Jack Wodhams - The Pickle Barrel [ss]

There is a difference between taking care of every known hazard - and taking care of every hazard ...

Hollins temporarily closed communications with landside. "That's the decision. Are there any objections?" He quizzed his two companions.

They exchanged glances, looked back at him. "It's what we're here for," Chaz Arnsted said. "Everything is A-1 perfect. Conditions could never be better. We can't turn back now."

"Florry?"

Dr. Florry Lewis thumbed his jawline. "As Chaz says, it's what we're here for. Everything A-1." He mused. "Now we are the biggest question mark."

"Well never be better equipped than we are now," Hollins said. "For us to fluff out might mean that the opportunity might never arise again. Naturally we can't duck, not really."

Arnsted grinned and shrugged. "We can't be afraid to start - not with all systems so beautifully on `Go.' To make some excuse to abort would have us suddenly look gone gutless."

"Yes," Florry nodded, a trifle re signedly, "the hope and trust of millions behind us - not to mention the capital investment. To say 'No' at this stage, without a so-called valid reason, would be to ask for la trine duty for the rest of our lives. But," and he frowned down out the window, "up here, with the break now imminent, some realization of the magnitude of what we're being asked to do is sinking in."

"It should be no worse than doing a tour in the Arctic, or upon some remote weather station some place." Hollins checked the countdown as landside paced their orbit. "Fine, everything is fine. We have no choice but to confirm." He did not sound unhappy. His gaze upon Florry held faint challenge. "In less than an hour now we shall reach the point of no return."

Dr. Florry Lewis acceded to the seeming inevitable. In some vague way he had not expected everything to go so well. Of course, he had been prepared, but ... he still had misgivings - as any sane person would have at the outset of such a wildly improbable venture.

They burnt their bridges, crossed their Rubicon, cut off their own retreat. They used precious fuel to swing them out and away, to send them on a long, long journey to carry out a manned survey of Mars.

Much had been built into the craft to alleviate the tedium of interminable travel through emptiness. Apart from fulfilling regular and demanding duties to satisfy home base, the crew took study subjects of their choice. They had films, music, standard entertainments, canned or direct from home. And among other items they had a diverting construction kit of sprung parts that could be played or made with great variety - a thousand-and-one-things for a boy to do.

Their living quarters were "unfinished," were designed to give them occupation and scope for individual fashioning in the arrangement and styling of light and malleable materials. They each had one hundred cubic meters of space. a third of which was private. For at least one hour in every twenty-four they were obliged to use the facilities of the "gym" to register their endeavors through Muntelsen's special regimen of weightless calisthenics.

Yet despite the best efforts of the planners to maximize the facilities in the space available, three hun dred cubic meters of room became very cramped after a while.

Hollins counted, "... Three ... two ... one ..." his scriber ticked at the last second, "Zero!" He stuck the pen to its holder. "One month." He gave a hip-twist against his straps to swivel his seat about. "Only another fifteen more to go, Florry."

Florry made uncheering reply. "If we can last that long. Lief, I don't like this creeping rise in the acetose level. It looks nothing much, but I still can't trace the source and we're not getting it under control."

"We're cycling it out, aren't we? Don't tell me you're worried about shortage already."

"There's a limit to our reserves and we've been drawing on them too heavily. We've got a long way to go still, and there are other flaws in our ecosystem that begin to bother me."

"Florry, you're beginning to repeat yourself. We've discussed this before, and I see no reason to change our position. The journey out is more important than the journey back. We will use up all the pure reserve if need be to ensure the best chance of keeping us in good shape to arrive. Coming back we can- run through it all again. I don't see us meeting any serious trouble, nothing we can't handle."

"No, I don't suppose you can."

"Florry," Hollins's tone had sharpness, "we have been equipped, thoroughly equipped, to take countermeasures against any contingency that might arise. A completely fresh atmosphere every two weeks till we get there, and a complete change of water every week. If we want to step up this rate, we can. I can see no reason at all for your pessimism."

"We don't have fresh pipes and taps, fresh tables, fresh eating ware, fresh paint work. Refreshing part does not refresh the whole."

"Florry, what do you expect? For God's sake stop persisting with your gloomy forecasts. We've been fine so far, and I intend that we shall stay that way. Just concentrate on your job, Florry, huh?" And now he sounded a mite plaintive. "And stop trying to raise specters."

Florry was getting more and more disposed to thinking that there were none so deaf as those who did not want to hear.

