'We know that, Kathy,' Corning said, nodding. 'So this really ought to please you, when you examine it without distracting emotion. By the way...' Dipping into the briefcase, Corning brought out a handful of capsules; he laid one on the kitchen table and the capsule rolled off and fell on the floor. 'No offense meant, Kathy, but—' He shrugged. 'It is addictive. From even one exposure, such as you indulged yourself in at 45 Avila Street last night. And Chris Plout isn't going to get you any more.' Picking up the capsule of JJ-180 which had fallen to the kitchen floor, he held it out to Kathy.

'It couldn't be,' she said faintly, declining. 'After just one try. I've taken dozens of drugs before and never—' She regarded him then. 'You bastards,' she said. 'I don't believe it and anyhow, even if it is true, I can get unaddicted – there're clinics.'

'Not for JJ-180.' Returning the capsule to his briefcase. Corning added casually, 'We can free you of your addiction, not here but at a clinic in our own system ... perhaps later we can arrange this. Or you can stay on it and we can supply you for the rest of your life. Which won't be long.'

'Even to break a drug habit,' Kathy said, 'I wouldn't go to Lilistar. I'll go to the reegs; it's their drug – you said so. They must know more about it than you do if they invented it.' Turning her back to Corning, she walked to the living room closet and got her coat. 'I'm going to work. Good-by.' She opened the door to the hall. Neither 'Starman made a move to halt her.

It must be true, then, she thought. JJ-180 must be as addictive as they say. I haven't got a goddam chance; they know it and I know it. I have to co-operate with them or try to escape all the way across to the reeg lines, where it originates, and even then I'd still be addicted; I wouldn't have gained anything. And the reegs would probably kill me.

Corning said. Take my card, Kathy.' He walked to her, extending the small white square. 'When you find yourself requiring the drug, must at any cost have it—' He dropped the card into the breast pocket of her coat. 'Come and see me. We'll be expecting you, dear; we'll see you're supplied.' He added, as an afterthought, 'Of course it's addictive, Kathy; that's why we put you on it.' He smiled at her.

Shutting the door after her, Kathy made her way blindly to the elevator, numbed now to the point where she felt nothing, not even fear. Only a vague emptiness inside her, the vacuum left by the extinction of hope, of the ability even to conceive a possibility of escape.

But Virgil Ackerman could help me, she said to herself as she entered the elevator and touched the button. I'll go to him; he'll know exactly what I should do. I'll never work with the 'Starmen, addiction or not; I won't co-operate with them about Eric.

But she knew, before long, that she would.

SIX

It was during the early afternoon, as she sat in her office at TF&D arranging for the purchase of a 1937 artifact, a reasonably unworn Decca record of the Andrews Sisters singing 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schön', that Kathy Sweetscent felt the first withdrawal symptoms.

Her hands became oddly heavy.

With extreme care she put the delicate record down. And there was a physiognomic alteration in the objects around her. While at 45 Avila Street, under the influence of JJ-180, she had experienced the world as consisting of airy, penetrable, and benign entities, like so many bubbles; she had found herself able – at least in hallucination – to pass through them at will. Now, in the familiar environment of her office, she experienced a transformation of reality along the lines of an ominous progression: ordinary things, whichever way she looked, seemed to be gaining density. They were no longer susceptible to being moved or changed, affected in any way, by her.

And, from another viewpoint, she simultaneously experienced the oppressive change as taking place within her own body. From either standpoint the ratio between herself, her physical powers, and the outside world had altered for the worse; she experienced herself as growing progressively more and more helpless in the literal physical sense – there was, with each passing moment, less which she could do. The ten-inch Decca record, for instance. It lay within touch of her fingers, but suppose she reached out for it? The record would evade her. Her hand, clumsy with unnatural weight, hobbled by the internal gathering of density, would crush or break the record; the concept of performing intricate, skillful actions in reference to the record seemed out of the question. Refinements of motion were no longer a property belonging to her; only gross, sinking mass remained.

Wisely, she realized that this told her something about JJ-180; it lay in the class of thalamic stimulants. And now, in this withdrawal period, she was suffering a deprivation of thalamic energy; these changes, experienced as taking place in the outside world and in her body, were in actuality minute alterations of the metabolism of her brain. But—

This knowledge did not help her. For these changes in herself and her world were not beliefs; they were authentic experiences, reported by the normal sensory channels, imposed on her consciousness against her will. As stimuli they could not be avoided. And – the alteration of the world's physiognomy continued; the end was not in sight. In panic she thought, How far will this go? How much worse can it get? Certainly not much worse ... the impenetrability of even the smallest objects around her now seemed almost infinite; she sat rigidly, unable to move, incapable of thrusting her great body into any new relationship with the crushingly heavy objects that surrounded her and seemed to be pressing nearer and nearer.

And, even as the objects in her office settled massively against her, they became, on another level, remote; they receded in a meaningful, terrifying fashion. They were losing, she realized, their animation, their – so to speak – working souls. The animae which inhabited them were departing as her powers of psychological projection deteriorated. The objects had lost their heritage of the familiar; by degrees they became cold, remote, and – hostile. Into the vacuum left by the decline in her relatedness to them the things surrounding her achieved their original isolation from the taming forces which normally emanated from the human mind; they became raw, abrupt, with jagged edges capable of cutting, gashing, inflicting fatal wounds. She did not dare stir. Death, in potentiality, lay inherent in every object; even the hand-wrought brass ash tray on her desk had become irregular, and in its lack of symmetry it obtained projecting planes, shot out surfaces which, like spines, could tear her open if she was stupid enough to come near.

The combox on her desk buzzed. Lucile Sharp, Virgil Ack-erman's secretary, said, 'Mrs Sweetscent, Mr Ackerman would like to see you in his office. I'd suggest you bring along the new "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" record you purchased today; he expressed interest in it.'

'Yes,' Kathy said, and the effort almost buried her; she ceased breathing and sat with her rib-cage inert, the basic physiological processes slowing under the pressure, dying by degrees. And then, somehow, she breathed one breath; she filled her lungs and then exhaled raggedly, noisily. For the moment she had escaped. But it was all worsening. What next? She rose to her feet, stood. So this is how it feels to be hooked on JJ-180, she thought. She managed to pick up the Decca record. Its dark edges were like knife blades sawing into her hands as she carried it across the office to the door. Its hostility toward her, its inanimate and yet ferocious desire to inflict destruction on her, became overwhelming; she cringed from the disc's touch.