were pretty small.
The Space Service officers and the scientists discussed the problem for over an hour, but they came to no promising conclusion.
At last, Colonel Fennister said: “Very well, Dr. Pilar; we’ll have to leave the food supply problem in your hands. Meanwhile, I’ll try to keep order here in the camp.”
* * * *
SM/2 Broderick MacNeil may not have had a top-level grade of intelligence, but by the end of the second week, his conscience was nagging him, and he was beginning to wonder who was goofing and why. After much thinking—if we may so refer to MacNeil’s painful cerebral processes—he decided to ask a few cautious questions.
Going without food tends to make for mental fogginess, snarling tempers, and general physical lassitude in any group of men. And, while quarter rations were not quite starvation meals, they closely approached it. It was fortunate, therefore, that MacNeil decided to approach Dr. Pilar.
Dr. Petrelli’s temper, waspish by nature, had become positively virulent in the two weeks that had passed since the destruction of the major food cache. Dr. Smathers was losing weight from his excess, but his heretofore pampered stomach was voicelessly screaming along his nerve passages, and his fingers had become shaky, which is unnerving in a surgeon, so his temper was no better than Petrelli’s.
Pilar, of course, was no better fed, but he was calmer than either of the others by disposition, and his lean frame didn’t use as much energy. So, when the big hulking spaceman appeared at the door of his office with his cap in his hands, he was inclined to be less brusque than he might have been.
“Yes? What is it?” he asked. He had been correlating notes in his journal with the thought in the back of his mind that he would never finish it, but he felt that a small respite might be relaxing.
MacNeil came in and looked nervously around at the plain walls of the pre-fab plastic dome-hut as though seeking consolation from them. Then he straightened himself in the approved military manner and looked at the doctor.
“You Dr. Piller? Sir?”
“Pilar,” said the scientist in correction. “If you’re looking for the medic, you’ll want Dr. Smathers, over in G Section.”
“Oh, yessir,” said MacNeil quickly, “I know that. But I ain’t sick.” He didn’t feel that sick, anyway. “I’m Spaceman Second MacNeil, sir, from B Company. Could I ask you something, sir?”
Pilar sighed a little, then smiled. “Go ahead, spaceman.”
MacNeil wondered if maybe he’d ought to ask the doctor about his sacroiliac pains, then decided against it. This wasn’t the time for it. “Well, about the food. Uh…Doc, can men eat monkey food all right?”
Pilar smiled. “Yes. What food there is left for the monkeys has already been sent to the men’s mess hall.” He didn’t add that the lab animals would be the next to go. Quick-frozen, they might help eke out the dwindling food supply, but it would be better not to let the men know what they were eating for a while. When they got hungry enough, they wouldn’t care.
But MacNeil was plainly puzzled by Pilar’s answer. He decided to approach the stuff as obliquely as he knew how.
“Doc, sir, if I…I uh…well—” He took the bit in his teeth and plunged ahead. “If I done something against the regulations, would you have to report me to Captain Bellwether?”
Dr. Pilar leaned back in his chair and looked at the big man with interest. “Well,” he said carefully, “that would all depend on what it was. If it was something really…ah…dangerous to the welfare of the expedition, I’d have to say something about it, I suppose, but I’m not a military officer, and minor infractions don’t concern me.”
MacNeil absorbed that “Well, sir, this ain’t much, really—I ate something I shouldn’t of.”
Pilar drew down his brows. “Stealing food, I’m afraid, would be a major offense, under the circumstances.”
MacNeil looked both startled and insulted. “Oh, nossir! I never swiped no food! In fact, I’ve been givin’ my chow to my buddies.”
Pilar’s brows lifted. He suddenly realized that the man before him looked in exceptionally good health for one who had been on a marginal diet for two weeks. “Then what have you been living on?”
“The monkey food, sir.”
“Monkey food?”
“Yessir. Them greenish things with the purple spots. You know—them fruits you feed the monkeys on.”
Pilar looked at MacNeil goggle-eyed for a full thirty seconds before he burst into action.
* * * *
“No, of course I won’t punish him,” said Colonel Fennister. “Something will have to go on the record, naturally, but I’ll just restrict him to barracks for thirty days and then recommend him for light duty. But are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Pilar, half in wonder.
Fennister glanced over at Dr. Smathers, now noticeably thinner in the face. The medic was looking over MacNeil’s record. “But if that fruit kills monkeys and rats and guinea pigs, how can a man eat it?”
“Animals differ,” said Smathers, without taking his eyes off the record sheets. He didn’t amplify the statement.
The colonel looked back at Pilar.
“That’s the trouble with test animals,” Dr. Pilar said, ruffling his gray beard with a fingertip. “You take a rat, for instance. A rat can live on a diet that would kill a monkey. If there’s no vitamin A in the diet, the monkey dies, but the rat makes his own vitamin A; he doesn’t need to import it, you might say, since he can synthesize it in his own body. But a monkey can’t.
“That’s just one example. There are hundreds that we know of and God alone knows how many that we haven’t found yet.”
Fennister settled his own body more comfortably in the chair and scratched his head thoughtfully. “Then, even after a piece of alien vegetation has passed all the animal tests, you still couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t kill a human?”
“That’s right. That’s why we ask for volunteers. But we haven’t lost a man so far. Sometimes a volunteer will get pretty sick, but if a food passes all the other tests, you can usually depend on its not killing a human being.”
“I gather that this is a pretty unusual case, then?”
Pilar frowned. “As far as I know, yes. But if something kills all the test animals, we don’t ask for humans to try it out. We assume the worst and forget it.” He looked musingly at the wall. “I wonder how many edible plants we’ve by-passed that way?” he asked softly, half to himself.
“What are you going to do next?” the colonel asked. “My men are getting hungry.”
Smathers looked up from the report in alarm, and Pilar had a similar expression on his face.
“For Pete’s sake,” said Smathers, “don’t tell anyone—not anyone—about this, just yet. We don’t want all your men rushing out in the forest to gobble down those things until we are more sure of them. Give us a few more days at least.”
The colonel patted the air with a hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll wait until you give me the go-ahead. But I’ll want to know your plans.”
Pilar pursed his lips for a moment before he spoke. “We’ll check up on MacNeil for another forty-eight hours. We’d like to have him transferred over here, so that we can keep him in isolation. We’ll feed him more of the…uh…what’d he call ’em, Smathers?”
“Banana-pears.”
“We’ll feed him more banana-pears, and keep checking. If he is still in good shape, we’ll ask for volunteers.”
“Good