it came. He felt it coming and there was nothing he could do to
stop it. The hammering nausea took him suddenly about the middle,
bending him double.

"I'm an Earthman," Joel Latham groaned aloud. That was invariably the
first reaction of the tsith hound, at least with Terrestrials who
indulged in the deadly stuff; a piteous protest half in defiance, half
in despair. The nausea reached up through his stomach, through his
chest and into his throat. It became more than nausea. It grew thorns
that stabbed inwardly, jagged edges that sawed away at his brain with
a terrible need. He fell forward on hands and knees ... and that's
when he saw the little Martian who crouched a few feet away, watching
him.

"I went through mine a few minutes ago," the Martian said in a
monotone. "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 this
was 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, and
more. What had once been clothes were tattered and spattered with
swamp mud. The hair was a wisp, the teeth only a memory. The skin was
tight and leathery across the bony structure of the face, the eyes
distended 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 matter-of-fact.

"I believe you." He looked long and hard at the Martian. "I remember
you now. Name's Kueelo. You were with me last night--"

Kueelo grinned, showing the stumps of yellowish teeth. "Correction.
Four nights ago. That's when it began."

Latham climbed to his feet. The reaction was going away but there was
still a dull apathy about his brain. Just to think was an aching
effort.

"Four days," he muttered. "How'd I come here?"

"So you don't remember that? You came on the pleasure yacht. The one
from Turibek."

* * * * *

"Turibek--" Latham was remembering now. Turibek, capital city of
Venus, far on the other side of the planet. He'd had a small stake and
was lucky at the gaming tables. Before that it was Callisto, where he
had struck it rich in the iridium fields; anyway, rich enough to keep
him supplied with tsith for a