feet on the mysterious box as he sat to eat.

"What disgusting form does the ship's garbage appear in today, Belly-Robber?" he asked the Cook.

Bailey frowned, but kept his temper, an asceticism in which by now he'd had much practice. "I've been working on the problem of steak, Sir," he said. "I think I've whipped the taste; what was left was to get the texture steak-like. Do you understand, Sir?"

"I understand," Winkelmann growled. "You intend that your latest mess should feel like steak to the mouth, and not like baby-food. Right?"

"Yes, Sir," Bailey said. "Well, I squeezed the steak-substrate—Chlorella, of course, with all sorts of special seasonings—through a sieve, and blanched the strands in hot algaeal oil. Then I chopped those strands to bits and rolled them out. Voila! I had something very close in texture to the muscle-fibers of genuine meat."

"Remarkable, Bailey," I said.

"It rather throws me off my appetite to hear how you muddle about with our food," the Captain said, his jowls settling into an expression of distaste. "It's quite all right to eat lobster, for example, but I never cared to see the ugly beast boiled before my eyes. Detail spoils the meal."

Bailey lifted the cover off the electric warming-pan at the center of the table and tenderly lifted a small "steak" onto each of our plates. "Try it," he urged the Captain.

Captain Winkelmann sliced off a corner of his algaeal steak. The color was an excellent medium-rare, the odor was the rich smell of fresh-broiled beef. Winkelmann bit down, chewed, swallowed. "Not too bad, Belly-Robber," he said, nodding. Bailey grinned and bobbed his head, his hands folded before him in an ecstasy of pleasure. A kind word from the Captain bettered the ruffles-and-flourishes of a more reasonable man. "But it still needs something ... something," Winkelmann went on, slicing off another portion of the tasty Chlorella. "Aha! I have it!"

"Yes, Sir?" Bailey asked.

"This, Belly-Robber!" Winkelmann reached beneath the mess-table and ripped open his cardboard carton. He brought out a bottle and unscrewed the cap. "Ketchup," he said, splattering the red juice over Bailey's masterpiece. "The scarlet burial-shroud for the failures of Cooks." Lifting a hunk of the "steak," streaming ketchup, to his mouth, Winkelmann chewed. "Just the thing," he smiled.

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