Three was a crowd. Often two was a crowd. Dr. Florry Lewis, as a semi-civilian, did his not-too successful best to overcome this disadvantage. All three were trained and very conscious of the need to practice tolerance. They needed all the forebearance they could muster so they saw less of each other whenever they had the choice.

Where he was not overruled, Florry's stipulations for con servation and usage were largely obeyed. His diets were adhered to, and the medicines he issued were religiously taken. It was his concern to see that they balanced activity and sleep. Unavoidably he was at times a nuisance with his insistences.

"Everything else is working fine, so why do you have to be a Jeremiah harping on our prospects of doom all the time?"

"This is the sixth time Chaz has got sick, and you're off-color again yourself. It's occurring with greater frequency."

"We're beating it, aren't we?" Hollins said. "There's plenty of medicine left in the cabinet yet, isn't there?"

"At our present rate of usage to combat anticipated woes - yes, more than adequate. But should there be a markedly increased demand in greater variety, then we could find ourselves in difficulty.-

"But is that likely? It's been nearly four months now, and by my reckoning we're not doing too badly at all."

"You don't seem to understand. You're switching in the new reserves too prematurely. Necessarily there's an overlap in the substitution, and we're not managing to leech out the CO content to an entirely satisfactory degree. Also we're not bleeding off static as we should, and I begin to suspect that we might be getting mild but unwanted reactions from this phenomenon."

"All right, Florry, all right, so you've told us. We can't help it very much, can we? If we stay longer with the stale this time it might not be healthy, so why do it yet? We can build our immunity later if we have to - that's what the big kit is for. We want to be fit when we come to make the Mars loop. If we are to suffer, we can do it after we turn for home, where if need be we can lock on the automatic."

Florry annoyed with his chin-fondling habit: "I don't like it. We should be putting our resistance to the test now. At the rate we're using it up, we won't have a whiff of fresh left after Mars. And it's in the later stages that we'll be needing it most."

"Florry, our retrieval system will take care of that - theoretically we should need nothing else."

"Oh, yes," Florry scoffed, "theoretically. That's why they gave us such generous basic reserves to alternate in the first place."

"That will be all, Dr. Lewis," Hollins snapped. And this adoption of curt formality was recognized warning, and closed the conversation.

"I don't know what it is," Florry said. "Could be fungus, could be some kind of bacteria. Whatever it is, it seems to be specific to something in the fibric."

Arnsted's nostrils dilated, "Haven't we anything to kill it off?"

"You don't listen to me, do you? I keep trying to explain the total impossibility of maintaining a sealed ecological balance over a prolonged period. Absolute sterility cannot be achieved, and we ourselves are just crawling with symbiotes that could go haywire if triggered by a bad upset."

"You give me a pain, Lewis," Arnsted said loudly. For the past couple months the two had been seeing as little of each other as possible, literally looking the other way if it could be managed. "You're always crabbing and never doing."

"Oh yes? If I wasn't doing, we'd all have been dead long since. I know you - you'd use some gunk to clean up the fibric, and so add more noxious fumes to our atmosphere."

"It couldn't be much worse than the queer smell it's got - it's like cheese."

"As far as I can tell, it is not injurious to health," Florry said. "On the other hand it's not wanted and we need to get rid of it - but not by methods which release toxic substances into our air."

"What's your purifying system for if it doesn't purify?" Arnsted shouted. "You're always making excuses. Excuses, excuses!"

"There's more to maintaining an environmental balance than running a few trays of hydroculture and keeping a pet goldfish," Florry answered stiffly. "Which means that here, right here, we only have a mere fraction of everything. We have too much and a preponderance of some things that we don't want, and more and more we are sadly missing so many things that we don't have."

"But," Arnsted's fists clenched, "we can't do anything about it, can we? We have to make do, do the best we can. It's your job!"

"Oh yes, I've had a free hand, no interference." Florry was sarcastic. "Even a spanking clean changeover doesn't do much good now. Can you remember how clean and crisp this scow was when we started? Since then practically every agent used attempting to keep her that way has added its own effluvia, and its combined reactive effluvia, to linger resistant to tanking. No matter how hard we try, our atmosphere steadily is becoming more dominated by those ingredients most resistant to extraction and purification."

"It hasn't killed us yet," Arnsted snarled.

"Give it time," Florry promised. "This vessel is a stagnant pool, filtrated ever more perniciously by the accumulation of contaminant juices."

"What can we do about it then?" Arnsted cried, losing his patience. "We've got to go on, and on, and on. Do you have to keep telling us that we're going to eventually choke on our own poison?"

"Would you rather not know?" Florry asked.

"Yes!" Arnsted spat. "I'd rather not know!"

