Cum Grano Salis

On the remote world of Alphegar IV, Colonel Fennister faces a disaster no amount of military training prepared him for: a lightning-struck giant tree has smashed Storage Shed Number One and destroyed most of the expedition's food. With eighty-five men stranded, rescue six months away, and supplies likely to last only a month, the camp becomes a siege in all but name. Fennister, Major Grodski, and Dr. Pilar struggle to find hope in the planet's alien flora, but the scientists warn that the local plants may be plentiful without being edible, and earlier tests have already killed laboratory animals. Amid the grim crisis, Broderick MacNeil provides a comic, human counterpoint. A chronic complainer and secret pill-taker, he wanders the jungle, munching forbidden banana-pears because monkeys eat them, and somehow thrives when others sicken and die. His accidental immunity turns a starvation emergency into a baffling biological mystery: the fruit appears nourishing, yet humans who eat it collapse from an oxygen-starvation effect. As the doctors debate toxins, enzymes, blood types, and allergies, they finally turn to MacNeil's hidden stash of mislabeled pills, gambling that one of them may hold the key to survival. Hard science fiction, dry humor, and tense survival drama collide in this dangerous alien world. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.