The Addicts
By WILLIAM MORRISON
Illustrated by ED. ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Wives always try to cure husbands of
bad habits, even on lonely asteroids!
You must understand that Palmer loved his wife as much as ever, or he would never have thought of his simple little scheme at all. It was entirely for her own good, as he had told himself a dozen times in the past day. And with that he stilled whatever qualms of conscience he might otherwise have had. He didn't think of himself as being something of a murderer.
She was sitting at the artificial fireplace, a cheerful relic of ancient days, reading just as peacefully as if she had been back home on Mars, instead of on this desolate outpost of space. She had adjusted quickly to the loneliness and the strangeness of this life—to the absence of friends, the need for conserving air, the strange feeling of an artificial gravity that varied slightly at the whim of impurities in the station fuel. To everything, in fact, but her husband.