If confronted with insurmountable obstacles, they were to return at once to Earth with whatever information they might have as to the nature of the obstacles.
McBride grinned in spite of his regret over the loss of his ship and looked at the wreckage. That sort of made the orders unconditional.
Things could have been worse, he thought. Not one of the ten men in the expedition had been lost or even badly injured. And, Venus being the land of plenty that it had turned out to be, it was beginning to look as if the stay here would be a pleasant one.
He was just starting to get some of his old spunk back when Jeff Flaunders came up to him with a worried frown on his face.
Because of the limited space aboard the ship, Flaunders was a combination of several men, as were most of the others. Specially trained for the expedition, he handled anything that went under the heading of botany, biology or zoology.
"You look a lot like bad news," McBride said as Flaunders drew near. "Might have known there'd be a catch to this world."
"More than a catch," Flaunders said. "I hope none of the men has eaten anything native to Venus."
McBride shook his head. "They haven't if they've followed orders. I told them not to touch anything until you had made a report." He looked at the other questioningly. "Poison?"
"We brought twelve white rats and two monkeys along for experimental purposes," Flaunders said. "Now we have only six rats. Each of the others we fed a different kind of native fruit or meat. That was about five hours ago. In the past hour they've gone into convulsions one after another. Seemed to go blind, too. Died within minutes."
"You tried it on just the six rats and not the monkeys?" McBride asked, and got a nod from Flaunders. "Then that's just six things tested. Maybe something edible will turn up yet."
"Small chance." Flaunders was positive. "Thompson used a little of his chemistry and found a substance he couldn't identify, not only in the stuff we fed the rats but in twenty-some other plants. He even found it in the flesh of the animals we caught. That makes it pretty certain that it will be found in everything. When the rats died we pegged that substance as the poison.
"What to do about it is another question. Since it's entirely new to us it would probably take years to find a way to neutralize it, and it plays such an integral part in the structure of everything on Venus that we'd have one sweet time trying to completely draw it out. Anyway, a lot of needed lab equipment was smashed in the wreck. That makes it even more of a problem."