The Addicts: Happiness At Any Cost

Life on a remote asteroid lighthouse is supposed to be dull, not unbearable. For Jim Palmer, it isn’t unbearable at all. A powerful drug smooths every edge, silences fear, and turns isolation into contentment. The problem is that his wife doesn’t share his peace. She still feels the pressure of time, danger, and the creatures waiting just beyond the hull. Jim believes he has found a way to give her the same calm he enjoys. He tells himself it is an act of love. He refuses to consider what it might take from her.

As the hours pass, the gulf between them widens. Jim’s certainty clashes with Louise’s desperation, and every choice tightens the walls of their fragile refuge. Outside, the station drifts among hostile asteroids, dependent on a single beam that cannot fail. Inside, trust erodes as each spouse believes they are the only one still thinking clearly. When the drug’s promise collides with reality, the story forces a reckoning between comfort and responsibility, and between feeling good and staying alive.

William Morrison wrote fiction that often placed ordinary people under extraordinary mental strain. His stories appeared in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Weird Tales, where psychological tension mattered as much as speculative ideas. “The Addicts” reflects Morrison’s talent for trapping characters in confined spaces and watching their convictions collapse under pressure, turning a quiet domestic setting into something far more dangerous than any alien threat.