"I mean the vitamins," said Smathers. "According to Dr. Petrelli, the
fruits contain neither A nor B_1. After living solely on them for four
weeks now, he should be beginning to show some deficiencies--but he's
not.
"No signs?" queried Dr. Pilar. "No symptoms?"
"No signs--at least no abnormal ones. He's not getting enough protein,
but, then, none of us is." He made a bitter face. "But he has plenty of
symptoms."
Dr. Petrelli raised a thin eyebrow. "What's the difference between a
sign and a symptom?"
"A sign," said Smathers testily, "is something that can be objectively
checked by another person than the patient. Lesions, swellings,
inflammations, erratic heartbeat, and so on. A symptom is a subjective
feeling of the patient, like aches, pains, nausea, dizziness, or spots
before the eyes.
"And MacNeil is beginning to get all kinds of symptoms. Trouble is, he's
got a record of hypochondria, and I can't tell which of the symptoms are
psychosomatic and which, if any, might be caused by the fruit."
"The trouble is," said Petrelli, "that we have an unidentifiable disease
caused by an unidentifiable agent which is checked by an unidentifiable
something in MacNeil. And we have neither the time nor the equipment to
find out. This is a job that a fully equipped research lab might take a
couple of years to solve."
"We can keep trying," said Pilar, "and hope we stumble across it by
accident."
[Illustration]
Petrelli nodded and picked up the beaker he'd been heating over an
electric plate. He added a chelating agent which, if there were any
nickel present, would sequester the nickel ions and bring them out of
solution as a brick-red precipitate.
Smathers scowled and bent over his microscope to count more leucocytes.
Pilar pushed his notes aside and went over to check his agar plates in
the constant-temperature box.
The technicians who had been listening to the conversation with ears
wide open went back to their various duties.
And all of them tried in vain to fight down the hunger pangs that were
corroding at their insides.
* * * * *
Broderick MacNeil lay in his bed and felt pleasantly ill. He treasured
each one of his various symptoms; each pain and ache was just right. He
hadn't been so comfortable in years. It really felt fine to have all
those doctors fussing over him. They got snappy and irritable once in a
while, but then, all them brainy people had a tendency to do that. He
wondered how the rest of the boys were doing on their diet of
banana-pears. Too bad they weren't getting any special treatment.
MacNeil had decided just that morning that he'd leave the whole state of
his health in the hands of the doctors. No need for a fellow to dose
himself when there were three medics on the job, was there? If he needed
anything, they'd give it to him, so he'd decided to take no medicine.
A delightful, dulling lassitude was creeping over him.
* * * * *
"MacNeil! _MacNeil!_ Wake up, MacNeil!"
The spaceman vaguely heard the voice, and tried to respond, but a sudden
dizziness overtook him. His stomach felt as though it were going to come
loose from his interior.
"I'm sick," he said weakly. Then, with a terrible realization, "I'm
really _awful_ sick!"
He saw Dr. Smathers' face swimming above him and tried to lift himself
from the bed. "Shoulda taken pills," he said through the haze that was
beginning to fold over him again. "Locker box." And then he was
unconscious again.
Dr. Smathers looked at him bleakly. The same thing was killing MacNeil
as had killed the others. It had taken longer--much longer. But it had
come.
And then the meaning of the spaceman's mumbled words came to him. Pills?
Locker box?
He grabbed the unconscious man's right hand and shoved his right thumb
up against the sensor plate in the front of the metal box next to the
bed. He could have gotten the master key from Colonel Fennister, but he
hadn't the time.
The box door dilated open, and Dr. Smathers looked inside.
When he came across the bottles, he swore under his breath, then flung
the spaceman's arm down and ran from the room.
* * * * *
"That's where he was getting his vitamins, then," said Dr. Pilar as he
looked over the assortment of bottles that he and Smathers had taken
from the locker box. "Look at 'em. He's got almost as many pills as you
have." He looked up at the physician. "Do you suppose it was just
vitamins that kept him going?"
"I don't know," said Smathers. "I've given him massive doses of every
one of the vitamins--from my own supplies, naturally. He may rally
round, if that's what it was. But why would he suddenly be affected by
the stuff _now_?"
"Maybe he quit taking them?" Pilar made it half a question.
"It's possible," agreed Smathers. "A hypochondriac will sometimes leave
off dosing himself if there's a doctor around to do it for him. As long
as the subconscious need is filled, he's happy." But he was shaking his
head.
"What's the matter?" Pilar asked.
Smathers pointed at the bottles. "Some of those are mislabeled. They all
say vitamins of one kind or another on the label, but the tablets inside
aren't all vitamins. MacNeil's been giving himself all kinds of things."