Getting inside the Barracks was a production. The safety-suits worn
outside presumably bore on their outer surfaces all the dust-borne
bugs native to Kansas. To carry these bacteria into the Barracks, to
be inspired and ingested by Axenites--humans who'd never before had a
bacterium inside their bodies--would wipe out the Regiment. Axenites
are chemically pure people. They have no immuniological experience.
Their gamma-globulin is low, their intestinal walls are thin. They may
be killed by a light salting of staphyllococci, a soupcon of strep, or
just a pinch of B. subtilis, a buglet as innocuous to "normal" humans
as the dust-motes it inhabits.
The Syphon was the only entrance to the Barracks. It opened as the "Wet
Gut," a ramp leading downward into liquid disinfectant which finally
filled a tunnel, which ran the length of the Barracks. Each trooper,
as he walked down into the disinfectant, grabbed the hand-holds at
either side to pull himself along. Half-swimming through a turbulent
portion that tugged at his suit with cavitations designed to loose the
gummiest particle of bug-dirt, he came to a quieter section where he
wormed along in silence, watching the man ahead of him, his stay in the
antiseptic gauged to make the outside of his safety-suit as germ-free
as the inside.
The Wet Gut ended in an upslope. The troopers walked out, dripping,
into a hallway returning in the direction from which they'd just
swum. This upper arm of the Syphon was a hallway so brilliantly
lighted that the trooper had to drop his polarizing shields over his
eyes. The air here in the Hot Gut was spiced with ozone from the
ultra-violet sources. As each man strode down the Hot Gut at a set
pace, his suit was bathed in u-v light from lamps in the ceiling,
floor and walls. Just as he was washed sufficiently in the Wet Gut
to kill the sturdiest-shelled spore of anthrax, the most insistently
cysted protozooan, in the Hot Gut he was laved in actinic radiation
powerful enough to afford a one hundred per cent safety factor against
his bringing viable bug-dirt into the Barracks. At the very end of
the Syphon, so that his safety-suit wouldn't stink of disinfectant
or crack from ozone-rot, the trooper was blasted from all sides by a
needle-shower of sterile water. Then he was home.
The platoon to the left of the Terrible Third had ballooned and was
column-of-squadding toward the entrance to the Syphon. "At ease, men,"
Hartford said. "Increase suit-pressure one pound. Open and check
reserve air-tanks. Close off filters." The men blimped a bit. Their
suits sausaged out around their arms and legs. Should some trooper
have a pinhole in his safety-suit, the positive pressure within would
keep the deadly antiseptic solution from seeping in. "Okay, men. First
squad off to the sheep-dip. Check the man ahead of you for bubbles.
This is Save-Your-Buddy Week," Hartford said.
* * * * *
Fat-legged and stiff, the men of Third Platoon waddled through the
doorway and down the ramp into the bug-juice. One by one they went
under, tugging themselves along through the turbulent area, past that;
then turning over in three planes so that the man behind them could
spot bubbles coming from any part of their safety-suit. A leak, of
course, meant Decontamination. Decontamination meant an all-over shave,
a load of antibiotics and quarantine. But it was better that one man
should suffer this from time to time than that the Barracks should be
sullied with a single bit of germ-laden dust.
The pale-green murk of the Wet Gut and the desert brightness of the Hot
Gut were the gates of home, and welcome.
Hartford saw the Terrible Third off to their quarters, then got
together with Piacentelli to go up to Officers' Country. It was good to
un-clam helmets and breathe the inside air, smelling faintly green from
having swept across the gardens on Level Eight. Hartford shucked off
his blue suit and draped it over a refreshing unit. The device buzzed
into action, washing, drying and recharging the safety-suit with fresh
filters and reserve air and water. The moment the refresher had grunted
an okay to his safety-suit, Hartford carried it, clean and sweet as
the day it had left the Goodyear plant on Titan, to hang it up in his
locker, ready for his next foray onto bug-dirt.
Piacentelli was already under a shower. "Come on, jay-bird," he
shouted. "Last one out buys the beers."
"No contest," Hartford said, setting the shower-dial. "I'm gonna stay
under water for three weeks." He revolved blissfully beneath cold and
angry needles.
Piacentelli, snowed in with suds and steam, yelled through the blasting
water. "How'd you rate O.G. the night we get in?" he asked. "I thought
you were Nasty Nef's fairhaired boy."
Hartford turned off his shower. "I got nothing better to do," he said.
He stood on the drier for a minute. "I don't mind being Officer of the
Guard, so long as I can eat supper off a plate instead of through a
tube." He stepped into his shorts, pulled on sneakers and tugged on a
tee-shirt that had stenciled over its shoulders the two half-inch gold
stripes of his rank.
Pia dressed in a similar uniform. "It isn't the Messhall I miss,"
he said. "It's this. No number of ingenious engines, valves and
relief-tubes can still my nostalgia for the simple dignity of our
Barracks latrines."
