The Happiness Rock
"The Happiness Rock" by Albert Teichner opens as scout craft Warrant Officer Will Cramer and Captain Nick Hartley discover a promising asteroid and land to collect mineral specimens. Cramer, eager to overcome his nervousness about extravehicular work, insists on going out himself despite Hartley's nominal authority. While chipping rock samples, Cramer accidentally leaves his specimen box improperly sealed; when he re-enters the ship and the cabin repressurizes, a cloud of strange white flecks escapes into the warm air. Moments later Cramer is overcome with inexplicable, euphoric laughter and a sense of blissful well-being, yet he passes a rigorous mental arithmetic test Hartley poses, proving his mind is unimpaired despite the "space ecstasy." Hartley, initially cautious, becomes suspicious and returns to the asteroid multiple times, ostensibly for more samples but secretly to harvest a private stockpile of the mysterious substance for himself, repeatedly exposing himself to the same euphoric effect while concealing his true purpose from Cramer. Back aboard the dreadnought Solar Pioneer, Hartley suppresses any official mention of the phenomenon, and when Cramer tries to report the "white stuff" to General Chisholm, he is punished for breaking the chain of command and placed under Probationary discipline. A cursory lab analysis at normal temperature finds nothing unusual, since the samples require proper cryogenic handling to preserve the substance—something Hartley has manipulated to his advantage. Once Earth-bound, Hartley reveals the truth to Cramer: the white flecks are a living, silicon-based microorganism that induces intense, harmless-seeming euphoria and then completely self-destructs in the human body, leaving no trace and no apparent physiological addiction. Hartley resigns from the service and partners with a wealthy, jaded socialite biochemist, Neilson, to test, verify, and mass-market the substance—dubbed "germ-joy"—to a decadent, thrill-starved elite before expanding to the general public. Cramer is drugged with sedatives and psychologically conditioned into dependency to ensure his silence, then released to make an official report that conceals what he knows. Cramer manages to get an audience with General Chisholm, who, despite skepticism, recognizes there is more to the story than a simple disciplinary matter and orders blood tests that reveal Cramer was sedated. Realizing the danger, Chisholm and North American President Shelby Johnson conclude they are powerless to stop Hartley's scheme through direct confrontation, since exposing it would only accelerate germ-joy's spread across an already bored, complacent, freeloading society hungry for easy pleasure. They decide on covert surveillance, hoping some hidden danger will eventually surface, while quietly investigating the substance's true nature. Scientific analysis shows the organism has no detectable genetic material and breaks down through some unknown subatomic process, defying conventional biology and physics, deepening the mystery of what "germ-joy" really is and whether it is truly harmless. Cramer, sequestered at headquarters and monitored for any bodily reaction, eventually develops a strange, itching rash on his wrist that subsides quickly—a delayed reaction revealing that the silicon element can reform in the body after a fixed incubation period tied to the asteroid's rotational cycle, the same interval as the initial exposure. Realizing Hartley must be nearing the same crisis point, since he was exposed only slightly after Cramer, authorities move to intercept him. They find Hartley at Neilson's penthouse in the grip of a horrifying, rapid affliction: the reformed silicon has become a virulent agent triggering explosive, cancerous lesions across his body. Despite frantic medical efforts, Hartley dies in agonizing fashion as scientists coldly seize the opportunity to study the unprecedented biological event even as he perishes. The story closes on Chisholm's grim assessment that this brutal, individual death—though horrific—is a far lesser evil than the slow, corrosive social catastrophe that would have resulted had germ-joy spread unchecked through a civilization already prone to passivity and easy gratification. Cramer, unable to feel triumphant despite knowing this outcome averts wider disaster, reflects on the need to remember Hartley for whatever good existed in him rather than for the corruption and greed that ultimately consumed him. The narrative closes as a cautionary tale about humanity's vulnerability to costless-seeming pleasure, the peril of assuming something can be enjoyed without consequence, and the tension between individual freedom and the protection of a society susceptible to complacent self-destruction through a substance too good, and too strange, to be true.
By Albert Teichner · First published 1964 · Genre: Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Cautionary Tale