Mason took an experimental sip, then another, and then a hefty gulp. It was milk. And not synthetic, either. This was the pure authentic article, unadulterated, homogenized, creamy and rich to the taste. Milk.
“Where in blazes did you get it?” Mason demanded. It couldn’t possibly be a product of the unfinished milk-still; in any event, Firestone knew nothing about the project. But where else, Mason wondered, could real milk have come from on the Moon?
The rotund cook said, “It’s Representative Manners’ private stock. I figured he could spare you a glassful or so. He must have brought five or ten gallons up from Earth with him.”
Mason’s jaw dropped. “He brought . . . five or ten . . . gallons . . . of milk?”
Firestone nodded amiably. “And, me knowing how much you went for the stuff, I figured I’d invite you in here for a little sip of it on the sly—”
“But why . . . why did he bring milk with him?”
“He’s got stomach ulcers,” the cook confided. “He’s on a milk diet. Drinks quarts and quarts of the stuff every day, hardly eats anything else. It’s a nuisance, I tell you, keeping that milk of his under refrigeration and dishing it out to him. But the commander says we gotta cater to those birds, and so I give ’em the best treatment. You ought to hear the rest of them grumble about the synthetic foods I”
Mason shrugged. “It’s their own fault they have to eat synthetics up here,” he said, “We eat ersatz because the budget doesn’t allow for anything else.”
“Yeah,” Firestone said. “You try to tell them that!”
“Me?” Mason asked. He grinned broadly, making his face a little uglier, and finished off his milk. “I just work here, Roily. I’m not looking for any trouble. Well, thanks for the milk, old man.”
“Just don’t tell anyone I let you have some.”
“I’ll keep mum,” Mason promised.
During the next couple of days, Mason and his buddies paid a few surreptitious visits to the Project Bossie lab, for maintenance purposes. One innovation was put into effect: the surplus growth from the liver tissue was no longer inhibited nor discarded, but now was carefully trimmed away and refrigerated. As Mason explained, it was perfectly edible meat, and there was no sense in letting it go to waste. As soon as the Washingtonites were gone, they would turn the meat supply over to Roily Firestone with much fanfare. Some real meat would be a vast improvement over algae steaks.
Just before dinner call on the sixth day of the visit, Al Mason was on his way to quarters to wash up when Roily Firestone intercepted him in the clearing.
“Al, can I talk with you for a minute?” the little cook whispered.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Remember the milk I gave you a couple of days ago? Representative Manners’ milk?”
“Yeah,” Mason said. “What about it?”
Firestone looked terrified. “You didn’t tell anyone I let you have some, did you?”
“Of course not. You don’t think I’d say anything that would get you in trouble, Roily?”
Firestone said in a low voice, “If anyone ever finds out that I left you have Manners’ milk, Al, I’ll be drawn and quartered by Henderson.”
“Huh? What for?”
“Because,” Firestone whispered, “I just had a peek in Manners’ milk container. It’s practically empty. All gone. Guzzled completely and utterly. Manners has enough left for tonight, but come breakfast-time there’ll be a rumpus.”
“But he brought gallons, you said. How could he run out of milk?”
“He didn’t keep track of how much he was drinking,” said Firestone. “And who was I to tell him he was using it up too fast? Anyway, I wasn’t paying attention. So he was ordering milk every time his stomach gave a twitch, five, six, seven times a day, and now there isn’t any more.”
Mason laughed. “I like that. The congressman who’s so eager to cut everybody else’s appropriation can’t even budget his own milk supply I”
“It isn’t funny, Al! Manners will raise the roof over it, and you can bet he isn’t going to admit it’s his own fault!”
“Have you told Henderson yet?”
“No. I’ll let him know after dinner. But remember, not a word about the glass I slipped you, or I’m done! They’ll accuse me of having given his milk to all the men!”
“Don’t worry, Roily. I’ll stick by you.” Mason chuckled happily. A lovely idea was forming. He wondered if they could handle the job in time.
For the first time since the arrival of the Washington visitors, real work went on in Laboratory 106a after hours. The lab lights were on right through the night, as the members of Project Bossie labored fiercely to iron out the final bugs in their system.
Toward morning, the last hitches were straightened away. Mason and his cohorts stood back, proudly surveying the monstrous device that almost completely filled Laboratory 106a. A bale of waste paper—to supply cellulose in the absence of grass—stood stacked near the intake. A receptacle waited at the far end of the room. In between was a spiderweb of pistons and rods, pipes and tubes, stopcocks and flow-meters and vats of chemicals—with the two organic components of the device, the culture-grown liver, and milk gland, occupying positions of prominence.
“O.K.,” Mason said. “Let’s try her out.”
Maury Roberts and Nat Bryan stuffed the waste-paper bale onto the intake platform, while Sam Brewster’s hand hovered over the electronic keyboard that controlled the entire operation. He thumbed a switch. The machine hummed. The bale of paper moved ponderously forward, into the jaws of the shredders.
From there the shredded cellulose proceeded to the first stomach to be mangled and pulped into a soggy semiliquid; then on to the second stomach for further breaking-down, then to the wringer in the third stomach, then to the fourth, where digestion proper could begin. Translucent feed lines spurted enzymes into the system at the properly programed intervals. Counters clicked; gears meshed. The effect was imposing.
According to Mason’s computations, the process, vastly accelerated over its natural counterpart, would take about three hours from waste-paper to milk. The time was 0540 hours when the first few drops of yield came filtering through the udder. At 0650, after Maury Roberts had run some quick chemical tests and after the yield had been refrigerated, the six bleary-eyed experimenters gravely toasted each,other with milk that was milk to the last decimal point.
Shutting up shop, they left—five of them to try to catch some rest before the bonging of the reveille bell half an hour hence. But Al Mason had an errand to run. He stepped out into the cool breeze of the artificial morning and headed for Commander Henderson’s office.
Henderson always rose at least an hour before reveille. Mason saw his office lights on. He opened the door and found himself staring at Major Chalmers, Henderson’s aide-de-camp.
“Good morning, Major,” Mason said briskly.
“Morning, Mason.”
“The commander busy?” Mason asked. “I’d like to talk to him for a minute, if I could.”
“I’m afraid he is busy,” Chalmers replied. “Maybe you’d better try later—around noon, maybe.”
From within came a loud expostulatory outburst in Commander Henderson’s voice. “I tell you, Donovan, I have to have milk for Manners. He’s going to find out in half an hour that his supply is gone, and then he’ll howl loud enough to be heard on Mars. No, I can’t tell him that it’s his own fault for drinking it up too fast! Would you tell a man like Manners something like that?”
Mason grinned at Major Chalmers. “What’s all that about?”
Chalmers said dourly, “Seems Representative Manners has ulcers, and he’s on a milk diet. He brought his own milk supply along with him, but he didn’t figure consumption right, and Roily Firestone discovered yesterday that the milk’s all gone. Manners can’t eat anything else, he refused to touch the powdered milk, and the C.O.’s been on the wire with Earth all night, trying to get them to O.K. a special shipment-rocket for Manners.”