Breath Of Beelzebub
By LARRY STERNIG
All that had been distilled from the curious
vegetation of the doomed planetoid was half
an ounce, a mere timbleful of blue liquor.
But it was enough to drive a universe mad.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The martian servant stopped at my desk, coughed faintly to attractmy attention. I looked up and he handed me a calling card on whichwas printed "Slane O'Graeme." It was a limp, thumb-marked anddiscouraged-looking emissary.
"'E wishes to see Mr. Ames," the wedge-faced servant told me. The highdisdain in his tone of voice revealed more clearly than words hisopinion of the visitor.
I shrugged and dropped the card on my desk. "Oh, well, send him in.I'll give him the brush-off."
The Martian faded away and I turned back to the 1999 capitulationfigures Mr. Ames wanted. I forgot about Slane O'Graeme, whoever he was,until a timid "hello" made me look up from the reports.
"You're Mr. Fleming Ames?" he asked diffidently.
He was an odd-looking little guy with a head like an oversize cue-balland a narrow fringe of fuzzy graying hair that looked like a misguidedhalo. He wore green-tinted contact lenses that made his eyes seemunusually large and bright.
"No, I'm not Fleming Ames," I told him. "I'm Bill Dineen, Mr. Ames'confidential secretary. What can I do for you?"
"Uh—Mr. Ames is president of Universal Liquors, Incorporated, isn'the?"
I nodded.
"I have something I'd like to show him, Mr. Dineen. It's something new.I found it on Planetoid Y-145."
I stared at him almost incredulously. He didn't look like a spaceman.
"You mean a kind of drink? But I didn't think any of the planetoidswere inhabited. How did you—"
"It isn't a drink exactly, Mr. Dineen. And Planetoid Y-145 isn'tinhabited—in fact, there isn't any Planetoid Y-145 any more. A meteorhit it last week, I read in the astrogation reports. Busted it tosmithereens."
He reached in his pocket and held up a little transpariplast vial,which held about half an ounce of a murky blue fluid.
"So this is all there is anywhere, as far as I know," he revealed."It's the juice of a kind of lichen that grew on the planetoid. Istopped there last month looking for minerals, and I took some of thelichen along just to see what it was. I didn't know then. I distilledthis on the way back and threw out the lichen, so this is all—"
"—there is," I finished for him, a bit impatiently. "But what is it?And if there isn't any more, what good can it do us?"
"Your laboratories can synthesize things, can't they? Yes, I know it'san expensive process, but this stuff is very concentrated and a littlegoes a long way. So, even if it did cost quite a bit to make, justthink of the—"
"But get to the point, Mr. O'Graeme. What is it?"
"Uh—I've named it 'Breath of Beelzebub'. You put a drop of it inwater, and—oh, boy! You don't even drink the water. The gas worksthrough your skin. Osmosis, or something. I found it out accidentally."
I frowned at him. "What do you mean 'Oh, boy!'? If you've read anythingabout our policies, you know that we discourage the use of strongintoxicants. Ever since the Martian uprising ten years ago, we've beenpromoting beers, ales and Venusian klorah, and weaning drinks away fromanything stronger. What effect does this have?"
O'Graeme took the stopper out of the vial and set it carefully uprighton my desk.
"It works without water, too," he said. "But it's less efficient thisway. One drop in water is