* * * * *
Junior Officers' Mess was set in what looked like a park, except that
the bushes were tomato-plants and the trees grew apples. The tables
were mostly full. "All the subalterns getting in a quick sundowner,"
Pia remarked, finding a two-place table yet untaken. A Service Company
K.P. in the brief skirt-and-halter Class B's the women wore informally
in the Barracks came to take their order. "Big cold beer for me,
honey," Pia said. "The other gentleman is tonight's O.G., so he'll have
a black, black coffee."
Hartford stared after the girl. "You're right, Pia," he said. "No
matter how comfy Goodyear makes those safety-suits, home is best."
"You bachelors are a threat to the Table of Organization," Piacentelli
said. "You'd breed us right out of house and home if you had a chance."
"Damned right," Hartford said.
"You could find a girl," Piacentelli said.
"They all itch to get married," Hartford explained. "They come out to
these germy planets like they used to go to Purdue. The man-woman ratio
is in their favor. And biology. Pia, I've seen bears you wouldn't glim
twice on Titan turn into love-goddesses after six months here. I'll
meet some Service Company corporal, say. She'll look to me like the
prettiest li'l thing since Adam's costectomy, and I'll call in at the
Orderly Room to have us assigned Family Quarters. Back at Home Base,
she'll turn out to be something you scare kids quiet with. She'll talk
all the time, leave lipstick on drinking-glasses, or play bridge and
talk about it. First thing you know, I'll be volunteering for another
five years duty on bug-dirt, just for a chance to leave her behind."
"So pick up a local germ," Piacentelli suggested. "If they can't
decontaminate you, they'll send you to Earth. Lots of women on Earth."
"I'd do it," Hartford said, "but I'm still more scared of microbes than
lustful for a woman. Here's Dimples with our chow."
"Dimples?" Piacentelli asked as the girl came up with their tray.
"Watch her when she walks away," Hartford suggested.
"You must keep a carton of goat-glands under your bunk, Lee,"
Piacentelli said. "Marriage isn't all bad. I've done pretty well with
Paula."
Hartford nodded. Paula Piacentelli, a lieutenant in the Service
Companies, was a pretty decent sort. "Where is she now?" he asked.
"She'll be on the Status Board tonight," Piacentelli said. "You'll be
in the Board Room with her. Lee, I've got a favor to ask you. As O.G.
you'll be in charge tonight."
"Paula will be in charge," Hartford said. "I'll be sleeping."
"If I go outside, though, it will need your okay as well as Paula's,"
Piacentelli said.
"Who's going outside with you?"
"That's the sticky bit," Piacentelli said. "I'd like to go outside
alone."
* * * * *
"Want to run in the rain in your little bare skin?" Hartford asked.
"Mix it up with a Stinker maiden? Paula wouldn't like that. Besides,
you might get yourself jack-rolled by some Indigenous Hominid who
doesn't like Axenites running his planet."
"I want to work on my Kansan-Standard Dictionary," Piacentelli said.
"Bug-dirt," Hartford said. "Don't tell lies."
"All right, then," Piacentelli said. "I've got an idea that might lead
to the most important discovery ever made on Kansas. Paula suggested
it. I want to prove it."
"Tell Nasty Nef about your idea," Hartford said, signalling the
waitress for a second cup of stay-awake. "Give CINCK something clever
to report when the supply ship lands, and you'll have your silver
stripes before I will. Wouldn't Paula love that, though? Captain
Piacentelli, I'd have to salute first."
"Nasty Nef wouldn't consider our idea," Piacentelli said. "He wouldn't
be happy to know that I've been studying the Kansan language, even. A
common humanity between us Axenites and the Indigenous Hominids is a
notion not welcome to the world of Colonel Nef. _Brother_ Nef, I might
say."
Hartford leaned against the table to press a fist against Piacentelli's
propped elbow. "Don't say that, Pia," he whispered. "I'm not political;
I'm not interested; I don't care whether the Brotherhood even exists."
"Yes, Virginia; there is a Brotherhood," Piacentelli said. "And our
Nasty Nef is a Brother."
"He's a number of things," Hartford said. "He's our CO; he's CINCK;
he's an SOB. But he's our boss, and 'Brotherhood' is a dangerous
word." He sipped his coffee. "Tell you what, Pia. If you want to go
out and talk Gook with the Gooks, I'll fix it for you to draw picket
duty tonight. The man who's got picket has been married only a month,
and spent three weeks of that in a safety-suit out in the woods. I'm
sure he'll relinquish to you the pleasure of a night's romp as picket
officer."
"Can you do it?"
"An O.G. can do anything, during those hours when his superior officers
are asleep," Hartford said.
"You're a buddy," Piacentelli said. "I'll give you free tutoring in
Kansan for the rest of our tour."
"_Do mo arigato gazaimashita_," Hartford said. "Thanks to your mumbling
the stuff in our room, I already talk like a Stinker." He stood up.
"I'm going down to the Board Room. Pick your companion for picket,
and come on down when you've dressed." Hartford bowed, Kansas-style.
"_Shitsurei itashimasu ga ..._" he said politely, and left to assume
his duties as O.G.