huddled figure at his feet. “We were coming back with moss samples and she started groaning, and then she doubled up and went down like a rock. Cramps, she says, and it seems severe. Help me with this, Chief.”
We got the helmet off and Sally Dieter looked awful, face pinched up in pain and her skin sweaty and grey. Scared us both right away. When we unzipped her suit she screamed and writhed around like a crazy person, and that really scared us. We carried Sally in her suit, groaning and in a fetal position, all the way to sick bay where Doc Joan hustled us outside before she even made an examination. We went back to the lock to talk to the rest of the botany team, but they only scratched their heads. One minute Sally was fine, the next she was down on the ground yelling about pain in her stomach.
Joan came up two hours later to ask a bunch of questions and tell us Sally was seriously ill and she was doing some blood work on her. Whatever was wrong, she said, it was rough stuff.
The following day, it started happening to other members of the crew.
* * * *
It was just me, Harry and Doc Joan having coffee in the mess room the morning of day eight on Emerald. John Redcloud poured the thick, black stuff for us and munched down his usual breakfast of dry toast. “Anyone for eggs?” he asked hopefully.
“Sure,” said Harry, and John served him up a plate.
“We’ve got to radio Roosevelt and get a pickup,” said Joan, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve got them stacked up in there like cordwood and I need lab help. I don’t even have a decent microscope, and nothing is visible on the plates.”
“You’re sure it’s some kind of bug?” asked Harry, brushing mini-rat turds off his eggs before eating a forkful of them. John frowned at him.
“Has to be,” said Joan. “Probably viral, the way they keep spiking fevers, and the penicillin isn’t doing a thing.
“Sally went up to a hundred-five and was crazy with pain until I got her in the cold tub and then in a few minutes she was coherent again, asking about the others and wanting to know if her plant samples were stowed. Fifteen minutes out of the bath she was raving again and I had to restrain her. It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t keep shuttling six people to and from the cold bath. I haven’t had any sleep in two days and I’m out of ideas.”
“Even if we call now,” I put in, “we can’t get Roosevelt back for maybe a week. They’ve followed those inner planets half way around Procyon by now.”
“Terrific,” said Joan. “Another day of no sleep, making ice as fast as I can.” And then she seemed to brighten. “Maybe if the sick bay were cooler they’d at least get some rest. Cold seems to help.”
Harry swallowed the last of his eggs. “The four of us are okay and we’ve been in close proximity to the others. Whatever it is can’t be airborne and if we brought it in with us the UV had no effect. There has to be a common denominator, and we’re not seeing it.”
“You, Sally, Hadley, Estevez and Ono have been outside,” I said, “and the rest of us have been in here the whole time. It’s either airborne or contact, and I’ve handled the suits, too.”
“Whatever,” said Joan, and she ran off to turn down the thermostat in sick bay while Harry, John and I sat drinking coffee and puzzling at the table.
An hour later, Sally sat up in bed, screamed once very loud—and died.
The next morning, Harry was sick and out of his head like the rest of Joan’s patients.
* * * *
We were too scared to go outside so we put Sally in the aft lock and purged it good with nitrogen. The first good thing to happen in days was when I got Roosevelt on the horn and told them our troubles. The bad news was it’d be six days before we got a pickup. Hang on, they said, and that’s when I discovered pretty Doc Joan could swear for five minutes without repeating herself. After she’d calmed down she tried to encourage John and me. “The rest of them are doing better, but I’ve got sick bay down to fifty degrees. All we need now is pneumonia, but this bug doesn’t seem to like low temperature. It’s evolved with the hundred-fifty degrees outside. I still can’t get a culture. Come on, guys, there’s three of us left here. What’s the common link in all this? Think!”
So I thought. Five had been outside and five had not, and Harry had taken sick days after the others. We’d all been breathing the same air, and John usually washed our dishes and utensils in cold water. When someone got a cold we all got it, but not this time. John and I sat there staring at each other while Joan went back to start her patients on some kind of antibiotic, but she was back in a flash. “Well? Any ideas?”
“Not a clue,” I said, and Joan sighed, looked real tired, her eyes kind of puffy. John leaned back against the stove and folded his arms across his chest, the look on his face unreadable as usual.
“Eggs,” said John Redcloud.
“What?” said Joan tiredly.
“They all been eatin’ eggs—except us three. Harry had ’em just yesterday and now he’s sick too.”
Joan looked startled, and me I was thinking fast and he was right. The entire botany team had fueled up on eggs the morning after planet fall, cleaning out the whole pan so there was nothing left for anyone else, but John had been making enough for the whole crew and more since then. John’s a vegetarian and Joan is like me; breakfast is coffee and maybe some toast. And at that instant, something clicked in my head.
“What are the black specks on the eggs, John? Pepper?”
“Don’t use pepper, just a little salt. People’re picky about eggs.”
“You know what I mean. The crew’s been kidding you about it. Rat turds? Look like little peppercorns, they do.”
“Nothin’ I put in,” said John, looking offended. “Maybe some burn from the oven.”
Now Doc Joan was suddenly interested. “You cook the eggs in the oven?”
“Naw. I got only one skillet, not enough for everyone. I scramble eggs in relay and warm ’em in the oven.”
Now Joan seemed real interested. “Show me the oven, John.”
“Right here,” he said, and opened it. I took one look and decided it needed cleaning, but Joan pushed me aside and got down on her knees to look all around inside the thing. Those black specks were scattered around on the bottom of the oven, but it was when Joan looked up at where the heating coils were that she gasped. “Oh, my God. Carl, get me a bowl or a cup—and a spoon, quick. I think I’ve found our bugs.”
I was quick about it and in a second she was holding a cup up inside the oven, scraping away with the spoon while John and I exchanged curious looks. She put the cup on the table and we looked inside.
Rat turds. Half a cup-full.
“They’re thick on the oven ceiling, clusters following the shape of the coil, and they’re growing there. One of them popped open while I was inside. Close the oven door, John!” It was more than curiosity in Joan’s voice, now. It was fear, and I remember thinking that the stuff in that cup was nothing to be fooled with. I stepped back a little from the table.
“I’ve
