Free Bedlam Planet by John Brunner Page A

She still sounded doubtful.
    “We’re desperate,” Tai grunted. “Mark you, I don’t propose to quit yet. I have a few more ideas I can try. I have three of my best aides looking for a natural source of antibiotics which we could safely use as a food-additive, to depress the level of the bowel bacteria while we’re digesting our meals. That takes time, though, and a big test layout—I’ve had to turn over nearly the whole of the biolab here in the ship to that single project. But if we don’t have a major breakthrough inside—hmmm … Yes, inside two weeks, maximum—we’ll be beaten anyway unless we gamble.”
    “I suppose this is a ridiculous question,” Parvati said after a few moments’ thought. “But couldn’t you transfer some of our hydroponic plants to—?”
    “It’s a ridiculous question,” Tai interrupted. “We evaluated that along with every other possibility. I take it you were going to suggest starting a batch of hydroponically-grown plants outside the ship? We’re going to do that anyhow. It’ll still leave a gap before the crops start to yield, and another thing we’re short of is gibberellins—growth-accelerators—so we can’t kick them along artificially. And the established plants, inside the ship, are already being harvested at the highest level we can risk. What we have to do is at least
treble
our intake of fruit juices, vegetable juices, citrus pulp, salad leaves and what have you, on top of our ordinary diet. Not instead of: on top of!”
    Parvati shivered suddenly. She said involuntarily, “It makes my skin crawl!”
    “What does?”
    “I—well, I guess I’ve known since school that everyone carries a bunch of intestinal flora around. But I’ve never been consciously aware of it before. And there’s something almost nauseating about the idea that there are other creatures using your body, isn’t there?”
    “I tell you one thing,” Tai said. “If that’s the way youfeel, there are probably a hundred more of us who feel much, much worse.”
    He rose, gathered his sheaf of printouts, and headed for the elevator.
    Left alone, Parvati sat immobile for a minute or more. At length she reached out to the board of the computer and punched a one-word question:
scurvy?
    The printout began before she had taken her hand away. Words and phrases jumped at her, references to the skin discoloration caused by capillary leakage, easy bruising and slow healing, swollen and painful joints, bleeding gums and loosening teeth. When she did not halt the machine at that point, it progressed from the physical symptoms to the mental, citing at length Larrey’s classic observation regarding troops overcome by it who were so lethargic they paid no attention to the approach of the enemy.
    At that, she violently countermanded the question, swept up the printout, and regardless of the waste it entailed—for it should have been wiped and re-used—tore it across, and again, and again, until the multiple thickness was too much for her strength and she let the pieces fall and scatter like snowflakes across the polished metal floor.

FOUR THE MOON’S MY MISTRESS
    When short I have shorn my sowce face
    And swigged my horned barrél
    In an oaken inn do I pawn my skin
    As a suit of gilt apparel.
    The moon’s my constant mistress
    And the lonely owl my marrow.
    The flaming drake and the night-crow make
    Me music to my sorrow.
    While there I sing, “Any food, any feeding,
    Money, drink or clothing?
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid—
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.”
    —Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song

X
    A FTER A WEEK ALONE , time for Dennis blended into the soft contours of a dream. He had to consult his instruments before he could tell how long he had spent on the trip. He touched at island after island, one barely distinguishable from another, and made camp beside his boat—which he could run up the beaches on its hoverducts—on the triturated shells of diatom-like sea-creatures. Small animals with