“Yum.” Gershon snipped the top off his chicken stew bag and began to spoon it into his mouth. He waved at the camera and grinned; he was eating his meal upside down relative to Stone.

Stone said smoothly, “We’ve been flying in space now for more than twenty years, and I guess we’ve figured out how to provide decent food. We’re basically having much the same kind of food that the workshop crews, in lunar and Earth orbits, are eating right now. We have a menu that repeats, every six days or so. Most of our food is rehydratable. Like my noodles and chicken here.” He pointed at his tray. “That’s because rehydratable gives the best food value per pound of weight. But we do have some foods which are thermostabilized — cooked before launch, and then stored in a cold box. I’ve got here stewed tomatoes, and ground beef with pickle sauce, for instance. And some foods we can carry in their natural form, like my almonds here. And then I have these freeze-dried pears, and this strawberry drink… We don’t have a refrigerator or a food freezer, as the Skylabs have, but we do have something new: an oven. It’s fan-forced, of course, not convection. Because hot air doesn’t rise anywhere in zero G. And we’ve even got hot and cold running water, here in this little galley of ours.”

Gershon said sotto voce, “Tell him about the farts, Phil.”

Oh, sure. Hot mike, asshole.

Actually the farts were a real problem. There was a device in the spigots that was supposed to scrape excess hydrogen, which was a by-product of the Mission Module’s power cells, out of their water supply. But the gizmo didn’t work too well, and a lot of gas got into their stomachs. And out again almost as quickly.

“Ares, Houston.” Ares was already so far from Earth that it took a full six seconds for their signal to reach Houston, and for Crippen’s reply to come back. “Phil, we’re told we have a pretty good audience here.”

“We’re gratified to hear that.”

“Phil, would you say you actually enjoy the in-flight catering?”

Stone hesitated. “It’s hard to say. Even stuff in its natural form tends to taste different, somehow, up here; I guess there’s some subtle physiological change — a response to microgravity — we don’t understand yet. Then there’s the packaging. I know this form of food has a lot of advantages. There’s little chance of food particles getting into the equipment. But the Russians have been sending their cosmonauts up with cakes and bread since 1965…”

Six seconds.

“Copy all that, Phil,” Crippen said, “but it wasn’t quite the question I asked.”

Stone said firmly, “It’s the answer you’re going to get, Bob.”

After the delay, York heard laughter in the background, in the MOCR.