‘The nine day cycle will be up for ten more cases tomorrow. Infinite foreboding fills me.
‘One hundred and eighty-eight people are now prostrate, many lying in their respective rooms, the Sick Bay being full. Power staff are being drafted as orderlies. Bassitt in demand! A deputation of twenty officers, all very respectful, and headed by Glasser, came to see me after lunch; they requested that we turn back to New Earth before it is too late. Of course I had to dissuade them; poor Cruikshank of Ship’s Press was among them — his son was one of the eight who died this morning.
‘18.xii.2221. Could not sleep. Frank was taken early this morning, dear lad. He lies as rigid as a corpse, staring at — what? Yet he was only one of twenty fresh cases; the older people are getting it now. Have been forced to modify the ship’s routine: another few days and it must be abandoned altogether. Thank heaven most devices are automatic and self-servicing.
‘Of the ten patients whose nine day cycle finished today, seven have died. The other three remain on the threshold of consciousness. No change in young Sheila. All anyone talks about now is what is called the “Nine Day Ague”. Had Bassitt put in the cells on a charge of spreading depression.
‘I am tired after a prolonged inspection of Agriculture with, among others, Glasser, who was rather cold after the failure of his deputation yesterday. Ninety-five per cent of all livestock took the Ague, Noah tells me. About 45 per cent of those recovered — wish human figures looked as good! Unfortunately, the bigger animals came off worst; no horses survived and, more serious, no cows. Sheep fared badly, pigs and dogs comparatively well. The mice and rats are fully recovered, their reproductive capacities unimpaired.
‘Ordinary earth-grown plants have shown roughly similar percentages of survival. Back-breaking work has gone on here; the depleted staffs have coped nobly with the job of cleaning the acres of beds.
‘In the adjacent chambers, Montgomery showed me his hydroponics with pride. Completely recovered from chlorosis — if it was chlorosis — they are more vigorous than ever, and seem almost to have benefited from their version of the Nine Day Ague. Five types of oxygenator are grown: two “wet,” one “semi-wet” and two “dry” varieties. One of these dry varieties in particular, an edible variety modified centuries ago from ground elder, is growing luxuriantly and shows a tendency to flow out from its gravel beds over the deck. Temperatures in Floriculture are being kept high; Montgomery thinks it helps.
‘Phoned Laboratories. Research promise (as they have before) to produce a cure for our plague tomorrow; unfortunately most of the scientists there are down with the Ague, and a woman called Besti is trying to run things.
‘21.xii.2221. I have left the Control Room — perhaps for good. The shutters have been closed against the ghastly stars. Gloom lies thick over the ship. Over half our population has the Nine Day Ague; out of sixty-six who have completed the full cycle, forty-six have died. The percentage of deaths is dropping daily, but the survivors seem comatose. Sheila Pesoli, for instance, hardly stirs.
‘Managing any sort of organization becomes increasingly hard. Contact with further parts of the ship is virtually lost, vital cable complexes having been destroyed. Everywhere, groups of men and women huddle together, waiting. Licentiousness vies with apathy for upper hand. I have visions of us all dying, this dreadful tomb speeding on perhaps for millennia until it is captured by a sun’s gravity.
‘This pessimism is weakness: even Yvonne cannot cheer me.
‘Research has now identified the causal virus; somehow that seems of small importance. The knowledge comes too late. For what it is worth, here are their findings. Before leaving the new planet, we completely rewatered. All stocks of water aboard were evacuated into orbit, and fresh supplies ferried up. The automatic processes which claim moisture from the air and feed it back into the hull tanks have always been efficient; but naturally such water, used over and over, had become — to use a mild word — insipid.
‘The new water, ferried up from the streams of Procyon V, tasted good. It had, of course, been tested for microscopic life and filtered; but perhaps we were not as thorough as we should have been — scientific method has naturally stagnated over the generations. However, apportioning blame is irrelevent in our present extremity. In simple terms, viral proteins were suspended in the water in molecular solutions, and so slipped through our filters.
‘June Besti, in Research, a bright and conceited young thing whose hyper-agoraphobia rendered her unable to join her husband on Procyon V, explained the whole chain of events to me in words of one syllable. Proteins are complex condensation forms of amino acids; amino acids are the basics, and link together to form proteins in peptic chains. Though the known amino acids number only twenty-five, the combinations of proteins they can form is infinite; unfortunately a twenty-sixth amino acid turned up in the water from Procyon V. It served as a vector for the fatal virus.
‘In the tanks, the proteins soon hydrolyzed back into their constituents, as doubtless they would have done on the planet. Meanwhile, the ship’s quota of human beings, livestock and plants absorb many gallons of water per day; their systems build up the amino acids back into proteins, which are transferred to the body cells, where they are used as fuel and, in the combustive processes of metabolism, dissolved back into aminos again. That’s the usual way it happens.
‘The twenty-sixth amino acid disrupts this sequence. It combines into too complex a protein for any system — vegetable or animal — to handle. This is the point at which rigidity of the limbs sets in and the virus proliferates. As Payne explained, the denser peptic linkage may partially be due to the heavier gravity of New Earth; we know very little about the sustained effects of gravity on viral development or free-building molecules.
‘By now, the settlement on the new world must be in as sad a state as we. At least they have the privilege of dying in the open air.
‘22.xii.2221. I had no time to finish yesterday. Today there seems to be all the time in the world. Fourteen more deaths reported this morning by a tired Toynbee. The Nine Day Ague is undisputed master of the ship: my dear Yvonne is its latest victim. I have tucked her in bed but cannot look at her — too terrible. I have ceased to pray.
‘Let me finish what young Besti told me. She was guardedly optimistic about the ultimate survival of a percentage of our population. The bodies of Ague victims are inactive while their internal forces cope with viral depredations; they will eventually break them down if the constitution concerned is elastic enough: “another little virus won’t do us any harm”, Miss Besti pertly quotes. Proteins are present already in all living cells and, after a danger period, another protein, differing but slightly, may be tolerated. The new amino, christened bestine (this bright young creature smoothly informs me!), has been isolated; like leucine and lysine, which are already known, it has an effect on growth — what effect, only long-term research will establish, and I doubt that we have that much time.
‘The short-term results are before us. The plants have mainly adapted to bestine and, once adapted, seem to thrive. The animals, varying with their species, have adapted, though only the pig colony actually seems exhuberant. All survivals, Besti says, may be regarded as mutations — what she calls “low-level mutations”. It seems the heat in Agriculture may have helped them; so I have ordered a ten degree temperature increase from Inboard Power for the whole ship. That is literally the only step we have been able to take to help…