Four years after being ruined by a crash he was blamed for, Charles Farradyne is labouring in the fungus fields of Venus when Howard Clevis offers him a way back. The job is to trace the smuggling of the love lotus, an alien flower whose addictive power is spreading through the planets, and it leads him to a woman who may be immune.
A brisk 1952 novel from Startling Stories, mixing space opera with a drug-trade thriller. Download the free EPUB.