The algae--dried by the Cook, bleached with methyl alcohol to kill the smell and make the residue more digestible, disguised and seasoned in a hundred ways--served as a sort of meat-and-potatoes that never quite wore out. Our air and water were equally immortal. Each molecule of oxygen would be conversant with the alveoli of every man aboard by the end of our trip. Every drop of water would have been intimate with the glomeruli of each kidney on the ship before we grounded in. Groundling politicians are right enough when they say that we spacers are a breed apart. We're the one race of men who can't afford the luxury of squeamishness. * * * * * Though I'm signed aboard as Ship's Surgeon, I seldom lift a knife in space. My employment is more in the nature of TS-card-puncher extraordinary. My duties are to serve as wailing-wall, morale officer, guardian of the medicinal whiskey and frustrator of mutual murder. Generally the man aboard who'd serve as the most popular murder-victim is the Cook. This trip, the-man-you-love-to-hate was our Captain. If the Cook hadn't problems enough with the chemical and psychic duties of his office, Winkelmann supplied the want. Captain Willy Winkelmann was the sort of man who, if he had to go into space at all, had best do so alone. If the Prussians had a Marine Corps, Winkelmann would have done splendidly as Drill Instructor for their boot camp. His heart was a chip of helium ice, his voice dripped sarcastic acid. The planet Earth was hardly large enough to accommodate a wart as annoying as Willy Winkelmann. Cheek-by-jowl every day in a nacelle the size of a Pullman car, our Captain quickly established himself as a major social hemorrhoid. The Captain's particular patsy was, of course, young Bailey the Cook. It was Winkelmann who saw humorous possibilities in the entry, "Bailey, Robert," on Ship's Articles. He at once renamed our unfortunate shipmate "Belly-Robber." It was Winkelmann who discussed _haut cuisine_ and the properties of the nobler wines while we munched our algaeburgers and sipped coffee that tasted of utility water. And it was Captain Willy Winkelmann who never referred to the ship's head by any other name than The Kitchen Cabinet.