Hunter Patrol | Page 9

psychologist, at one of the tables, smoking his pipe, checking over a stack of aptitude test forms, and drinking beer. He got a highball at the bar and carried it over to Bill's table.
"Oh, hi, Fred." The psychologist separated the finished from the unfinished work with a sheet of yellow paper and crammed the whole business into his brief case. "I was hoping somebody'd show up...."
Benson lit a cigarette, sipped his highball. They talked at random--school-talk; the progress of the war, now in its twelfth year; personal reminiscences, of the Turkish Theater where Benson had served, and the Madras Beachhead, where Myers had been.
"Bring home any souvenirs?" Myers asked.
"Not much. Couple of pistols, couple of knives, some pictures. I don't remember what all; haven't gotten around to unpacking them, yet.... I have a sixth of rye and some beer, at my rooms. Let's go around and see what I did bring home."
They finished their drinks and went out.
"What the devil's that?" Myers said, pointing to the cardboard box with the envelope taped to it, when Benson lifted it out of the gray-green locker.
"Bill, I don't know," Benson said. "I found it in the pocket of my coat, on my way back from my last hunter patrol.... I've never told anybody about this, before."
"That's the damnedest story I've ever heard, and in my racket you hear some honeys," Myers said, when he had finished. "You couldn't have picked that thing up in some other way, deliberately forgotten the circumstances, and fabricated this story about the tank and the grenade and the discrepancy in your watch subconsciously as an explanation?"
"My subconscious is a better liar than that," Benson replied. "It would have cobbled up some kind of a story that would stand up. This business...."
"Top Secret! For the Guide Only!" Myers frowned. "That isn't one of our marks, and if it were Soviet, it'd be tri-lingual, Russian, Hindi and Chinese."
"Well, let's see what's in it. I want this thing cleared up. I've been having some of the nastiest dreams, lately...."
"Well, be careful; it may be booby-trapped," Myers said urgently.
"Don't worry; I will."
He used a knife to slice the envelope open without untaping it from the box, and exposed five sheets of typewritten onion-skin paper. There was no letterhead, no salutation or address-line. Just a mass of chemical formulae, and a concise report on tests. It seemed to be a report on an improved syrup for a carbonated soft-drink. There were a few cryptic cautionary references to heightened physico-psychological effects.
The box was opened with the same caution, but it proved as innocent of dangers as the envelope. It contained only a half-liter bottle, wax-sealed, containing a dark reddish-brown syrup.
"There's a lot of this stuff I don't dig," Benson said, tapping the sheets of onion-skin. "I don't even scratch the surface of this rigamarole about The Guide. I'm going to get to work on this sample in the lab, at school, though. Maybe we have something, here."
* * * * *
At eight-thirty the next evening, after four and a half hours work, he stopped to check what he had found out.
The school's X-ray, an excellent one, had given him a complete picture of the molecular structure of the syrup. There were a couple of long-chain molecules that he could only believe after two re-examinations and a careful check of the machine, but with the help of the notes he could deduce how they had been put together. They would be the Ingredient Alpha and Ingredient Beta referred to in the notes.
The components of the syrup were all simple and easily procurable with these two exceptions, as were the basic components from which these were made.
The mechanical guinea-pig demonstrated that the syrup contained nothing harmful to human tissue.
Of course, there were the warnings about heightened psycho-physiological effects....
He stuck a poison-label on the bottle, locked it up, and went home. The next day, he and Bill Myers got a bottle of carbonated water and mixed themselves a couple of drinks of it. It was delicious--sweet, dry, tart, sour, all of these in alternating waves of pleasure.
"We do have something, Bill," he said. "We have something that's going to give our income-tax experts headaches."
"You have," Myers corrected. "Where do you start fitting me into it?"
"We're a good team, Bill. I'm a chemist, but I don't know a thing about people. You're a psychologist. A real one; not one of these night-school boys. A juvenile psychologist, too. And what age-group spends the most money in this country for soft-drinks?"
Knowing the names of the syrup's ingredients, and what their molecular structure was like, was only the beginning. Gallon after gallon of the School Board's chemicals went down the laboratory sink; Fred Benson and Bill Myers almost lived in the fourth floor lab. Once or twice there were head-shaking warnings