Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
If I'm going to die it's going to be my way—that wasLatham's last thought.
ONE PURPLE HOPE!
By HENRY HASSE
Once he had been a tall, straight spaceman, free as thegalaxies. Now Joel Latham was a tsith-addict, a beach-comberat Venusport. Maybe he'd get one last chance....
is sleep-drugged mind was slow to respond. He was lying face down, heknew that. And he ought to get up. If he didn't get up he would drown.Something hot and heavy, like a huge hand, was pressing him deeperinto the brackish mire. He pondered. Perhaps it were better to drown.For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of the thought, thendecided against it. Plenty of time later for drowning. First there wassomething he had to do!
So it was that Joel Latham, Earthman, age thirty, occupation spacedrifter, avocation tsith drinker, awakened on this most momentous ofmornings.
Moaning in protest, he slowly rolled himself over. The sun slapped himhard against the eyes. He blinked against the pain and saw that he wasstill in Venusport; rather he was at the edge of the swamp near thesprawling compound. Overhead the ionic field was aglow, hummingsoftly, beating back the obscurant mists.
He managed to stand up. Some of the pallid-faced gweels, out in theswamp, stopped their work to stare at him. Latham grimaced. Everyfiber of him, especially his brain, seemed to have been squeezed dry.Then it came. He felt it coming and there was nothing he could do tostop it. The hammering nausea took him suddenly about the middle,bending him double.
"I'm an Earthman," Joel Latham groaned aloud. That was invariably thefirst reaction of the tsith hound, at least with Terrestrials whoindulged in the deadly stuff; a piteous protest half in defiance, halfin despair. The nausea reached up through his stomach, through hischest and into his throat. It became more than nausea. It grew thornsthat stabbed inwardly, jagged edges that sawed away at his brain witha terrible need. He fell forward on hands and knees ... and that'swhen he saw the little Martian who crouched a few feet away, watchinghim.
"I went through mine a few minutes ago," the Martian said in amonotone. "Yours will go away presently."
"I know ... it will. Been through this ... before."
"You obviously have. Many times."
Many times was an understatement, Latham thought wretchedly. But thiswas one of the worst ones, even worse than the time on Callisto.Thinking about it didn't help.
He turned his gaze back to the Martian. That didn't help either.
Most Martians are lean and brown and ugly. This one was that, andmore. What had once been clothes were tattered and spattered withswamp mud. The hair was a wisp, the teeth only a memory. The skin wastight and leathery across the bony structure of the face, the eyesdistended and yellow, the unmistakable sign of a tsith hound.
Latham grimaced, managed to grind out: "Do I look as bad as you?"
"Worse," the little Martian was