Rocket to Luna

Ted soon mastered the process of eating. No sit-down-and-stuff-yourself matter was this, he soon discovered. The food was cooked in a closed broiler. As soon as the broiler was opened, the food had to be speared with a fork immediately. Luckily, the fork utilized friction and not gravity, so there was no danger of a piece of food floating off a fork. After the food was speared, it was transferred to the plate, and the cover immediately put in place. The meal could then be begun.

Whenever a piece of food was desired, one of the quarters was slid open a fraction of an inch, and the fork thrust into that space to spear the food. The opening was then sufficiently enlarged to allow the food on the fork to pass through, and then snapped shut again. Cutting was a little more difficult in that the food had to be speared through the opening, the knife inserted into the slit, the food sliced, the knife withdrawn, the opening made wider, the food taken out, the opening closed. Nor was it possible to lay down a utensil on anything but a metal surface. Ted once put down his knife on a plastic clipboard and promptly had to chase it halfway across the cabin. He finally grasped it when its magnetism caught at the metal bulkhead.

Eating was no longer a pleasant pastime. It was, rather, a full-scale operation. This distressed Ted because he was a boy with an unusually large appetite, and weightlessness somehow took the edge off his hunger. At least, he attributed his loss of appetite to the weightless condition inside the rocket. Eating his meals alone, separate from the other men, may have had something to do with it.

At the end of their first day out from the Station, Ted was physically exhausted. And he soon discovered that sleeping was another pleasure which had been complicated by the peculiar properties of weightlessness.

It was conceivably possible to simply stretch out in mid-air and go to sleep that way. Barring any sudden jar, the body would simply hang there until it drifted off to sleep. Ted found this wasn’t the case. Every time he breathed, he found himself drifting over toward one or another of the bulkheads. When he finally settled himself close to one of the bulkheads, preventing any further drifting, he was surprised to discover he was slowly being sucked toward the intake grill of the air-conditioning system.

He gave it up as a bad try, and ended up by strapping himself into his couch, where he spent a tossless night — and, as a result, a sleepless one. He was not used to being strapped down in bed. He was a sprawling sleeper, and his inability to turn and toss at will kept him awake most of the night.

That was how he discovered the loose rivet.

He was lying on the couch, the straps across his waist and chest annoying the life out of him. He stared up at the overhead, tracing the pattern of rivets with his eyes. He decided to count the rivets, using them as substitutes for sheep. He started with the first rivet near the instrument panel, working his way aft, over his head, down the side of the bulkhead, and then across the deck. When he was back from where he’d started, he’d counted one hundred and thirteen rivets, and he then began on the rivets that ran athwartships.

He had reached one hundred and fifty-four when he saw the rivet hanging from the overhead. At first he thought his mind was just fuzzy from lack of sleep. He stared at the loose rivet, trying to decide whether its apparent looseness was simply an optical illusion, a trick being played by the shadows and the flickering lights of the instrument panel.

Undecided, he loosened his safety belts and shoved off from the couch, floating quickly across the cabin to the overhead. He hung beneath the questioned rivet, his eyes close to the overhead. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, surprised when it almost fell out in his hands.

“Captain Merola!” he called.

The steady breathing of the other men filled the cabin, giving it the warm atmosphere of sleepy contentment.

“Captain Merola!” he shouted, his voice louder this time.

“Hm? Huh? What?” Merola stirred on his couch, straining against the straps for an instant and then sinking back against the cushion.

“Captain!” Ted pushed his fist against the overhead, dropped quickly to the captain’s couch. “Captain, wake up!”

Merola turned his head away from Ted. “No,” he mumbled. “Go ’way.”

Ted grabbed his shoulder and began to shake the man. “Come on,” he pleaded, “wake up.”

Merola’s eyes popped open suddenly, alert instantly. He twisted his head to one side, the alert cocker spaniel look on his face again. “What is it, Baker?” he asked quickly.

“A loose rivet, sir. In the overhead.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir. I just happened to see it while...”

“Where?”

Ted pointed. “Up there, sir. I can show you.”

Merola had already unbuckled his belts and he sat upright now. “Dan!” he called. “Roll out, Dan. On the double!”