Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 52 — page 62: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

STAR HAVEN food being dangerous, that’s nonsense. Gerald has eaten nothing else for weeks now, and I’ve lived on it for a week myself. It isn’t the fruit which is causing the illness, it is lack of it.” “‘How do you mean?” “You don’t know much about ecology, do you, com- mander? It goes a little deeper than just the balance between flora and fauna. It applies’ to everything on the planet and you can’t ignore it. For a long time now we've known that, to remain healthy, a man must eat the food of the region he is in. The old travellers knew that. Ex- plorers ate seal meat and blubber as far as their stomachs could stand it while venturing to the poles. Others made a point of changing their drinking habits to con- form to the local customs. Canned food brought a flock of stomach upsets in its wake, not because it was canned so much as because it was foreign. Don’t misunderstand me, commander. I’m not 61 suggesting that men died be- cause they ate tinned beef instead of the local food, but I am saying that they were not perfectly healthy. Not that it mattered then; few people really were, and the human body is pretty tough anyway. But now we are on a new world. If it was desirable to eat varying foods on our own planet, how much more desirable must it be to eat local food in differing star systems?” “If I do as you suggest, will that save them ?”’ “No, but it will prevent others from dying the same way.” Hermitage shrugged. “Some will die, of course. Not everyone can adapt to a new world, but we know that the first colonists managed to halt their deaths and we know, too, that terrestrial food is inacceptable to a metabolism which has become accustomed to native produce.” “So?” Williams looked his disbelief. “How do we know that?” “Gerald was sick after - comiclbooks.corn