 What is lung-rot?
Spacemen Die at Home By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by THORNE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home! How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships.
 Lung-rot is a disease caused by chemicals in the Martian atmosphere.
 Lung-rot is a disease caused by chemicals in the Martian atmosphere.  Lung-rot is tuberculosis.  A disease that presents like whooping cough.  Lung-rot is Martian slang for pneumonia.