"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Hagstrom asked.

Van den Burg nodded. They pulled themselves silently along the passageway back to the control room. Aréchaga was speaking softly into the recorder, his back to the entrance. Hagstrom cleared his throat and the black-haired little man spun guiltily. Van den Burg reached for the playback switch.

"It's just a routine report," Aréchaga protested.

"We're curious," Hagstrom said.

The recorder began playing. "—I should have figured it right from the start. If food is so lousy the flies won't touch it, then humans have no business eating it."

"What's the food got to do with it?" Hagstrom asked.

"Quiet!" van den Burg hissed.

"—got by all right on Earth where there was plenty of reinfection, but when you sealed us in this can without a bug in a million miles—" Aréchaga's voice continued.

"If food can't rot it can't digest either. Irradiate it—burn the last bit of life out of it—and then give us a whopping dose of antibiotics until there isn't one bug in our alimentary tracts from one end to the other. It's no wonder we were starving in the midst of plenty."

"Wait a minute. How come you didn't get sick?" Hagstrom asked.

Aréchaga flipped a switch and the recorder ground to a stop. "I reinfected myself with a swallow of salsa picante—good, old-fashioned, unsanitary chili sauce."

A horrible suspicion was growing in van den Burg's mind. "What did you give us?" he asked.

"You left me little choice when you threw out my salsa," Aréchaga said. "Why do you have to be so curious?"

"What was it?" van den Burg demanded.

"I scraped a little salsa scum from the inside of the disposal. It made a fine culture. What did you think I gave you?"

"I'd rather not answer that," van den Burg said weakly. 

 Prev. P 9/9