Nor would it be politic to use the story as a lever to pry concessions out of Cimon. If Mark’s correction of Bureau “stupidity”—that would undoubtedly be the opposition’s phrasing—were overpublicized, the Bureau would look bad. If they could be grateful, they could be vengeful, too. Retaliation against the Mnemonic Service would not be too petty a thing to expect.
Still—
Sheffield stood up with quick decision. “All right, Mark. I’ll get you out to the settlement site. I’ll get us both out there. Now you sit down and wait for me. Promise you’ll try nothing on your own.”
“All right,” said Mark. He sat down on his bunk again.
“Well, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?” said Cimon. The astrophysicist sat at his desk, on which papers and film formed rigidly arranged heaps about a small Macfreed integrator and watched Sheffield step over the threshold.
Sheffield sat carelessly down upon the tautly yaaked top-sheet of Cimon’s bunk. He was aware of Cimon’s annoyed glance in that direction and it did not worry him. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.
He said, “I have a quarrel with your choice of men to go to the expedition site. It looks as though you’ve picked two men for the physical sciences, and three for the biological sciences. Right?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose you think you’ve covered the ground like a Danielski ovospore at perihelion.”
“Oh, space! Have you anything to suggest?”
“I would like to come along myself.”
“Why?”
“You have no one to take care of the mental sciences.”
“The menial sciences! Good galaxy! Dr. Sheffield, five men are quite enough to risk. As a matter of fact, doctor, you and your… uh… ward were assigned to the scientific personnel of this ship by order of the Bureau of Outer Provinces without any prior consultation of myself. I’ll be frank—if I had been consulted, I would have advised against you. I don’t see the function of mental science in an investigation such as this, which, after all, is purely physical. It is too bad that the Bureau wishes to experiment with Mnemonics on an occasion such as this. We can’t afford scenes like that one with Rodriguez.”
Sheffield decided that Cimon did no I know of Mark’s connection with the original decision to send out the expedition.
He sat upright, hands on knees, elbows cocked outward and let a freezing formality settle over him. “So you wonder about the function of menial science in an investigation such as this, Dr. Cimon. Suppose I told you that the end of the first settlement might possibly be explained on a simple, psychological basis.”
“It wouldn’t impress me. A psychologist is a man who can explain anything and prove nothing.” Cimon smirked like a man who had made an epigram and was proud of it.
Sheffield ignored it. He said, “Let me go into a little detail. In what way is Junior different from every one of the eighty-three thousand inhabited worlds?”
“Our information is as yet incomplete. I cannot say.”
“Oh, cobber-vital s. You had the necessary information before you ever came here. Junior has two suns.”
“Well, of course.” But the astrophysicist allowed a trace of discomfiture to enter his expression.
“Colored suns, mind you. Colored suns. Do you know what that means? It means that a human being yourself or myself, standing in the full glare of the two suns, would cast two shadows. One blue-green, one red-orange. The length of each would naturally vary with the time of day. Have you taken the trouble to verify the color distribution in those shadows? The what-do-you-call-em—reflection spectrum?”
“I presume,” said Cimon, loftily, “they’d be-about the same as the radiation spectra of the suns. What are you getting at?”
“You should check. Wouldn’t the air absorb some wave-lengths? And the vegetation? What’s left? And take Junior’s moon, Sister. I’ve been watching it in the last few nights. It’s in colors, too, and the colors change position.”
“Well, of course. It runs through its phases independently with each sun.”
“You haven’t changed its reflection spectrum, either, have you?”
“We have that somewhere. There are no points of interest about it. Of what interest is it to you, anyway?”
“My dear Dr. Cimon. It is a well established psychological fact that combinations of red and green colors exert a deleterious effect on mental stability. We have a case here where the red-green chromopsychic picture—to use a technical term—is inescapable and is presented under circumstances which seem most unnatural to the human mind. It is quite possible that chromopsychosis could reach the fatal level by inducing hypertrophy of the trinitarian follicles with consequent cerebric catatonia.”
Cimon looked floored. He said, “I never heard of such a thing.”
“Naturally not,” said Sheffield—it was his turn to be lofty. “You are not a psychologist. Surely you are not questioning my professional opinion.”
“No, of course not. But it’s quite plain from the last reports of the expedition that they were dying of something that sounded like a respiratory disease.”
“Correct, but Rodriguez denies that and you accepted his professional opinion.”
“I didn’t say it was a respiratory disease. I said it sounded like one. Where does your red-green cromothingumbob come in?”
Sheffield shook his head. “You laymen have your misconceptions. Granted that there is a physical effect, it still does not imply that there may not be a mental cause. The most convincing point about my theory is that red-green chromopsychosis has been recorded to exhibit itself first as a psychogenic respiratory infection. I take it you are not acquainted with psychogenics.”
“No. It’s out of my field.”
“Well, yes. I should say so. Now my own calculations show me that under the heightened oxygen tension of this world the psychogenic respiratory infection is both inevitable and particularly severe. For instance, you’ve observed the moon—Sister, I mean—in the last few nights.”
“Yes, I have observed Ilium.” Cimon did not forget Sister’s official name, even now.
“You watched it closely and over lengthy periods? Under magnification?”
“Yes.” Cimon was growing uneasy.
“Ah,” said Sheffield, “now the moon colors in the last few nights have been particularly virulent. Surely you must be noticing just a small inflammation of the mucous membrane of the nose, a slight itching in the throat. Nothing painful yet, I imagine. Have you been coughing or sneezing? Is it a little hard to swallow?”
“I believe I—” Cimon swallowed, then drew in his breath sharply. He was testing.
Then he sprang to his feet, fists clenched and mouth working. “Great galaxy, Sheffield, you had no right to keep quiet about this. I can feel it now. What do I do, Sheffield? It’s not incurable, is it? Damn it, Sheffield”—his voice went shrill—“why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“Because,” said Sheffield, calmly, “there’s not a word of truth in anything I’ve said. Not one word. There’s no harm in colors. Sit down, Dr. Cimon. You’re beginning to look rather foolish to say the least.”
“You said,” said Cimon, thoroughly confused, and in a voice that was beginning to strangle, “that it was your professional opinion that—”
“My professional opinion! Space and little comets, Cimon, what’s so magic about a professional opinion. A man can be lying or he can just plain be ignorant, even about the final details of his own specially. A professional can be wrong because he’s ignorant of a neighboring specialty. He may be certain he’s right and still be wrong.
“Look at you. You know all about what makes the universe tick and I’m lost completely except that I know that a star is something that twinkles and a light-year is something that’s long. And yet you’ll swallow gibberish-psychology that a freshman student of mentics would laugh his head off at. Don’t you think, Cimon, it’s time we worried less about professional opinion and more about over-all co-ordination?”