Part 3 (1/2)

”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.”