"It's good to see you're not being overly sensitive about it," Kinsman joked, pushing his way back from between the frigid green tanks.
"Or bitter."
"Well . . . they've got to let us go EVA tomorrow. There's no way they can keep us from going ouside." 41
For a long moment Colt did not respond. Then he said simply, "Wanna bet?"
The living quarters in the mid-deck were crowded enough when all six trainees were lumped together in the metal shoebox, but when a couple of officers came down from the flight deck the tensions became almost impossible.
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?"
