Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

father had been killed. Then, she had said composedly, the overdrive would be repaired and the Delilah would probably return to the port from which she had started, taking back its shaken, half-crazed passengers and the bodies of those who had died. None of it made sense, anyhow. One thing was sure. The drinks of the Delilah's bar had been doctored within twenty minutes of the cutting of the overdrive. It should have taken nearly that long to be sure that a failure was irreparable. It seemed almost like a measure planned in advance. It was too quick ... Brent tasted his sarfane again. He savored the spoiled flavor carefully, trying to discern what had been added to ruin the delicate flavor. The addition was aromatic, bitter. It was just enough to spoil the pleasure of drinking sarfane. It’s sposap, thought Brent. He _- tasted = again, deliberately. Jaurine iposap. |It was a flavoring ingredient for mixed drinks, like the ancient bitters. It came in blue bottles with gold labels, and it was very, very expensive, and on some planets it was forbidden by law. Its flavor was fascinating and blended perfectly with most bar-dispensed beverages. It made them taste better, but most people avoided it. One drink, with one drop of iposap in it, was very good, but two were murder. Most people became fighting drunks when their drinks had been laced with iposap, and most drinkers were drunk with two such drinks under their belts. lf all the Delilah's drinks had been dashed like Brent’s, they were not dosed to make drinkers sleepy, but to make them lunatics. In that case, the officers of theDe/ilah were not planning to check the horrors to be expected in any ship hopelessly lost in space, but were planning to hurry them and increase them. It was designed that madness should follow instantly upon despair. Decent people were to be overwhelmed by madmen before they could organize to die with dignity. A child began to scream: CORniclooo SS (SO)