"I can guess."
"Each of these is a good, heavy jolt; about all that a strong man with a strong heart can stand. Sit down. Here is one dose. Pull the cover, stick the capsule up one nostril, squeeze the ejector, and sniff. If you can leave this other dose sitting here on the desk you will live, and thus pass the test. If you can't, you die."
Samms sat, and pulled, and squeezed, and sniffed.
His forearms hit the desk with a thud. His hands clenched themselves into fists, the tight-stretched tendons standing boldly out. His face turned white. His eyes jammed themselves shut; his jaw-muscles sprang into bands and lumps as they clamped his teeth hard together. Every voluntary muscle in his body went into a rigor as extreme as that of death itself. His heart pounded; his breathing became stertorous.
This was the dreadful "muscle-lock" so uniquely characteristic of thionite; the frenzied immobility of the ultimately passionate satisfaction of every desire.
The Galactic Patrol became for him an actuality; a force for good pervading all the worlds of all the galaxies of all the universes of all existing space-time continual. He knew what the Lens was, and why. He understood time and space. He knew the absolute beginning and the ultimate end.
He also saw things and did things over which it is best to draw a kindly veil, for every desire—mental or physical, open or sternly suppressed, noble or base—that Virgil Samms had ever had was being completely satisfied. EVERY DESIRE.
As Samms sat there, straining motionlessly upon the verge of death through sheer ecstasy, a door opened and Senator Morgan entered the room. Herkimer started, almost imperceptibly, as he turned—had there been, or not, an instantaneously-suppressed flash of guilt in those now completely clear and frank brown eyes?
"Hi, Chief; come in and sit down. Glad to see you—this is not exactly my idea of fun."
"No? When did you stop being a sadist?" The senator sat down beside his minion's desk, the fingertips of his left hand began soundlessly to drum. "You wouldn't have, by any chance, been considering the idea of...?" He paused significantly.