“You’ve been here how long?” Ben asked her as they sat at a plastic micro-bar sipping coffee from faintly-gray plastic cups.
“Wade Frazer, our psychologist, arrived first. That was roughly two months ago. The rest of us have been arriving in dribs and drabs. I hope Morley comes soon. We’re dying to hear what this is all about.”
“You’re sure Wade Frazer doesn’t know?”
“Pardon?” Betty Jo Berm blinked at him.
“He was the first one here. Waiting for the rest of you. I mean of us. Maybe this is a psychological experiment they’ve set up, and Frazer is running it. Without telling anyone.
“What we’re afraid of,” Betty J0 Berm said, “is not that. We have one vast fear, and that is this: there is no purpose to us being here, and we’ll never be able to leave. Everyone came here by noser: that was mandatory. Well, a noser can land but it can’t take off. Without outside help we’d never be able to leave here. Maybe this is a prison–we’ve thought of that. Maybe we’ve all done something, or anyhow someone _thinks_ we’ve done something.” She eyed him alertly with her gray, calm eyes. “Have you done anything, Mr. Tallchief?” she asked.
“Well, you know how it is.”
“I mean, you’re not a criminal or anything.”
“Not that I know of.”
“You look ordinary.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, you don’t look like a criminal.” She rose, walked across the cramped room to a cupboard. “How about some Seagram’s VO?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said, pleased at the idea.
As they sat drinking coffee laced with Seagram’s VO Canadian whiskey (imported) Dr. Milton Babble strolled in, perceived them, and seated himself at the bar. “This is a second-rate planet,” he said to Ben without preamble. His dingy, shovel-like face twisted in distaste. “It just plain is second rate. Thanks.” He accepted his cup of coffee from Betty Jo, sipped, still showed distaste. “What’s in this?” he demanded. He then saw the bottle of Seagram’s VO. “Hell, that ruins coffee,” he said angrily. He set his cup down again, his expression of distaste greater than ever.
“I think it helps,” Betty Jo Berm said.
Dr. Babble said, “You know, it’s a funny thing, all of us here together. Now see, Tallchief, I’ve been here a month and I have yet to find someone I can talk to, really talk to. Every person here is completely involved with himself and doesn’t give a damn about the others. Excluding you, of course, B.J.”
Betty Jo said, “I’m not offended. It’s true. I don’t care about you, Babble, or any of the rest. I just want to be left alone.” She turned toward Ben. “We have an initial curiosity when someone lands . . . as we had about you. But afterward, after we see the person and listen to him a little–” She lifted her cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled its smoke silently. “No offense meant, Mr. Tallchief, as Babble just now said. We’ll get you pretty soon and you’ll be the same; I predict it. You’ll talk with us for a while and then you’ll withdraw into–” She hesitated, groping the air with her right hand as if physically searching for a word. As if a word were a three dimensional object which she could seize manually. “Take Beisnor. All he thinks about is the refrigeration unit. He has a phobia that it’ll stop working, which you would gather from his panic would mean the end of us. He thinks the refrigeration unit is keeping us from–” She gestured with her cigarette. “Boiling away.”
“But he’s harmless,” Dr. Babble said.
“Oh, we’re all harmless,” Betty Jo Berm said. To Ben she said, “Do you know what I do, Mr. Tallchief? I take pills. I’ll show you.” She opened her purse and brought out a pharmacy bottle. “Look at these,” she said as she handed the bottle to Ben. “The blue ones are stelazine, which I use as an anti-emetic. You understand: I use it for that, but that isn’t its basic purpose. Basically stelazine is a tranquilizer, in doses of less than twenty milligrams a day. In greater doses it’s an anti-hallucinogenic agent. But I don’t take it for that either. Now, the problem with stelazine is that it’s a vasodilator. I sometimes have trouble standing up after I’ve taken some. Hypostasis, I think it’s called.”
Babble grunted, “So she also takes a vasoconstrictor.”
