McBride tried to call order to mind, starting from the beginning. He looked dazedly at the gun in his hand.
Flaunders laughed. "Don't look so surprised to be alive. One of the men hit your arm just in time. You missed death by an inch."
It was all too much at one time, a skirling confusion.
"That what you said about beating the poison," McBride said. "Are you sure? It's not just something on paper, something not proven?"
"Lord, no," Flaunders said, fighting down an urge to shout. "I had it worked out yesterday, but it still had to be tested and the white rats and two monkeys we brought along for experimental purposes were gone. So I went out last night and gathered some fruit and treated it and tried it on myself. Just look at me and you have your answer. I feel fine."
Still dazed, still not quite understanding how everything had happened, McBride started back toward the ship with the others. But one thing he knew. Venus had been beaten!
The meal was all day in the preparing. The eating was a gala event, a banquet, a roaring party. It lasted two hours.
There wasn't any wolfing down. When you have been starving for weeks you just don't start off that way. You take a small bite and wait until you are sure it is safely down. Then you take another small bite and wait again. If you keep doing that you have a chance of holding what you eat.
They didn't mind. This food was not the kind you had to force yourself to chew on, like--some other things.
There were little animals looking something like rabbits, but tasting more like chicken, fried golden brown. There were oranges that tasted like nothing of Earth and apples that reminded you of paw-paws in fall. Seven different kinds of meat there were, and it seemed like a hundred different kinds of fruits and nuts and herbs. There was even a juice that proved mildly intoxicating. All a little different, but all delightfully, temptingly good!
"We'll be eating like this every day!" Flaunders said. "Maybe we can even set up a bar, with fruit-juice drinks and wine and even invent a new kind of beer. Big, foamy schooners of beer on Venus! Won't the work crew be surprised when they get here!"
They let it run away with them. It went to their heads. The warmth of intoxication, the feel of stomachs filling out. All the things long missing now returning in full force, all at one time. Almost it was too much. Almost death from excessive joy.