Free Bedlam Planet by John Brunner

was trying to do when he brought up that particular red herring at the progress meeting, but he knows, I’m sure, that what I said then about natural ascorbic acid here being as rare as copper-based globin on Earth was only half the truth. The way the chemistry of life is set up on Asgard, the bug we’ve acquired is a maverick, on a par with the bacteria on Earth who can live in boiling sulphur springs. In the ordinary course of events it wouldn’t use ascorbic acid. There wouldn’t
be
any for it to use.
    “What we can do, of course, is the other thing I mentioned: ingest a certain amount of the substance this bug actually prefers, which our own bodies ignore, in the hope that it will then take the line of least resistance and leave our vitamin alone. But—!” He uttered an explosive compounded of frustration and rage. “We lost our big fractionator, which would enable us to purify the stuff. We lost: our Roberts synthesiser, which would enable us to go one better and tailor the native molecule so that it actually
became
ascorbic acid, the ideal solution. As things stand, we have precisely one means of converting the local raw materials in large quantities: our plants, which do the job cheerfully and what’s more retain in their leaves and fruits enough of the original substance to content the bug in our bowels—so far as we can estimate.”
    “In that case, where’s the problem?” Parvati demanded. “None of your test animals have been significantly upset by the soil-grown diet they’ve been eating, have they?”
    “True enough. But that’s not proof that we can do the same, Parvati! A human being is not a rat or even a pig, which eats substantially the same kind of diet as a man. Primate metabolism differs from other animals’—for example, we can’t oxidise urea to allantoin before we excrete it. We lost our rhesus macaques with the
Pinta,
of course, so … Anyhow, if one compound direct from the soil manages to enter the edible portions of our crops in detectable quantities, others may be doing soin amounts too small to detect with our available equipment.”
    He fixed Parvati with his eyes, his expression almost belligerent.
    “How have you been lately? Well?”
    “I have a bruise on my leg which doesn’t seem to be healing properly,” she admitted. “That’s indicative of scurvy, isn’t it? And I found blood on my toothbrush this morning.”
    “Yes, I’m not surprised. But, you see, if I say go ahead and issue native-grown food at the mess, for all I know I may be poisoning the entire colony.”
    There was a dead pause. At length Parvati said, “You’ve got a choice of evils, in other words.”
    “Yes. To risk our energy being sapped by scurvy, or to risk something which could be considerably worse.” Tai shrugged. “And I haven’t got any more sensitive piece of equipment than one of our own bodies. When I mentioned the need for volunteers at the meeting, I saw you bridle—don’t deny it! You control yourself marvellously, but we’re old friends and you don’t have a monopoly of insight into other people. Yet I don’t see any alternative.”
    “Anything which tends to separate us into classes is potentially dangerous. Our stability is precarious in spite of our apparently good progress. We dare not let any kind of elite develop among us which isn’t based squarely on superior knowledge or experience. If we were to start splitting up into brave volunteer versus cowardly shirker, or expendable test subject versus indispensable expert, we could find ourselves factionalised in next to no time.” Parvati uttered the warning in a flat, emotionless tone.
    “So what else are we to do?” Tai snapped. “Look, could we not avoid the risk you’re worried about by drawing lots, or matching to a random number series generated by one of the computers?”
    “If you feel we’re that desperate … Well, I don’t likeit, but it might be better than an appeal for volunteers, I suppose.”