“It correlates,” Yang said, eyeing the new data displayed on the computer screen. “They all show the symptoms of scurvy.”
Reed sat back in his chair feeling as weak and hollow as if he had come down with the affliction himself. Scurvy. And it’s all my fault. If only I had seen it earlier. Of course it had to be that. The oxygen, the pills…
He looked up and saw that Yang was striding through the infirmary doorway.
“Where are you going?” Tony called to her as he scrambled from behind his desk.
“Wardroom,” she answered over her shoulder. Little though she was she marched like a trained soldier, arms swinging, boots clacking on the plastic floor. Tony hurried to catch up with her.
“Looking for anyone in particular?” he asked.
“The ground team leader. Vosnesensky.”
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
“You have bottles of vitamins that have not been unsealed?” Yang asked. “Not contaminated by oxygen?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Fifteen hundred of them, in three sealed bottles.”
Monique Bonnet was at the wardroom table with Paul Abell and Mironov, all three of them slumped wearily.
“Where is the group leader?” Yang asked.
Monique gave an exhausted sigh, then replied, “I believe he is at the communications console.”
Yang headed off for the comm console without another word, Reed trailing right behind her. She must be hell on wheels in a hospital, the Englishman thought. God help the man or woman who gets in her way!
Vosnesensky looked as if he were ready to drop off to sleep. He sagged in the chair; his face looked puffy, red eyed, bleary. Connors’s black features in the communications screen looked no better; worse, in fact.
“I require your cooperation,” Yang said without preamble.
Vosnesensky turned in his chair, started to push himself to his feet, then gave it up and simply sat there looking at the Chinese physician, almost eye to eye.
“You must begin taking large doses of vitamins, now, immediately.”
“Vitamins?” Vosnesensky was saying dully. “But we take vitamins. We take them every day, on the regular schedule.”
“They are contaminated,” Yang said.
Vosnesensky’s eyes shifted to Reed.
“It’s true, Mikhail Andreivitch,” said Tony. “They were bathed in oxygen after the meteor hit. They’re practically useless.”
“But what has that to do…?”
“Scurvy,” said Yang.
“Scurvy?”
“That’s right,” Reed said. “You’ve all come down with scurvy from lack of vitamin C.”
Silently he added, Because of me. Because I panicked. Because I didn’t want to see the truth. I’m a murderer. That’s what I am.
SOL 39: MORNING
“Vitamin deficiency?”
The words woke Jamie. He had been sleeping dreamlessly when Connors’s voice, shrilly high-pitched, cut through to his conscious mind.
Untangling himself from the thin blanket, Jamie slithered out of his bunk and padded in his stockinged feet forward to the cockpit. The rover felt shivering cold. Connors was talking to Vosnesensky. Both men looked utterly drained, but there was a strange grin on the Russian’s image on the screen.
“We have scurvy,” Vosnesensky said, almost as if it were a joke.
“Scurvy?”
“It is definite. Yang’s tests were analyzed during the night. Our vitamin pills have been poisoned-no, that is not the correct word. The vitamin C in the pills has been deactivated because it was exposed to oxygen after the meteorite hit. Without sufficient vitamin C we have all come down with scurvy.”
Jamie slumped into the right-hand seat. “You mean like old-time sailors who’ve been at sea too long?”
“That’s why they called the Brits ‘limeys,'” Connors said, his voice still echoing disbelief. “Because they carried limes and other fresh fruits aboard their ships once they figured out what caused scurvy.”
“Scurvy,” Jamie mumbled. “Scurvy.”
“According to Dr. Yang it will take several days before the symptoms go away,” Vosnesensky said.
“What about us?” Connors asked.
The Russian’s grin disappeared like a light winking off. “So far, Kaliningrad has forbidden a rescue flight from orbit. Not until they make a decision.”
“We’re stuck here until they make up their minds?” Connors said it as if it were equivalent to a death sentence.
“And our illness will get worse, not better. We can barely stand on our feet, as it is,” Jamie said.