Florry scowled and averted his face, and kicked himself off to his own quarters.

They hated each other's guts. They lived like monks now, were jealous for their privacy. Claustrophobia in a void. Each with a ritual, a defined territory. Duties designated to an exactness of responsibility, timing so very important.

As medic, Florry held sick parade twice every twenty-four hours.

"If you didn't have it yourself, I'd say you were doing it on purpose," Hollins said bitterly.

"You're not feeling any better?" Flurry looked as sallowly jaundiced as his patient.

"No - are you?" Hollins jibed. "Physician cure thyself." Gingerly he straightened his legs. "You've got to do something - I've only got to think about moving faster and the cramps get me." He exploded, "There must be something in the chest to fix a simple thing like this."

"It's not a simple thing." Florry had grown coolly dispassionate with the passage of time. "The answer that came through from base appears to have been no more reliable than their cure for our brand of diarrhea. Did the green pills give you any relief, by the way?"

"Partially," Hollins admitted. "But now I've got this rash around my neck and around my stomach. It can't be blasted measles - I had them when I was a toddler."

"Open up and let's have a look," Florry said professionally.

Hollins complied irritably. He had lost a lot of faith in his medical man, but he was too far removed from alternatives to seek to change. "You've got to get us fit, Florry," he growled. "In another week we'll be on top of Mars. At all costs we've got to be in maximum shape to handle that twist and traverse. If we foul up, I'll never forgive you.

"We've been lucky not to have something like this happen sooner."

"What is it?"

The approach and surveillance of Mars had occupied them, uplifted them with a renewed sense of usefulness and vitality. Their contact with home base had shown a marked upcurve in enthusiasm and duration, and they had tackled their programmed tasks meticulously and right on schedule.

For a while it had been quite like old times, and the grinding dreariness of the past months had magically fallen away. They'd had something to do, their job, their tremendous reward for their stolid and enduring patience. Sickness and travail had become of no moment.

Now there was anticlimax. Mars was receding. It was over. The sustaining anticipation and eagerness was all used up and the long, long voyage home stretched with unattractive bleakness before them.

"I don't know what it is," Florry said. "It could be a deficiency, but it's more probably an unwanted additive."

Hollins studied the radach leaves, poking to rub at the pale copper veins. "Is it still edible?"

"I can detect nothing harmful," Florry admitted, "but it's obviously different. Some ingredient has changed its structure."

"And you don't know what it might be?"

"It could be anything. We're starting to go through our reserves for the second time, and no matter how we try, we can't get our recycling equipment to better than ninety-eight percent proficiency."

Florry picked up a leaf to twiddle. "Natural counterbalance is absent. There is an interdependence between the needs of humans and the needs of the things that humans need. We share and need a common environment. We cannot emulate the vast entirety of terrestrial resource in a compartment no bigger than a trailer. The winds, the waters, the enormous diversity - we can contain hut a fraction. And in this fraction we contain there is part that hungers for what is absent, and the other part which is overloaded by the proliferation of certain commodities normally dispersed and subdued by alternative absorption processes."

Hollins fidgeted. "All right, all right, so you've told us."

"I have." Florry was not of a mind to self-deprecation. "Everything becomes affected, one to another, from our ingenious microbiological purifiers, through our salad box, and so up through to ourselves. Uncomplicated organisms can adjust and adapt, like these leaves. But we are more complex, and we're less able to modify rapidly to insidiously deteriorating circumstances."

"Well," Hollins shoved the vegetable aside, "we can do without it. It was only meant to supplement our diet. We've got plenty of hydrate left."

"I disagree," Florry said. "Anything that diminishes the variety in our intake is to be avoided."

"God alone knows that all our food seems to taste the same anyway," Hollins grumbled. "Don't give us a lecture on your parallels with scurvy and other ailments peculiar to isolated ancient mariners."

"The parallel is there." Florry asserted. "We're not on salt pork and ships biscuit, but we have the monotony of a latter-day equivalent. Everything starts to taste the same because, no matter how clear and seemingly aerated, our water supply is acquiring an ineradicable taint. And it will get worse."

"Thanks," Hollins grated. "for letting us know."

They did not know what they looked like. That is, they were not conscious of the steady change in each other. Sallow to gray, figures trimming from lean to gaunt. Some carelessness in dress and tidying of beards.

The struggle to live now became most acute. The interflow between base and ship became almost entirely devoted to medical enumeration and diagnoses. Specialists and experts mooted answers to the problems. answers that calculably raised other problems. Much sweat, much brainwork, the questions became more involved and devious, the suggestions to correction became more ingenious and sophisticated.