“That’s this little white tablet,” Betty Jo said, showing him the part of the bottle in which the white tablets dwelt. “It’s methamphetamine. Now, this green capsule is–”
“One day,” Babble said, “your pills are going to hatch, and some strange birds are going to emerge.”
“What an odd thing to say,” Betty Jo said.
“I meant they look like colored birds’ eggs.”
“Yes, I realize that. But it’s still a strange thing to say.” Removing the lid from the bottle she poured out a variety of pills into the palm of her hand. “This red cap–that’s of course pentabarbital, for sleeping. And then this yellow one, it’s norpramin, which counterbalances the C.N.S. depressive effect of the mellaril. Now, this square orange tab, it’s new. It has five layers on it which time-release on the so-called ‘trickle principle.’ A very effective C.N.S. stimulant. Then a–”
“She takes a central nervous system depressor,” Babble broke in, “and also a C.N.S. stimulant.”
Ben said, “Wouldn’t they cancel each other out?”
“One might say so, yes,” Babble said.
“But they don’t,” Betty Jo said. “I mean subjectively I can feel the difference. I know they’re helping me.”
“She reads the literature on them all,” Babble said. “She brought a copy of the _P.D.R._ with her–_Physicians’ Desk Reference_–with lists of side effects, contraindications, dosage, when indicated and so forth. She knows as much about her pills as I do. In fact, as much as the manufacturers know. If you show her a pill, any pill, she can tell you what it is, what it does, what–” He belched, drew himself up higher in his chair, laughed, and then said, “I remember a pill that had as side effects–if you took an overdose–convulsions, coma and then death. And in the literature, right after it told about the convulsions, coma and death, it said, _May Be Habit Forming_. Which always struck me as an anticlimax.” Again he laughed, and then pried at his nose with one hairy, dark finger. “It’s a strange world,” he murmured. “Very strange.”
Ben had a little more of the Seagram’s VO. It had begun to fill him with a familiar warm glow. He felt himself beginning to ignore Dr. Babble and Betty Jo. He sank into the privacy of his own mind, his own being, and it was a good feeling.
Tony Dunkelwelt, photographer and soil-sample specialist, put his head in the door and called, “There’s another noser landing. It must be Morley.” The screen door banged shut as Dunkelwelt scuttled off.
Half-rising to her feet, Betty Jo said, “We’d better go. So at last, we’re finally all here.” Dr. Babble rose, too. “Come on, Babble,” she said, and started toward the door. “And you, Mr. Eighth-Part-Indian-Tallchief.”
Ben drank down the rest of his coffee and Seagram’s VO and got up, dizzily. A moment later and he was following them out the door and into the light of day.
4
Shutting off the retrojets Seth Morley shuddered, then unfastened his seat belt. Pointing, he instructed Mary to do the same.
“I know,” Mary said, “what to do. You don’t have to treat me like a child.”
“You’re sore at me,” Morley said, “even though I navigated us here perfectly. The whole way.”
“You were on automatic pilot and you followed the beam,” she said archly. “But you’re right, I should be grateful.” Her tone of voice did not sound grateful, however. But he did not care. He had other things on his mind.
He manually unbolted the hatch. Green sunlight streamed in and he saw, shielding his eyes, a barren landscape of meager trees and even more meager brush. Off to the left a gaggle of unimpressive buildings jutted irregularly. The colony.
People were approaching the noser, a gang of them. Some of them waved and he waved back. “Hello,” he said, stepping down the iron pins and dropping to the ground. Turning, he began to help Mary out, but she shook him loose and descended without assistance.
“Hi,” a plain, brownish girl called as she approached. “We’re glad to see you–you’re the last!”
“I’m Seth Morley,” he said. “And this is Mary, my wife.”
“We know,” the plain, brownish girl said, nodding. “Glad to meet you, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” She indicated a muscular youth nearby. “Ignatz Thugg.”
“Glad to meet you.” Morley shook hands with him. ‘I’m Seth Morley and this is my wife Mary.”
“I’m Betty Jo Berm,” the plain, brownish girl said. “And this gentleman–” She directed his attention toward an elderly man with stooped, fatigue posture. “Bert Kosler, our custodian.”