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had provoked precisely the kind of response she wanted: not smugness, but self-approbation.
    Now the question remained—was this bad news from Tai Men going to wipe out the good atmosphere the consistent record of success so far had created?
    Hassan called on the blocky medical biologist, who got up wearing the same scowl as when he arrived, although it had momentarily disappeared while he was listening to the reports from the other sections.
    “Most of you probably know this by now,” he said. “We have a problem. It’s not
—
as far as I can tell at the moment-a major setback. But it’s indubitably going to be a damned nuisance. Anybody here not know what scurvy is?”
    He glanced around. Unable to tell whether everyone knew or not, he amplified.
    “It’s a deficiency condition, like pellagra and beri-beri. It stems from a shortage of ascorbic acid-what some people still know by the ancient name of vitamin C. When I started getting computer printouts suggesting that was what people were complaining of, a few days ago, I didn’t believe it, because we’ve been eating as balanced a diet since we got here as we were aboard the ships. I think I’ve finally established why we have the trouble, though.
    Remember we had that epidemic diarrhoea on our first arrival
—
a kind of interplanetary
turismo?
Well, as you know, most of the bacteria here are used to protoplasmin their hosts which is different enough from ours to mean we can’t fall sick from them. However, we always carry around with us certain bacteria from which we don’t fall ill, but actually derive benefit. And from analysing and culturing stool-samples we’ve found that since we got over that diarrhoea epidemic all of us have been carrying around a variety of local bugs which like the hospitable environment of the human bowel. They don’t cause any trouble so we needn’t bother about them, bar one crucial factor. One of them tends to make ascorbic acid metabolically inaccessible to us. It knocks the molecule about in a way which our bodies aren’t accustomed to. So in spite of eating a balanced diet we’re developing a deficiency.”
    Parvati saw with dismay that expressions of gloom—perhaps even of doom—were appearing among the audience. She called out to Tai Men.
    “Tai! We can get around this, can’t we?”
    “Oh, sure, but it’ll take time. And scurvy is a very lowering condition. Saps your energy. If we let it spread through the whole colony we’re going to fall badly behind schedule. I’ve set computers to work on the problem of finding a specific to clear these local bugs out of the bowel, but re-infection is inevitable unless we go back to canned air. And although we can stave off the worst effects of the scurvy by taking massive doses of ascorbic acid, our resources of the ready-made are running low and we shan’t be capable of such complex chemical synthesis before next spring at the soonest. So I’m afraid it looks as though we’re going to have to take a pretty important gamble.”
    “Spell it out, Tai,” Hassan invited.
    The biologist drew a deep breath. “We’re going to have to switch from hydroponic vegetables to native-grown ones, as soon as possible. It’s the only way I can think of to provide the interfering bug with the local chemical for which it’s employing our vitamin as a second-best substitute.”

V
    T AI M EN didn’t need to consult Parvati, with whom he inevitably worked more closely than anyone else in the colony simply because the interaction of mind with body made both the psychologist and the medical biologist necessary whenever a complex problem developed—and there had been no shortage of those, despite their all having been solved up until today. He could see for himself that his bombshell had struck deep among his listeners.
    Why not? It upsets me pretty badly, too, and I’m supposed to be the dispassionate analyst—the metabolic engineer!
    Everyone who had joined the Draco expedition had