"We're fine, fine. O.K., fine," Arnsted slammed the microphone hack into its socket, "just fine!" He glared at Hollins. "Who do we think we're kidding. huh?" He shivered. "We know it's a front, and they know it's a front, yet we still sign off happy happy as though everything is running smoothly."

"Everything is running smoothly. We're turning in a copybook operation, navigationally on the button, a sweet performance." Hollins was chagrined. "But we arc going to pieces. My eyes keep going funny, and my fingers sometimes feel like bananas."

"It's his fault," Arnsted mut tered. "He should have spotted that blown gasket in the number four filtrator long ago. And he's not handling the distillation properly."

"He's doing his best," Hollins temporized grudgingly. "The way his hands and feet have swollen up it's a wonder he can do anything."

"That's right, defend him," Arnsted chafed. "You're on his side. You've been on his side right from the start. Well, he's an incompetent, and he's a Jonah, and he's killing us!"

Hollins grabbed his arm. "Shut up!" He pushed. "Now listen, Chaz - we've got enough troubles. You think you can do his job better, huh? You want to take it on?" He snorted. "I think no more of his ability than I think of yours - but in this situation he's all we've got. I need him if you don't."

Arnsted was jumpy with frustration. "It's all right for them at home to theorize. Counteractants," he jeered, "muck! Injections, injections - what good do they do?"

"Some, we can hope. We'd probably he worse off without them."

Arnsted sneered his contempt and swung away. "Muck! it's all muck!"

"We've got used to it." Florry said. "It's amazing how the senses become dulled by constancy in excess. But the olfactometer registers higher every day. This vessel is becoming worse than a sewer. From the water to the food to the air, we just can't get rid of it, or stop its sure increase."

"We're surviving," Hollins said doggedly. "So we're living in a pigsty. If we can't beat them then we have to join them, right?" His face had some long-absent color, and he seemed to be just a little bit drunk.

"We must do our best to adapt ourselves to prevailing conditions, yes," Florry agreed, "even if it means taking poisons to combat the poisons. Our organs need all the assistance they can get."

"Exactly," Hollins concurred. "We mustn't give up too easily."

"No. This latest prescription seems the best so far."

"It does, it does," Hollins nodded. "I feel better. Not a hundred percent, but better than for a long time. Headache's mostly gone, can do most of the exercises again, I... I feel a lot better."

"Gums still sore?"

"Not so bad, not so bad. But Florry, I've ... we've got a bit of hope back, haven't we?"

Florry scratched into his beard. "Specific causes can give rise to specific cures. The impurities after all cover a very narrow range. Giving the pertinent organs some booster assistance to cope with is not too difficult after all. I mean, we can he fairly sure by now of the disease dangers that don't exist on hoard, and this gives us at least some latitude to manipulate the metabolism."

"Uhuh." Hollins frowned.

"Halfway home. We've got to last out. How are the reserves holding?"

Florry became grave. "We'll start going through for the third time in another eighty hours. If we can again make each batch last a week before going on to the next, it should be just enough to get us home ..."

Chaz Arnsted began to hallucinate badly, thinking himself swimming in the sea, or skiing, or dangling from a parachute seeing land swinging below. He became hard to reach. His reaction to treatment was different from that of the other two, who seemed to enjoy a certain mutuality in physical symptoms and response.

Florry sweated and labored, himself suffering from double-vision much of the time. Test advice for remedies continued to flow in from base.

The ship was tuned and fully relinquished to be brought in by ground control. The crew concentrated on keeping themselves alive. Stale air and water cycled through the purifying system for a total of four weeks were replaced by stale air and water that had only been cycled through the purifying system for three weeks. This "fresh" air always smelled good, and the change-over was a welcome weekly event.

Florry ignored the olfactometer these days - he was sure that it was not working properly anyway. They were growing no green plants now, their aqua-culture providing them cress of a grown black variety, or radach and suchlike of an autumnal-colored foliage. Despite this the salad was eaten for its neutral flavor, to meagerly offset the deadly menu of prefabrications. And the menu of pills and shots to help them fight and enable them to live with their tight and exclusive environment.

It was an uphill battle of trial and error.

Two weeks from home.

It didn't seem possible. Arnsted was up and about again, and now somewhat on the defensive over the embarrassment of his lapse. Their spirits were reviving. They had been through hell and had feared the worst. Had lived in hell. Were living in hell.

"I wouldn't have believed it," Hollins said. "Not even a couple of weeks ago. Modern science, modern medicine - given time they can crack any problem. These last few days I've felt great, absolutely great."

