silent failure with ?out-of-memory? involving .PSPIC

[dan]

setting:
  Mac OS X 10.3.9 on PPC/G4, fully patched
  groff --version => 1.18.1


I have a 190 page, multi-file book draft.  One of the 
chapters has five .PSPIC callouts for *.eps files 
produced by GraphicConverter (lemkesoft) from the
*.tiff files Keynote can export, and the rest all
have three or four.  All *.eps are full color but
graphical (not photos).

When run through groff, the file with the five .PSPIC
callouts only shows four of them, and from that point
forward no .PSPIC is included.  If a prior one is
removed experimentally, then the output gets one 
more .PSPIC down the line before it stops processing
them.  This seems prima facie to be out-of-memory,
but the failure is entirely silent.

Yes, I've tried various things like the Csh "unlimit"
and quitting everything else such that there is >400MB
of free real memory.  None of that helps and, thus,
one concludes it is inside the groff apparatus.

While I don't expect much, my deadline is within 36
hours.  My discovering it now is because I have been 
working chapter by chapter.  Of course, I can figure
out all the various page, section, and so forth registers
and pre-set them all by hand in the front of each chapter
file then groff them one at a time, but there are 11
chapters and, well, I am already on deadline.

As always, the Apple site for "help" is completely
useless, and I am loathe to be recompiling groff when
I am already in trouble and already on deadline.

Thank you for reading,

--dan