years. It really felt fine to have all
those doctors fussing over him. They got snappy and irritable once in a
while, but then, all them brainy people had a tendency to do that. He
wondered how the rest of the boys were doing on their diet of
banana-pears. Too bad they weren't getting any special treatment.

MacNeil had decided just that morning that he'd leave the whole state of
his health in the hands of the doctors. No need for a fellow to dose
himself when there were three medics on the job, was there? If he needed
anything, they'd give it to him, so he'd decided to take no medicine.

A delightful, dulling lassitude was creeping over him.

* * * * *

"MacNeil! _MacNeil!_ Wake up, MacNeil!"

The spaceman vaguely heard the voice, and tried to respond, but a sudden
dizziness overtook him. His stomach felt as though it were going to come
loose from his interior.

"I'm sick," he said weakly. Then, with a terrible realization, "I'm
really _awful_ sick!"

He saw Dr. Smathers' face swimming above him and tried to lift himself
from the bed. "Shoulda taken pills," he said through the haze that was
beginning to fold over him again. "Locker box." And then he was
unconscious again.

Dr. Smathers looked at him bleakly. The same thing was killing MacNeil
as had killed the others. It had taken longer--much longer. But it had
come.

And then the meaning of the spaceman's mumbled words came to him. Pills?
Locker box?

He grabbed the unconscious man's right hand and shoved his right thumb
up against the sensor plate in the front of the metal box next to the
bed. He could have gotten the master key from Colonel Fennister, but he
hadn't the time.

The box door dilated open, and Dr. Smathers looked inside.

When he came across the bottles, he swore under his breath, then flung
the spaceman's arm down and ran from the room.

* * * * *

"That's where he was getting his vitamins, then," said Dr. Pilar as he
looked over the assortment of bottles that he and Smathers had taken
from the locker box. "Look at 'em. He's got almost as many pills as you
have." He looked up at the physician. "Do you suppose it was just
vitamins that kept him going?"

"I don't know," said Smathers. "I've given him massive doses of every
one of the vitamins--from my own supplies, naturally. He may rally
round, if that's what it was. But why would he suddenly be affected by
the stuff _now