"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!"