"We know," van den Burg said tiredly. He worked a microscopic speck of dirt from under a fingernail. There was a loud snap as he snipped the nail off. He stared at the general, a lean forefinger to one side of his ascetic nose.
"I'm no expert," the general said wearily. "When you reach my age they turn you into an office boy."
Hagstrom lit a cigarette. "It's tomorrow, isn't it?"
The general nodded. "They're loading now."
The third man's slight build and bushy black hair belied his mestizo origins. "I still don't think much of those rations," he said.
Hagstrom laughed suddenly. "You aren't going to con me into eating pickled fire bombs for four months."
"If I lived on prune soup and codfish balls I'd make no cracks about Mexican food," Aréchaga grunted. "You squareheads don't appreciate good cooking."
"You won't get any good cooking in zero gravity," the general said. They got up and filed out the door, putting on their caps and military manners.
Outside, trucks clustered at the base of a giant gantry. Aréchaga shuddered as a fork lift dropped a pallet of bagged meat on the gantry platform. The meat was irradiated and sealed in transparent plastic, but the habits of a lifetime in the tropics do not disappear in spite of engineering degrees. All that meat and not a fly in sight, he thought. It doesn't look right.