Free Norton, Andre - Anthology by Gates to Tomorrow (v1.0) Page B

normal, you know.
He said he left you one patient, chap by the name of Bickley or Bikeford or
something. Civilian, politician. You know about that
sort of thing. The lieutenant said Corbett would go places in the Service, had
fertile imagination, fertile, you know."
                   "Fertile," Donaldson chirped.
"Then you don't know?"
                   "Then I don't know what?" Admiral
Gates' eyes grew frosty. "Of course, I don't know. How should I know? What
should I know?"
                   Donaldson told him. "About a hundred days
out from Earth, they were just reaching terminal velocity, and their chlorophyl
went sour and started to decay."
                   "No trouble there,
ships always carry spare stuff. It's electron fever that gets me. Hate
the stuff, you know, high speed, space-free electrons going through the skin.
It's bad." He shivered and rubbed the wrinkled, red skin of his face.
                   His brows puckered, and his lids closed to
tiny slits. "Why did their chlorophyl go bad?"
                   "They had a psychopath aboard. A civilian who was placed in charge at the last minute to manage
their air. Had a record of police arrests a mile long, family shipped
him out here hoping he would turn over a new leaf or something." Donaldson
snorted rudely, "As if a psychopath would. This guy got mad at the ship
and all inside it and spit in their chlorophyl. It got infected but
quick!"
                   "But they had spare stuff."
                   "They didn't though," Donaldson
pointed out. "Bickford gave it all away. Traded it all
for some tools or something to gain favor with some rich dodo. They were
really in a spot."
                   "A psychopath aboard," the admiral
shook his head. "That's bad. They're dangerous. They crawl into positions
of responsibility, and then when you need 'em, they blow up, tear your ship to little
meteors. Happens too often. The space surgeons should
be more careful. They didn't have any spare chlorophyl, you say. Their own
lungs were going bad." He took a big swallow of beer. Then he exploded.
"Then how in the name of Great Space did they get here?"
                   "Well," Donaldson spoke slowly, as
if tasting every word. "Their stuff was decaying fast. They couldn't
recharge their tanks. Asphyxiation was shaking hands with the boys. The space
surgeon was set to make things easy at the end with poison in the food or
something. Then the skipper's fertile imagination comes through with a
roar."
                   "Don't say 'skipper,' "
Admiral Gates interrupted petulantly, "hate the word. Makes me
think of sail boats, sea, and water, things like that, you know. Go ahead, tell
the story," he wagged his finger, "but if Corbett has done something
wrong, I want the report in writing and officially and not over beer."
                  "Well, the captain," Donaldson said
in an annoyed tone, "got together with Stacker, the ship's space surgeon, and
they put half their crew to sleep with narcotol, left them that way for weeks,
I guess. Cut down oxygen expenditure, you see."
                   "And," Admiral Gates shouted.
                   "The rest of them turned gardener."
                   "What! You said gardener!"
                   "They turned gardeners, but big. They
pulled their sewage tanks, dried the stuff in the ship's ovens, spread the slew
over the recreation deck. They rigged actinic generators over
that, shunted their venous air straight through that room, and planted seed in
their synthetic ground. They had hydroponic gardens all over the
ship."
                   "Would it grow fast enough to convert
carbon dioxide to oxygen?"
                   "Well, it did," the port doctor said
succinctly. "They were having fresh, green vegetables from their own
garden by the time they planeted at