1
Sallman Ken had never been really sure of the wisdom he had shown in acceding to Rade’s request. He was no policeman and knew it. He had no particular liking for physical danger. He had always believed, of course, that he could stand his share of discomfort, but the view he was now getting through the Karella’s port was making him doubt even that.
Rade had been fair enough, he had to admit. The narcotics chief had told him, apparently, everything he himself knew; enough so that Ken, had he used his imagination sufficiently, might even have foreseen something like this.
“There has never been much of it,” Rade had said. “We don’t even know what the peddlers call it — it’s just a ‘sniff’ to them. It’s been around for quite a few years now; we got interested when it first appeared, and then took most of our attention from it when it never seemed to amount to much.”
“But what’s so dangerous about it, then?” Ken had asked.
“Well, of course any habit-forming drug is dangerous — you could hardly be a teacher of science without knowing that. The special menace of this stuff seems to lie in the fact that it is a gas, and can therefore be administered easily without the victim’s consent; and it seems to be so potent that a single dose will insure addiction. You can see what a public danger that could be.” Ken had seen, clearly.
“I should say so. I’m surprised we haven’t all been overcome already. A generator in a building’s ventilation system — on board a ship — anything like that could make hundreds of customers for whoever has the stuff to sell. Why hasn’t it spread?” Rade had smiled for the first time.
“There seems to be two reasons for that, also. There are production difficulties, if the very vague stories we hear have anything in them; and the stuff doesn’t keep at normal temperature. It has to be held under extreme refrigeration; when exposed to normal conditions it breaks down in a few seconds. I believe that the active principle is actually one of the breakdown products, but no one had obtained a sample to prove it.”
“But where do I come in? If you don’t have any of it I can’t analyze it for you. I probably couldn’t anyway — I’m a school teacher, not a professional chemist. What else can I do?”
“It’s because you’re a teacher — a sort of jack-of-all-trades in scientific matters, without being an expert at any of them — that we think you can help us. I mentioned that there seemed to be production troubles with the drug.