, I'll have even ripe tomatoes!
'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll
have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air
oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to
pollenate by hand..."

Nope--Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in space.

The Planet Strappers soon established a routine for their journey out as
far as the Moon. There were watches, to be sure that none of the bubbs
veered, while somebody was asleep or inattentive. Always at hand were
loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men--who
might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays
with their families--might be around, even here.

Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching
Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized,
more or less.

Everybody took to Ramos' kind of exercise, bouncing around inside a
bubb--even Lester, who was calmer, now, but obviously strained by the
vast novelty and uncertainty ahead.

"I gave you guys a hard time--I'm sorry," he apologized. "But I hope
there won't be any more of that. The Bunch will be breaking up, soon, I
guess--going here and there. And if I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I
think I'll be okay."

Frank Nelsen hoped that he could escape any further part of Lester, but
he wasn't sure that he had the guts to desert him.

It wasn't long before the ionics were shut off. Enough velocity had been
attained. Soon, the thrust would be needed in reverse, for braking
action, near the end of the sixty hour journey into a circumlunar orbit.

Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now mostly a kind of
gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and vitamins--each meal
differently flavored, up to the number of ten flavors, in a
manufacturer's attempt to mask the sameness. Add water to a powder--heat
and eat. The spaceman's usual diet, while afield...

One of the functions of the moisture-reclaimers was a rough joke, or a
squeamishness. A man's kidneys and bowels functioned, and precious water
molecules couldn't be wasted, here in the dehydrated emptiness. But what
difference did it really make, after the sanitary distillation of a
reclaimer? Accept, adjust...

Decision about employment or activity in the immediate future, was one
thing that couldn't be dismissed. And announcements, beamed from the
Moon, emphasized it:

"Serenit