"Without question the nearness of home has helped," Florry allowed, "but there can be no doubt but that we've struck the right combination to counter the debilitating effects of the bulk of noxious substances ingested. My bodily tone has improved almost to what I might consider normal."

"Well, I haven't felt so good in weeks," Hollins confessed. "In months. Not since we left. And maybe Mars." He wiped at his mouth with both hands, stroked brusquely at his short beard. "A month ago I'd have said we weren't going to make it - but now I think we might be able to take a hand in bringing her in."

"I don't see why not." Florry was uncharacteristically optimistic. "We seem to have the problem licked - or at least well under control. It's been a frightening challenge, and I must admit that I've been very much afraid that we wouldn't win through."

"And you think we might now?" Hollins's mood was cordial.

"I think so. I think we've mastered this environment. The weeks remaining should see us strengthening this ascendancy rather than losing it again."

"We're not likely to be hit by another type of sickness you think?"

"With luck, no. At least, nothing drastic. We seem at last to have become acclimatized to what there is. A body either recovers, or it does not. If it recovers, it generally signifies that the body has developed a fair measure of immunity."

"Thank God." Hollins held his own rib cage and took a deep breath. "It's been hell, Florry, absolute hell." Now he smacked his palms together. "Two more weeks. They're going to drag. I feel like a kid itching for Christmas ..."

The Earth getting bigger - oh bless you, baby! So lovely. It made the mouth dry, numbed the mind to just looking. Home, going home - it made the heart ache, hanging there, gradually, so gradually growing, causing the throat to constrict uncontrollably, the limbs to tremble in fondness of longing. Earth enormous, beautiful, unbelievable, so lovely and desirable as to be frightening in its massive meaning of home.

It had been so long, they had been away so long. The folk down there had ridden with them, followed them all the way, had looked and listened and sympathized and helped. They had been away too long, far too long. It was good to be back, so incredible to be back, so fantastic to be back.

The communications channels were jammed. But care, care! No mistakes, not now, easy. Easy, boy, easy, not a chance of a slip, bring her home, bring her home.

Perfect. To Mars and back. Functionally perfect, one hundred percent. A beautiful piece of work.

There was a rush to be at the opening of the doors of the sealed craft, to see and be near these three tough and hardy adventurers. And the trio of intrepid explorers were no less eager to escape their cage and set foot once more upon Earth. It was a poignant, highly-charged moment.

The willing hands of a number of privileged servicemen assisted at the opening of the doors. And briefly the travelers were seen framed in the doorway. Then the nearest servicemen reeled back, fending, covering their faces, swerving away from the awful reeking stench that issued from the returned vehicle.

The three voyagers tottered out and forward, and as they breathed the tangy air that breezed in off the sea, their faces squinched. They found themselves gasping, their breathing apparatus having become totally unaccustomed to dealing with such a disparate quality. This ocean air was an alien substance, and the shock to their drug-suppressed, modified and hybridized lung tissue was tremendous.

They died, of course.

DEADLY POISON

Water is poisonous to all mammals. Oxygen is corrosive-destructive to mammalian lung tissues. Quite a number of children have been killed by swallowing iron compounds. Less than a gram of vitamin A or D is lethal.

Arsenic and strychnine are excellent tonics.

Recently, it's been discovered that selenium - long known as a violently toxic material - is essential to mammalian life. "White muscle disease" of cattle, sheep and horses turns out to be a selenium-deficiency disease: selenium has been found to cure muscular dystrophy in some animal experiments.

Potassium chloride is essential in human metabolism. An injection of potassium chloride can cause almost instant death, and leave no trace of the cause of death.

In each case. it's not a matter of what alone, but of how much, and in what period of time. Of course mammals drown if water gets into the lungs; however, water is a true poison, if simply ingested in too great quantity. Too much water dilutes the ionic analysis of the blood below the livable level, and causes death. Oxygen, pure and under high pressure, produces oxygen pneumonia; remember that while we're adapted to an oxygen atmosphere, there are limits to any adaptation - and of all the elements in the universe, only fluorine is more corrosive than oxygen.

And while we need iron in our blood - as we need vitamins - again there are limits. Iron isn't ordinarily considered toxic, but children have got into Mama's iron pills and swallowed a quantity of them as to be fatal.

The rash of crepe-hanging that took off on the toxic properties of the pesticides - the Silent Spring Syndrome - centers around the muddy thinking that says "if a thing can be lethal, then that thing is a deadly poison."

Can you name anything that can't be lethal under any circumstances?