Colonel Fennister nodded. He was a military man, and he wasn"t too sure that the scientists" explanations would be very clear, but if there was information to be had, he might as well make the most of it.
SM/2 Broderick MacNeil kept a firm grip on his blast rifle and looked around at the surrounding jungle, meanwhile thanking whatever G.o.ds there were that he hadn"t been put on the fence-mending detail. Not that he objected violently to work, but he preferred to be out here in the forest just now. Breakfast hadn"t been exactly filling, and he was hungry.
Besides, this was his pet detail, and he liked it. He had been going out with the technicians ever since the base had been finished, a couple of weeks before, and he was used to the work. The biotechnicians came out to gather specimens, and it was his job, along with four others, to guard them--make sure that no wild animal got them while they were going about their duties. It was a simple job, and one well suited to MacNeil"s capacities.
He kept an eye on the technicians. They were working on a bush of some kind that had little th.o.r.n.y-looking nuts on it, clipping bits off here and there. He wasn"t at all sure what they did with all those little pieces and bits, but that was none of his business, anyway. Let the brains take care of that stuff; his job was to make sure they weren"t interrupted in whatever it was they were doing. After watching the three technicians in total incomprehension for a minute or so, he turned his attention to the surrounding forest. But he was looking for a plant, not an animal.
And he finally saw what he was looking for.
The technicians paid him no attention. They rarely did. They had their job, and he had his. Of course, he didn"t want to be caught breaking regulations, but he knew how to avoid that catastrophe. He walked casually toward the tree, as though he were only slightly interested in it.
He didn"t know what the name of the tree was. He"d asked a technician once, and the tech had said that the tree didn"t have any name yet.
Personally, MacNeil thought it was silly for a thing not to have a name.
h.e.l.l, _everything_ had a name.
But, if they didn"t want to tell him what it was, that was all right with him, too. He called it a banana-pear tree.
Because that"s what the fruit reminded him of.
The fruit that hung from the tree were six or eight inches long, fat in the middle, and tapering at both ends. The skin was a pale chartreuse in color, with heliotrope spots.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
MacNeil remembered the first time he"d seen one, the time he"d asked the tech what its name was. The tech had been picking some of them and putting them into plastic bags, and the faint spark of MacNeil"s dim curiosity had been brought to feebly flickering life.
"Hey, Doc," he"d said, "whatcha gonna do with them things?"
"Take "em to the lab," said the technician, engrossed in his work.
MacNeil had digested that carefully. "Yeah?" he"d said at last. "What for?"
The technician had sighed and popped another fruit into a bag. He had attempted to explain things to Broderick MacNeil before and given it up as a bad job. "We just feed "em to the monkeys, Mac, that"s all."
"Oh," said Broderick MacNeil.
Well, that made sense, anyhow. Monkeys got to eat _something_, don"t they? Sure. And he had gazed at the fruit in interest.
Fresh fruit was something MacNeil missed. He"d heard that fresh fruit was necessary for health, and on Earth he"d always made sure that he had plenty of it. He didn"t want to get sick. But they didn"t ship fresh fruit on an interstellar expedition, and MacNeil had felt vaguely apprehensive about the lack.
Now, however, his problems were solved. He knew that it was strictly against regulations to eat native fruit until the bra.s.s said so, but that didn"t worry him too much. He"d heard somewhere that a man can eat anything a monkey can, so he wasn"t worried about it. So he"d tried one.
It tasted fine, something like a pear and something like a banana, and different from either. It was just fine.
Since then, he"d managed to eat a couple every day, so"s to get his fresh fruit. It kept him healthy. Today, though, he needed more than just health; he was hungry, and the banana-pears looked singularly tempting.
When he reached the tree, he turned casually around to see if any of the others were watching. They weren"t, but he kept his eye on them while he picked several of the fruit. Then he turned carefully around, and, with his back to the others, masking his movements with his own body, he began to munch contentedly on the crisp flesh of the banana-pears.
"Now, take this one, for instance," said Dr. Pilar. He was holding up a native fruit. It bulged in the middle, and had a chartreuse rind with heliotrope spots on it. "It"s a very good example of exactly what we"re up against. Ever since we discovered this particular fruit, we"ve been interested in it because the a.n.a.lyses show that it should be an excellent source of basic food elements. Presumably, it even tastes good; our monkeys seemed to like it."
"What"s the matter with it, then?" asked Major Grodski, eying the fruit with sleepy curiosity.
Dr. Pilar gave the thing a wry look and put it back in the specimen bag.
"Except for the fact that it has killed every one of our test specimens, we don"t know what"s wrong with it."
Colonel Fennister looked around the laboratory at the cages full of chittering animals--monkeys, white mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, and the others. Then he looked back at the scientist. "Don"t you know what killed them?"
Pilar didn"t answer; instead, he glanced at Dr. Smathers, the physician.
Smathers steepled his fingers over his abdomen and rubbed his fingertips together. "We"re not sure. Thus far, it looks as though death was caused by oxygen starvation in the tissues."
"Some kind of anemia?" hazarded the colonel.
Smathers frowned. "The end results are similar, but there is no drop in the hemoglobin--in fact, it seems to rise a little. We"re still investigating that. We haven"t got all the answers yet, by any means, but since we don"t quite know what to look for, we"re rather hampered."
The colonel nodded slowly. "Lack of equipment?"
"Pretty much so," admitted Dr. Smathers. "Remember, we"re just here for preliminary investigation. When the ship brings in more men and equipment--"
His voice trailed off. Very likely, when the ship returned, it would find an empty base. The first-string team simply wasn"t set up for exhaustive work; its job was to survey the field in general and mark out the problems for the complete team to solve.
Establishing the base had been of primary importance, and that was the sort of equipment that had been carried on the ship. That--and food. The scientists had only the barest essentials to work with; they had no electron microscopes or any of the other complex instruments necessary for exhaustive biochemical work.
Now that they were engaged in a fight for survival, they felt like a gang of midgets attacking a herd of water-buffalo with penknives. Even if they won the battle, the mortality rate would be high, and their chances of winning were pretty small.
The s.p.a.ce 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 la.s.situde 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sages, 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 s.p.a.ceman 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?"