Eight or ten men were eating in the messroom when Jerry and Steve walked in. Several of them nodded to Steve. They eyed Jerry with more speculation. He understood that. He was the youngest guy there, and the one with the longest hair—most of them looked pretty buttoned-down. He sighed to himself. He’d hoped he was done with that first-day-of-high-school feeling forever. What you hoped for wasn’t always what you got, though.

The food was great. He ordered a rare sirloin, with mashed potatoes and string beans. Steve had his medium, and got french fries and a salad on the side. They both demolished their dinners. Halfway through, Steve said, “A beer would go great with this.”

“Man, would it ever!” Jerry said. “But they told me they’d clap me in irons or something if I brought any alcohol aboard.”

“They told me the same thing.” Steve winked. “Once we get hooked into the grapevine, I bet we can find some anyway. The crew is big enough, somebody will find a way.”

“I guess,” Jerry said, and then, “How big is the crew?”

“I heard about a hundred and eighty, counting everybody.” Steve eyed Jerry. “They didn’t tell you much, did they?”

Jerry shook his head. “Close but not quite. They didn’t tell me anything.” He wondered if that was because he was a longhair. He would have guessed most of the men in the galley were on the other side of the argument about whether Richard Nixon needed to be impeached. People who worried about national security first and democracy later mostly liked Mad Milhous.

But John P. and Fred and Steve would have known beforehand where he stood. He didn’t make a secret of it or anything. They’d taken him on even so. That counted for something.

He had cherry pie for dessert. Steve ate vanilla ice cream. As they went back up to their level, Jerry remarked, “Gonna have to find some way to exercise or I’ll get too wide to fit in this stairwell.”

“You? You’re young enough to burn it off,” Steve said. “I only wish I were. There’s a helipad behind the stern bridge. Maybe we can walk or jog on that.”

“Yeah, I saw it. I don’t know why we have it, though,” Jerry said. Steve shrugged. Either he also didn’t know or he wasn’t talking.

Signs said there was a movie theater on this deck. Jerry thought about visiting it, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He had The Queen of Air and Darkness, Poul Anderson’s latest collection, to read till he got sleepy. On the first night aboard, he’d keep things simple.