The Garden - Melissa Scott [5]
There was a little silence, and then Torres tossed aside her stylus. "Don't look at me, I'm an engineer. I don't know a thing about biological systems."
"I've been following the protocols," Neelix said again. "I swear, I've done everything just the way you told me-"
"I don't doubt that Mr. Neelix is entirely correct," Tuvok said. "Nonetheless, the food supply is, logically, the place to begin this investigation."
"I agree," Chakotay said. "And we did take on a lot of food in one place this last time. Not that we had a choice, given how rare M-class planets have been lately, but reliance on a single source is never good."
Janeway nodded. "With hindsight, I'm beginning to wonder if we should have been concerned about the absence of animal life."
Kim made a face, thinking about that lovely, empty planet. Rich it had been, but perhaps not as perfect as it had seemed. He thought he could guess what was coming next, and was not surprised when Janeway turned her gaze on him.
"Mr. Kim. You ran the analysis of the first samples we collected, is that right?"
"Yes, Captain." Even though he knew there was no need to defend himself, he found himself rushing on. "There was nothing anomalous in our findings, though."
"Except that we didn't know what we were looking for," Chakotay said.
"A number of things can interfere with vitamin C absorption," the doctor said impatiently.
"But I assume you've already tested for the most obvious ones," Janeway said.
Kim looked away from the wallscreen, trying to collect his own thoughts. The analysis had been done quickly-it had had to be done quickly, they had had to come into the fringes of Kazon-Ogla space to find any class-M planets at all, and they had had to reject two others before they had found this one. And it had been a good thing they'd been able to hurry it along the sensors had detected Kazon-Ogla activity nearby almost before they had finished the harvest. But as a result, they had looked only for positive dangers in the food, and known negatives like shortages of the crucial trace minerals. "Captain," he said aloud, "could something else be, well, masquerading as vitamin C?"
Janeway looked at the hologram, who shrugged. "That would be one possible explanation. Something that the human body perceives as vitamin C, and is therefore picked up preferentially over vitamin C- yes, that could happen."
"And if it looked enough like vitamin C, chemically speaking, to fool our bodies," Kim went on, "could it have fooled the computers as well?"
There was a little silence after he'd finished speaking, and then Chakotay said, "That's a frightening thought, Mr. Kim. And frighteningly plausible." He looked at Janeway. "That could explain it. If there's some difference at the submolecular level?"
"Like the left-handed amino acids," Kim said, dredging his memory for details of an already-forgotten Academy course in nutrition and diet.
"Look into it, Mr. Kim," Janeway said, and, too late, he remembered something else he had learned at the Academy. Never even look like you might volunteer, the senior cadets had said, and, all too often, they'd been right.
"Yes, Captain," he said, and managed to keep the resignation from his voice.
"Commander Chakotay, Lieutenant Tuvok," Jane-way went on, "I want you to review the records of the worst-affected crew members, see if there's any common factor among them besides being human. Lieutenant Torres, run a study of the minimum crew required to keep Voyager operational. I want answers-" She glanced again at her datapadd. "-in forty-eight hours."
There was an awkward murmur of acknowledgment, almost drowned in the shuffling of chairs, and Kim followed Torres and Paris from the ready room. The engineer was shaking her head, already deep in the parameters of her problem, but she looked up as Chakotay came abreast of them.
"I'll run the study, but I already know we need at least seventy-five people-seventy-five healthy people-to run the ship."
"Do what you can to bring it down, B'Elanna," Chakotay said.
"There