the others by disposition, and his lean frame didn’t use as much energy. So, when the big hulking spaceman appeared at the door of his office with his cap in his hands, he was inclined to be less brusque than he might have been.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked. He had been correlating notes in his journal with the thought in the back of his mind that he would never finish it, but he felt that a small respite might be relaxing.

MacNeil came in and looked nervously around at the plain walls of the pre-fab plastic dome-hut as though seeking consolation from them. Then he straightened himself in the approved military manner and looked at the doctor.

“You Dr. Piller? Sir?”

“Pilar,” said the scientist in correction. “If you’re looking for the medic, you’ll want Dr. Smathers, over in G Section.”

“Oh, yessir,” said MacNeil quickly, “I know that. But I ain’t sick.” He didn’t feel that sick, anyway. “I’m Spaceman Second MacNeil, sir, from B Company. Could I ask you something, sir?”

Pilar sighed a little, then smiled. “Go ahead, spaceman.”

MacNeil wondered if maybe he’d ought to ask the doctor about his sacroiliac pains, then decided against it. This wasn’t the time for it. “Well, about the food. Uh … Doc, can men eat monkey food all right?”

Pilar smiled. “Yes. What food there is left for the monkeys has already been sent to the men’s mess hall.” He didn’t add that the lab animals would be the next to go. Quick-frozen, they might help eke out the dwindling food supply, but it would be better not to let the men know what they were eating for a while. When they got hungry enough, they wouldn’t care.

But MacNeil was plainly puzzled by Pilar’s answer. He decided to approach the stuff as obliquely as he knew how.

“Doc, sir, if I … I uh … well—” He took the bit in his teeth and plunged ahead. “If I done something against the regulations, would you have to report me to Captain Bellwether?”

Dr. Pilar leaned back in his chair and looked at the big man with interest. “Well,” he said carefully, “that would all depend on what it was. If it was something really … ah … dangerous to the welfare of the expedition, I’d have to say something about it, I suppose, but I’m not a military officer, and minor infractions don’t concern me.”

MacNeil absorbed that “Well, sir, this ain’t much, really—I ate something I shouldn’t of.”

Pilar drew down his brows. “Stealing food, I’m afraid, would be a major offense, under the circumstances.”

MacNeil looked both startled and insulted. “Oh, nossir! I never swiped no food! In fact, I’ve been givin’ my chow to my buddies.”

Pilar’s brows lifted. He suddenly realized that the man before him looked in exceptionally good health for one who had been on a marginal diet for two weeks. “Then what have you been living on?”

“The monkey food, sir.”

“Monkey food?”

“Yessir. Them greenish things with the purple spots. You know—them fruits you feed the monkeys on.”

Pilar looked at MacNeil goggle-eyed for a full thirty seconds before he burst into action.

“No, of course I won’t punish him,” said Colonel Fennister. “Something will have to go on the record, naturally, but I’ll just restrict him to barracks for thirty days and then recommend him for light duty. But are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” said Pilar, half in wonder.

Fennister glanced over at Dr. Smathers, now noticeably thinner in the face. The medic was looking over MacNeil’s record. “But if that fruit kills monkeys and rats and guinea pigs, how can a man eat it?”

“Animals differ,” said Smathers, without taking his eyes off the record sheets. He didn’t amplify the statement.

The colonel looked back at Pilar.

“That’s the