Cum Grano Salis, Page 4

Second MacNeil, sir, fromB 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 hissacroiliac 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 alreadybeen sent to the men's mess hall." He didn't add that the lab animalswould be the next to go. Quick-frozen, they might help eke out thedwindling food supply, but it would be better not to let the men knowwhat they were eating for a while. When they got hungry enough, theywouldn't care.

  But MacNeil was plainly puzzled by Pilar's answer. He decided toapproach the stuff as obliquely as he knew how.

  "Doc, sir, if I ... I uh ... well--" He took the bit in his teeth andplunged ahead. "If I done something against the regulations, would youhave to report me to Captain Bellwether?"

  Dr. Pilar leaned back in his chair and looked at the big man withinterest. "Well," he said carefully, "that would all depend on what itwas. If it was something really ... ah ... dangerous to the welfare ofthe expedition, I'd have to say something about it, I suppose, but I'mnot a military officer, and minor infractions don't concern me."

  MacNeil absorbed that "Well, sir, this ain't much, really--I atesomething I shouldn't of."

  Pilar drew down his brows. "Stealing food, I'm afraid, would be a majoroffense, under the circumstances."

  MacNeil looked both startled and insulted. "Oh, nossir! I never swipedno food! In fact, I've been givin' my chow to my buddies."

  Pilar's brows lifted. He suddenly realized that the man before himlooked in exceptionally good health for one who had been on a marginaldiet 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--themfruits you feed the monkeys on."

  Pilar looked at MacNeil goggle-eyed for a full thirty seconds before heburst into action.

  * * * * *

  "No, of course I won't punish him," said Colonel Fennister. "Somethingwill have to go on the record, naturally, but I'll just restrict him tobarracks for thirty days and then recommend him for light duty. But areyou _sure_?"

  "I'm sure," said Pilar, half in wonder.

  Fennister glanced over at Dr. Smathers, now noticeably thinner in theface. The medic was looking over MacNeil's record. "But if that fruitkills monkeys and rats and guinea pigs, how can a _man_ eat it?"

  "Animals differ," said Smathers, without taking his eyes off the recordsheets. He didn't amplify the statement.

  The colonel looked back at Pilar.

  "That's the trouble with test animals," Dr. Pilar said, ruffling hisgray beard with a fingertip. "You take a rat, for instance. A rat canlive on a diet that would kill a monkey. If there's no vitamin A in thediet, the monkey dies, but the rat makes his own vitamin A; he doesn'tneed to import it, you might say, since he can synthesize it in his ownbody. But a monkey can't.

  "That's just one example. There are hundreds that we know of and Godalone knows how many that we haven't found yet."

  Fennister settled his own body more comfortably in the chair andscratched his head thoughtfully. "Then, even after a piece of alienvegetation has passed all the animal tests, you still couldn't be sureit wouldn't kill a human?"

  "That's right. That's why we ask for volunteers. But we haven't lost aman so far. Sometimes a volunteer will get pretty sick, but if a foodpasses all the other tests, you can usually depend on its not killing ahuman being."

  "I gather that this is a pretty unusual case, then?"

  Pilar frowned. "As far as I know, yes. But if something kills all thetest animals, we don't ask for humans to try it out. We assume the worstand forget it." He looked musingly at the wall. "I wonder how manyedible plants we've by-passed that way?" he asked softly, half tohimself.

  "What are you going to do next?" the colonel asked. "My men are gettinghungry."

  Smathers looked up from the report in alarm, and Pilar had a similarexpression 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 outin the forest to gobble down those things until we are more sure ofthem. Give us a few more days at least."

  The colonel patted the air with a hand. "Don't worry. I'll wait untilyou 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 onMacNeil for another forty-eight hours. We'd like to have him transferredover here, so that we can keep him in isolation. We'll feed him more ofthe ... uh ... what'd he call 'em, Smathers?"

  "Banana-pears."

  "We'll feed him more banana-pears, and keep checking. If he is still ingood 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, asusual, gulped down his normal assortment of vitamins, added a couple ofaspirin tablets, and took a dose of Epsom salts for good measure. Thenhe yawned and leaned back to wait for breakfast. He was certainlygetting enough fresh fruit, that was certain. He'd begun to worry aboutwhether he was getting a balanced diet--he'd heard that a balanced dietwas very important--but he figured that the doctors knew what they weredoing. Leave it up to them.

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

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

  * * * * *

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

  The volunteers ate their banana-pears for lunch, approaching them warilyat first, but soon polishing them off with gusto, proclaiming them tohave 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 theautopsies.

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

  * * * * *

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

  "It looks," he said in a high, savage voice, "as if that hulking idiotwill be the only one left alive when the ship returns!" He turned tolook at Smathers, who was peering through a binocular microscope."Smathers, what makes him different?"

  "How do I know?" growled Dr. Smathers, still peering. "There's somethingdifferent about him, that's all."

  Petrelli forcibly restrained his temper. "Very funny," he snapped.

  "Not funny at all," Smathers snapped back. "No two human beings areidentical--you know that." He lifted his gaze from the eyepiece of theinstrument and settled in on the chemist. "He's got AB blood type, forone thing, which none of the volunteers had. Is that what makes himimmune to whatever poison is in those things? I don't know.

  "Were the other three allergic to some protein substance in the fruit,while MacNeil isn't? I don't know.

  "Do his digestive processes destroy the poison? I don't know.

  "It's got something to do with his blood, I think, but I can't even besure of that. The leucocytes are a little high, the r
ed cell count is alittle low, the hemoglobin shows a little high on the colorimeter, butnone of 'em seems enough to do any harm.

  "It might be an enzyme that destroys the ability of the cells to utilizeoxygen. It might be _anything_!"

  His eyes narrowed then, as he looked at the chemist. "After all, whyhaven't you isolated the stuff from the fruit?"

  "There's no clue as to what to look for," said Petrelli, somewhat lessbitingly. "The poison