the pale canary distillate to a machine that bottled it in small ampules. More slaves took the ampules away and packed them tenderly into cotton-padded cases.
"Essence of Lotus juice," amplified the tutor, as they emerged. "This distillery runs only now and then. We furnish the police with fifty cases a year. No one else may have it."
"Lotus juice?" queried Winchester. "I thought that was the stuff that made addicts for the Crater of Dreams. Why should they allow it to the police?"
"The police do not take it themselves. They use it to dope the year's selected artists with. It makes them more tractable. Few intellectuals go voluntarily, you know. They cure that by spraying them with an atomizer.
"After a whiff or so, they want nothing else. I saw it done once — to a designer of ballet dances."
He stared meaningly at Winchester.
"It was not nice to see," he added softly. "He was my brother."
That time the instructor did not append the stock phrase of glorification to the Khan.
"The practise of botany is not what it used to be," commented Winchester, by way of reply.
"No," snapped the tutor.
In his eyes was a peculiar light.
That night Winchester made out his daily report in the exact fashion directed by the AFPA chieftain at Central. In doing so he took great care to exhibit no curiosity concerning the spot where he wrote. He knew that 8-RYF or one of his minions must be watching him through a cleverly concealed television scanner.
But he was equally confident that if such was the case, it would be so well hidden that no effort of his would find it. He assumed, too, that they did not want him to find out the method of transmission, or they would have told him about it before this.
He wrote sheet after sheet, steadily and without reserve. He put down the substance of the conversation he had had with his tutor. He characterized him as "not openly disloyal, but unenthusiastic." He was reluctant to do that, but he had a shrewd idea he was being tested. It was not unlikely that the tutor was also submitting a report.
Similarly, ten days later, after attending a clandestine meeting of six self-styled rebels — "freemen" all, loaned as assistant gardeners from the labor gangs of Cosmopolis — Winchester reported all that was said. They wanted, the gardeners told him, a certain vegetable oil derived from the flowers of the toxidal, a deadly poisonous vine of Ceres.
They had a fellow conspirator who was an assistant cook in the police barracks at Cosmopolis, and who promised to mix it in the food.
Winchester never knew what followed, as the working party finished its job and was withdrawn a few days later, but he had the feeling he had done no innocent man wrong. His invitation to the meeting, while furtively offered, was too bold. Genuine rebels would not have been so frank with an untested stranger.
CHAPTER XIII
Crater of Dreams
Winchester's testing period stretched into months, and still no word came from the mysterious man in green in the citadel. The American continued to work at whatever tasks were assigned, and learned many startling facts about the weird creatures of other worlds. Not only did he work with plants, but on several occasions assisted in the Zoological Division, and there he had to deal with queer animals.
One of his jobs was to discover a substitute diet for the terrible Venusian sea-tigret, which dwelled on the cliffs above the artificial lakes in the Venus Crater. It was a mammal much on the lines of a seal, but spotted like a leopard and possessing the powerful teeth of a cat, as well as claws at the tips of its flippers.
Its habit was to lie in waiting along the brow of the cliff, then pounce on the prey it could spot in the clear waters beneath. The sea-tigret was fierce and voracious, and the curators found it impossible to keep the lake stocked with suitable fish.
Another troublesome animal was the Ursa Saturnis, or the great bear of Saturn. It was a huge, rotund beast, covered with silky white feathers, on which a scarlet spiral stripe wound like the markings of a barber pole. It did not prey on large animals, but on tiny ones that lived in the crevices of rocks.
That problem Winchester helped solve by suggesting a thick glove that could be locked on, since the beast's claws grew so rapidly that clipping did no good.
Besides these activities and his occasional espionage work, Winchester found time for some research work in his little private laboratory. Some of its results he reported, some he kept to himself. Among the latter was a stimulant so powerful, he dreaded to think how it might be misused by wrong hands.
He found it by accident, seeking the ingredient which made the flittleberry wine of Ganymede so heady. By means of successive distillations, he found a fraction which he called ergogen, on account of the tremendous flood of energy it released in the human body.
It acted much as adrenalin does, only more promptly and with more pronounced results. It was small wonder that a man drunk on flittleberry wine was willing to fight his weight in wildcats.
Another subject of unfailing interest was the super-narcotic Lotusol. Winchester analyzed the oil carefully and read all the existing pamphlets on the symptoms arising from its use. In general, he found, it was similar to the opium of his own day. But it went far beyond opium in two ways. A few deep whiffs formed the habit, and the habit was incurable.
Winchester worked many weary hours of overtime on that fascinating drug, memorizing his results and committing nothing to paper, except some proposals for minor improvements in the method of the oil's distillation. A little later, he abstracted some books on medicine and physiology, which he found in a locked case at headquarters, and studied them intensively.
Bit by bit he added to his store of scientific knowledge. He was thankful to the Mongoloid rulers that their book-burning had been confined to such fields as history and philosophy.
As he was about to conclude his study of Lotusol and its effects, an event happened to round out and complete his data. The alarm gongs sounded and the scientists at the station were informed that a casualty had just occurred in the Lotusol distillation plant. Winchester happened to be in the office of the Curator-in-Chief at the time, and hopped into his lunabile with him.
They found the young scientist in charge in the bottling room, but a single glance was all that was necessary to know that no information could be had from him. For he was groveling ecstatically on the floor, sniffing deliriously at a broken ampule. His helmet had been discarded and lay at one side, showing a ragged tear in the fabric about the neck.
"What happened?" demanded the chief of the cowering slaves.
"There was a big crash — a retort, I think. Then he came in here, tore off his helmet, and grabbed an ampule and broke it. That's the fourth one."
The chief curator plugged his helmet jack into the nearest wall outlet. It connected him with the televisor control.
"Get me Welfare," he ordered. He turned to Winchester. "He's done, poor fellow. The still blew up and cut his suit. I'll see what I can do — "
"Yes?"
