Solution?
Not quite. Vernadsky came in a few hours later and said, calmly, “Copper, lead, and mercury.”
“What?” said Cimon.
“Those plants. They’re high in heavy metals. Probably an evolutionary development to keep from being eaten.”
“The first settlers—” began Cimon.
“No. That’s impossible. Most of the plants are perfectly all right. Just these and no one would eat them.”
“How do you know?”
“The rats didn’t.”
“They’re just rats.”
It was what Vernadsky was waiting for. He said, dramatically, “You may hail a modest martyr to science. I tasted the stuff.”
“What?” yelled Novee.
“Just a lick. Don’t worry. I’m the careful-type martyr. Anyway, the stuff is as bitter as strychnine. What do you expect? If a plant is going to fill itself with lead just to keep the animals off, what good does it do the plant to have the animal find out by dying after he’s eaten it? A little bitter stuff in addition acts as a warning. The combination warning and punishment does the trick.”
“Besides,” said Novee, “it wasn’t heavy metal poisoning that killed the settlers. The symptoms aren’t right for it.”
The rest knew the symptoms well enough. Some in lay terms and some in more technical language. Difficult and painful breathing that grew steadily worse. That’s what it amounted to.
Fawkes put down his fork. “Look here, suppose this stuff contains some alkaloid that paralyzes the nerves that control the lung muscles.”
“Rats have lung muscles,” said Vernadsky. “It doesn’t kill them.”
“Maybe it’s a cumulative thing.”
“All right. All right. Any time your breathing gels painful, go back to ship rations and see if you improve. But no fair counting psychosomatics.”
Sheffield grunted, “That’s my job. Don’t worry about it.”
Fawkes drew a deep breath, then another. Glumly, he put another piece of meat into his mouth.
At one corner of the table, Mark Annuncio, eating more slowly than the rest, thought of Norris Vinograd’s monograph on “Taste and Smell.” Vinograd had made a taste-smell classification based on enzyme inhibition patterns within the taste buds. Annuncio did not know what that meant exactly but he remembered the symbols, their values, and the descriptive definitions.
While he placed the taste of the stew to three subclassifications, he finished his helping. His jaws ached faintly because of the difficult chewing.
Evening was approaching and Lagrange I was low in the sky. It had been a bright day, reasonably warm, and Boris Vernadsky felt pleased. He had made interesting measurements and his brilliantly colored sweater had showed fascinating changes from hour to hour as the suns’ positions shifted.
Right now, his shadow was a long red thing, with the lowest third of it gray, where the Lagrange II shadow coincided. He held out one arm and it cast two shadows. There was a smeared orange one some fifteen feet away and a denser blue one in the same direction but only five feet away. If he had time, he could work out a beautiful set of shadowgrams.
He was so pleased with the thought that he felt no resentment at seeing Mark Annuncio skirting his trail in the distance.
He put down his nucleometer and waved his hand. “Come here!”
The youngster approached diffidently. “Hello.”
“Want something?”
“Just… just watching.”
“Oh? Well, go ahead and watch. Do you know what I’m doing?”
Mark shook his head.
“This is a nucleometer,” said Vernadsky. “You jab it into the ground like this. It’s got a force-held generator at the top so it will penetrate any rock.” He leaned on the nucleometer as he spoke, and it went two feet into the stony outcropping. “See?”
Mark’s eyes shone, and Vernadsky felt pleased. The chemist said, “Along the sides of the uniped are microscopic atomic furnaces, each of which vaporizes about a million molecules or so in the surrounding rock and decomposes them into atoms. The atoms are then differentiated in terms of nuclear mass and charge and the results may be read off directly on the dials above. Do you follow all that?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s a good thing to know.”
Vernadsky smiled, and said, “We end up with figures on the different elements in the crust. It’s pretty much the same on all oxygen/water planets.”
Mark said, seriously, “The planet with the most silicon I know of is Lepta with 32.765 per cent. Earth is only 24.862. That’s by weight.”
Vernadsky’s smile faded. He said, dryly, “You have the figures on all the planets, pal?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. I don’t think they’ve all been surveyed. Bischoon and Spenglow’s ‘Handbook of Planetary Crusts’ only lists figures for twenty-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four planets. I know all those, of course.”
Vernadsky, with a definite feeling of deflation, said, “Now Junior has a more even distribution of elements than is usually met up with. Oxygen is low. So far my average is a lousy 42.113. So is silicon, with 22.722. The heavy metals are ten to a hundred times as concentrated as on Earth. That’s not just a local phenomenon, either, since Junior’s over-all density is five per cent higher than Earth’s.” Vernadsky wasn’t sure why he was telling the kid all this. Partly, he felt, because it was good to find someone who would listen. A man gets lonely and frustrated when there is no one of his own field to talk to.
He went on, beginning to relish the lecture. “On the other hand, the lighter elements are also better distributed. The ocean solids aren’t predominantly sodium chloride as on Earth. Junior’s oceans contain a respectable helping of magnesium salts. And take what they call the ‘rare lights.’ Those are the elements lithium, beryllium, and boron. They’re lighter than carbon, all of them, but they are of very rare occurrence on Earth, and in fact, on all planets. Junior, on the other hand, is quite rich in them. The three of them total almost four-tenths of a per cent of the crust as compared to about four-thousands on Earth.”
Mark plucked at the other’s sleeve. “Do you have a list of figures on all the elements? May I see?”
“I suppose so.” He took a folded piece of paper out of his hip-pocket.
He grinned as Mark took the sheet and said, “Don’t publish those figures before I do.”
Mark glanced at them once and returned the paper.
“Are you through?” asked Vernadsky in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” said Mark, thoughtfully, “I have it all.” He turned on his heel and walked away with no word of parting.
The last glimmer of Lagrange I faded below the horizon.
Vernadsky gazed after Mark and shrugged. He plucked his nucleometer out of the ground, and followed after, walking back toward the tents.
Sheffield was moderately pleased.. Mark had been doing better than expected. To be sure, he scarcely talked but that was not very serious. At least, he showed interest and didn’t sulk. And he threw no tantrums.
Vernadsky was even telling Sheffield that last evening Mark had spoken to him quite normally, without raised voices on either side, about planetary crust analyses. Vernadsky had laughed a bit about it, saying that Mark knew the crust analyses of twenty thousand planets and some day he’d have the boy repeat them all just to see how long it would take.
Mark, himself, had made no mention of the matter. In fact, he had spent the morning sitting in his tent. Sheffield had looked in, seen him on his cot, staring at his feet, and had left him to himself.
What he really needed at the moment, Sheffield felt, was a bright idea for himself—a really bright one.