influence of the drug any more." He took a deep breath. "But I'm not cured?" "No. I knew that I wouldn't be able to slip you the antidote. The taste is too strong. Later you'll be able to start taking the drug again. That is, if you want to, after experiencing for a time what it is to be normal. But not now. You have to keep your head clear. You have to think of something to save us." "But there's nothing to think of!" he shouted angrily. "I told you that the drug doesn't affect the intelligence!" "I still don't believe you. If you'd only exert yourself, use your mind--" He said savagely, "I'm not going to bother. Give me those marak tablets." She backed away from him. "I thought you might want them. I took no chances. I threw them out." "Out there?" A horrified and incredulous look was on his face. "You mean that I'm stuck here without them? Louise, you fool, there's no help for us! The other way, at least, we'd have died happy. But now--" He stared out the window. The shadows were there in full force. Not one now, but two, three--he counted half a dozen. It was almost as if they knew that the end had come. They had reason to be happy, he thought with despair. And perhaps-- he shrank back from the thought, but it forced itself into his mind--perhaps, now that all happiness had gone, and wretchedness had taken its place, he might as well end everything. There would be no days to spend torturing himself in anticipation of a horrible death. Louise exclaimed suddenly, "Jim, _look_! They're _frolicking_!" He looked. The beasts certainly were gay. One of them leaped from the airless surface of the asteroid and sailed over its fellow. He had never seen them do that before. Usually they clung to the rocky surface. Another was spinning around oddly, as if it had lost its sense of balance. Louise said, "_They've_ swallowed the tablets! Over a hundred doses--enough to drug every beast on the asteroid!" For a moment Palmer stared at the gamboling alien drug addicts. Then he put on his spacesuit and took his gun, and, without the slightest danger to himself, went out and shot them one by one. He noted, with a kind of grim envy, that they died happy. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Addicts, by William Morrison