Vernadsky was even telling Sheffield that last evening Mark had spoken to him quite normally, without raised voices on either side, about planetary crust analyses. Vernadsky had laughed a bit about it, saying that Mark knew the crust analyses of twenty thousand planets and some day he’d have the boy repeat them all just to see how long it would take.
Mark, himself, had made no mention of the matter. In fact, he had spent the morning sitting in his tent. Sheffield had looked in, seen him on his cot, staring at his feet, and had left him to himself.
What he really needed at the moment, Sheffield felt, was a bright idea for himself—a really bright one.
So far, everything had come to nothing—a whole month of everything. Rodriguez held fast against any infection. Vernadsky absolutely barred food poisoning. Novee shook his head with vehement negativeness at suggestions of disturbed metabolism. “Where’s the evidence?” he kept saying.
What it amounted to was that every physical cause of death was eliminated on the strength of expert opinion. But men, women, and children had died. There must be a reason. Could it be psychological?
He had satirized the matter to Cimon for a purpose before they had come out here, but it was now time and more than time to be serious about it. Could the settlers have been driven to suicide? Why? Humanity had colonized tens of thousands of planets without its having seriously affected mental stability. In fact, the suicide rate, as well as the incidence of psychoses, were higher on Earth than anywhere else in the galaxy.
Besides, the settlement had called frantically for medical help. They didn’t want to die.
Personality disorders? Something peculiar to that one group? Enough to affect over a thousand people to the death. Unlikely. Besides, how could any evidence be uncovered. The settlement site had been ransacked for any films or records, even the most frivolous. Nothing. A century of dampness left nothing so fragile as purposeful records.
So he was working in a vacuum. He felt helpless. The others, at least, had data; something to chew on. He had nothing.
He found himself at Mark’s tent again and looked inside automatically. It was empty. He looked about and spied Mark walking out of the camp and into the woods.