are the black specks on the eggs, John? Pepper?”
“Don’t use pepper, just a little salt. People’re picky about eggs.”
“You know what I mean. The crew’s been kidding you about it. Rat turds? Look like little peppercorns, they do.”
“Nothin’ I put in,” said John, looking offended. “Maybe some burn from the oven.”
Now Doc Joan was suddenly interested. “You cook the eggs in the oven?”
“Naw. I got only one skillet, not enough for everyone. I scramble eggs in relay and warm ’em in the oven.”
Now Joan seemed real interested. “Show me the oven, John.”
“Right here,” he said, and opened it. I took one look and decided it needed cleaning, but Joan pushed me aside and got down on her knees to look all around inside the thing. Those black specks were scattered around on the bottom of the oven, but it was when Joan looked up at where the heating coils were that she gasped. “Oh, my God. Carl, get me a bowl or a cup—and a spoon, quick. I think I’ve found our bugs.”
I was quick about it and in a second she was holding a cup up inside the oven, scraping away with the spoon while John and I exchanged curious looks. She put the cup on the table and we looked inside.
Rat turds. Half a cup-full.
“They’re thick on the oven ceiling, clusters following the shape of the coil, and they’re growing there. One of them popped open while I was inside. Close the oven door, John!” It was more than curiosity in Joan’s voice, now. It was fear, and I remember thinking that the stuff in that cup was nothing to be fooled with. I stepped back a little from the table.
“I’ve got to do it here. Sick bay’s too cold,” she said. “Get some towels to cover the table, but don’t touch the cup or the spoon. I’ll be right back.” She rushed off towards the sick bay.
John and I laid out some towels at one end of the table, and didn’t go near that cup, and when Doc Joan returned we backed clear up against a wall to watch her.
She had a mask on, and surgical gloves, and carried a stack of those little dishes I’d seen her use for growing bug colonies on Roosevelt. She sat down at the table, put everything on towels, then poured some black stuff on a cup saucer and started worrying it with the spoon. Little peppercorns, like I said, but kind of squishy. “Like skin,” she said. “I bet it’s protein of some kind.” But then she hit a hard one and it popped open, and even from six feet away I could see something yellow ooze out. It made my stomach crawl.
“Here it is,” she said. “We’ve found it!”
Well you can have it, I thought, but she sure was excited. She popped some more, then smeared a bunch of stuff on those little dishes, some with black, some with the yellow gunk. It was past lunchtime, but I didn’t have any appetite at all. “Got to keep these things warm,” she said. “They’ve evolved at high T. John, turn the oven on again, right where you warm the eggs.”
“Ain’t going near that thing,” said John.
“Just set the temperature for me!” said Joan angrily. “I’ll open it up.”
John did as he was told and I stayed where I was, feeling a little wimpy, but then Joan had the mask on and I didn’t, and my mama did not raise a fool. So Doc put the dishes, cup and spoon in the oven and closed the door, looking tired but pleased with herself. “If I get a culture, I’ve got a good chance of finding something that’ll kill it quick. I’ve already eliminated penicillin and half a dozen antibiotics. Now we just have to wait.”
That didn’t mean sitting. I was a one-man maintenance crew now and the environmental system was overloaded from that air-conditioner blasting away in sick bay. I spent the next twenty four hours resetting relays, sending status reports to Roosevelt and scraping frost from coils, buckets of it. The ice machine stopped twice and we were pouring frost into the cold tub while Joan fought with two more members of the botany team out of their heads with fever again. And it was damn cold in that room. All the while Doc Joan was looking more and more haggard, big purple swellings of flesh now under her eyes, and Roosevelt was starting to talk quarantine to us. Couldn’t blame them; the whole probe had become a bug farm. I remember how thick and rancid the air seemed, and wondering if we were all breathing in yellow guck. I remember noticing stuffiness in my nose, and little pains in my stomach. It didn’t occur to me it was because I hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours.
The next morning we rushed to the mess room, Joan walking jerky and looking ashen-faced. She opened the oven and placed its contents on the towel-draped table, took one look and dropped hard into a chair. “Damn,” she said. “Damn, damn,” and put her head in her hands.
I looked carefully over her shoulder. The volume of black stuff in the cup had grown considerable. But there was nothing in those bug dishes. Nothing.
And then Doc Joan groaned, tilted her head back towards me. Her eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolled back up in her head and she fell forward hard onto the table.
* * * *
There were two of us left standing. At first we’d thought Joan had the bug, too, but the symptoms weren’t there and we decided it was plain old exhaustion. We laid her out on a cot in the mess room and she slept like a dead person for fifteen hours before she started tossing and turning and mumbling. John and I cat-napped and nibbled some toast and Roosevelt called to say pick up would be in four days with a med team joining us in quarantine.
Bad turned to worse when we lost our second crew member. Harry was thrashing around and yelling again and we had to do another cold dip on him, but when we went to get him we found his neighbor patient Ono lying peacefully dead and covered with a horrible black mass he’d vomited up. So we dipped Harry until he was quiet and put Ono in the lock with Sally. We went back to check on Joan and found her sitting up on the cot. We told her about Ono and she bit her lip so hard it bled a little. Frustrated. Angry. After a while, though, she was thinking again.
“Eggs,” she said. John and I looked at each other.
“Don’t you see? They grow in eggs. Protein eaters! I’m doing the wrong culture. Help me up.”
She stood there wobbly while we told her about the last fifteen hours. “Okay, so this is beyond serious, now. The whole crew can be dead in four days if I don’t do something right. Carl, put some gloves on and get a sputum sample from Ono. John, you help me to the botany lab. I still can’t find my feet. Carl, you meet us there.”
We did that. I found her in the botany lab working with the bug dishes. “Protein eaters,” she said again. “They’re eating our crew up from the inside. So I’m using albumin for the culture plates. John, set that oven to one hundred-fifty exactly. This is our last chance.”
John fled. I watched while Joan smeared ground peppercorns, yellow guck and Ono’s horrible spit on the bug dishes. I helped carry them to the oven. Her excitement was there again and a little color had returned to her face. Quite a lady. The bugs were cooking and Joan was thinking aloud; “Got to get it right the first time. Penicillin and standard antibiotics are no good. There’s a different pathway in these things. Maybe combinations. God, I don’t even know the pathology! Could be an inhibitor. Shut these suckers down. How much for a hundred kilo male?” She suddenly became aware of John and I staring at her blankly. “Okay, you watch after my patients a while. I’m going to do some inventory in the botany lab.” And she left the room.
Just in time. Now Harry was sitting up, eyes open—babbling. When we touched him he screamed and clawed at my face. I gave him a bear hug, told him everything was okay. Everything was under control. Yeah. He calmed down, went back to sleep, his forehead hot in the terrible cold of that room. John checked the ice machine when we noticed the silence. It was down again, a handful of ice cubes left. I reset the relay, scraped off two buckets of frost and set them at the ready.
Joan was in the mess room, smearing more guck on more bug dishes, a jar of white powder in