The end of the second day, the trainees were bobbing around the galley, which looked to Kinsman like a glorified Coke machine. They were punching buttons, pulling trays of hot food from the storage racks, gliding weightlessly to find an unoccupied corner of the cramped compartment in which to eat their precooked dinners.
Kinsman leaned his back against somebody's sleeping cocoon, legs dangling in the air, and picked at the food. The tray was already showing signs of heavy use; it was slightly bent and it no longer gleamed, new-looking. The food, a combination of precut bite-sized chunks of imitation protein and various moldy-looking pastes, was as appetizing as saw- dust.
Jill Meyers drifted past, empty-handed.
"Finished already?" Kinsman asked her.
"This junk was finished before it started," she said.
"It's chock-full of nutrition."
"So's a cockroach."
Major Jakes slid down the ladder and headed for the galley. Automatically the lieutenants made room for him. He had been an overweight, jowly, crew-cut, sullen-looking graying man when Kinsman had first seen him back at Vandenberg. His physical looks had changed in zero gravity: he seemed slimmer, taller, his cheekbones higher. And there was a happy grin on his face.
Jakes brought his tray to the corner where Kinsman was sitting, literally, on air. The Major was humming to himself cheerfully. After setting himself cross-legged beside Kins- man, anchoring his back against the other end of the nylon mesh cocoon, Jakes took a couple of bites of food, then asked, "How's it going, Lieutenant?"
"Okay, sir, I suppose," replied Kinsman. Never com- plain to officers, he knew from his Academy training. Espe- cially when they're trying to buddy up to you. 42
"I don't see Colt around."
"Frank?" Kinsman realized that Colt was not in sight. "Must be in the pissoir."
Jakes made a small clucking sound. "Your redheaded friend is missing, too."
Kinsman took a sip of lukewarm coffee from the squeeze bulb on his tray while he thought furiously, "Maybe they're in the airlock. You go nuts down here trying to find some elbow room."
Jakes made an agreeable nod. "Yeah, I guess so. Like the fo'c'sle of an old sailing ship, huh?"
Why me? Kinsman wondered. Why is he buddying up to me?
"You're from Pennsylvania, aren't you?"
"Yessir. Philadelphia area ..."
"Main Line, I know. My people have relatives down there. I'm from the North Shore—Boston. You know, the cradle of liberty."
"Where the Cabots talk only to the Lodges."
"Right." Jakes nibbled at a chunk of thinly disguised soybean meal. "And neither of 'em talk to my folks. We were sort of the black sheep of the clan. My old man could build the yachts for them, all right, but they never let us sail 'em."
"Black sheep," Kinsman muttered. Welcome to the club, buddy. Try to imagine what a black sheep you become when you leave a Quaker family to join the Air Force.
"Did you really pick Colt for a partner?"
"Yes," Kinsman said, warily.
"I hear he's a troublemaker."
