Cum Grano Salis Part 3

"Pi_lar_," 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 s.p.a.ceman Second MacNeil, sir, from B Company. Could I ask you something, sir?"

Pilar sighed a little, then smiled. "Go ahead, s.p.a.ceman."

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 circ.u.mstances."

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.sume the worst and forget it." He looked musingly at the wall. "I wonder how many edible plants we've by-pa.s.sed 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 enough," said the colonel. "I'll keep in touch."

On the morning of the third day in isolation, MacNeil rose early, as usual, gulped down his normal a.s.sortment of vitamins, added a couple of aspirin tablets, and took a dose of Epsom salts for good measure. Then he yawned and leaned back to wait for breakfast. He was certainly getting enough fresh fruit, that was certain. He'd begun to worry about whether he was getting a balanced diet--he'd heard that a balanced diet was very important--but he figured that the doctors knew what they were doing. Leave it up to them.

He'd been probed and needled and tested plenty in the last couple of days, but he didn't mind it. It gave him a feeling of confidence to know that the doctors were taking care of him. Maybe he ought to tell them about his various troubles; they all seemed like nice guys. On the other hand, it wouldn't do to get booted out of the Service. He'd think it over for a while.

He settled back to doze a little while he waited for his breakfast to be served. Sure was nice to be taken care of.

Later on that same day, Dr. Pilar put out a call for volunteers. He still said nothing about MacNeil; he simply asked the colonel to say that it had been eaten successfully by a test animal.

The volunteers ate their banana-pears for lunch, approaching them warily at first, but soon polishing them off with gusto, proclaiming them to have a fine taste.

The next morning, they felt weak and listless.

Thirty-six hours later, they were dead.

"Oxygen starvation," said Smathers angrily, when he had completed the autopsies.

Broderick MacNeil munched pleasantly on a banana-pear that evening, happily unaware that three of his buddies had died of eating that self-same fruit.

The chemist, Dr. Petrelli, looked at the fruit in his hand, snarled suddenly, and smashed it to the floor. Its skin burst, splattering pulp all over the gray plastic.

"It looks," he said in a high, savage voice, "as if that hulking idiot will be the only one left alive when the ship returns!" He turned to look at Smathers, who was peering through a binocular microscope.