"At least they feed you well."

Fatty grimaced at me. "You know where else you get served a meal with everything your heart desires."

Well, we unwrapped the cutlery and ate. What else could we do? The food was delicious, perfectly cooked. The drinks and the ice cream were cold, the grapefruit was chilled. When we finished, there was another click. First, three cigars that I remembered smoking at Louisa Capek's birthday party and liking more than any others I'd ever had, then, a plug of Fatty Myers's favorite chaw appeared. When the matches breezed down, we had stopped shrugging our shoulders. Fatty talked to himself a little, though.

I was halfway through the first cigar when Fatty heaved himself upright. "Got an idea."

He picked up a couple of plates and heaved them over the side. We both stood and watched them sink. Just before they got to the bottom—they disappeared. Like that. About two feet away from the lower box.

"So that's what happens to the waste."

"What?" I asked him.

He glared at me. "That."

We got rid of the rest of the service in the same way. On Fatty's suggestion we kept the knives. "We might need weapons when we arrive where—where we're going. Characters there might want to dissect us, or torture information out of us about Earth."

"If they can pull this kind of stuff, do you think we can stop them?" I wanted to know. "With knives that they made up for us out of empty emptiness?"

But we kept the knives.

We also kept the mackerel. For a pet. If we were going to be fed this as a steady diet, who wanted mackerel? There were only the three of us in that bubble and we felt we all had to stick together. The mackerel felt it too, for he began swimming up near the surface whenever we came close to the side. We became pretty good friends, and I fed him the bait I'd brought along—free.

About four hours later—it may have been five, because neither Fatty nor I had watches—the box clicked and the same meal wafted down with all the fixings. We ate some and threw the rest overboard.

"You know," Fatty said. "If it weren't for that 'Did Your Mother Come From Ireland' 

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