V
"You're not human," said Link Raeburn accusingly, and he shook a quivering finger at Lonny. "Here we are in the face of death, and all you think of is your stomach."
"There's not much choice," said Lonny Higgens, "when a fellow's empty. And the menu never changes here. Besides, eating might help you to think."
"You shouldn't think while you're eating," reprimanded Lana. "It'll give you indigestion."
"Great Space!" broke out Raeburn. "You too! Who gives a hang about indigestion? Listen, you pair of fools, we're snagged down here on the bottom of a sea of mud. Pearls won't mean a thing to us in this fix! We'll be lucky if we ever get out of this with a whole skin." He began pacing up and down the room, swinging his hands, while Lonny inspected the storage compartment.
"Looks like a fish dinner," he sighed. "Of course there are clams, of the mud-kelp variety, and Uranusian lobsters—they're really delicious at this time of the year. Then we've got a very good variety of that piscatorial wonder known here as a whirl-ray, whose steaks are rather tasty. But in the last analysis, just fish."
"I'll take the same," groaned Lana Hilton, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling with an attitude of unwilling acquiescence. "Between going nuts and getting the d. t.'s I'll take the nuts. Maybe I can forget a few trifles of life by just being in your company. At least it'll keep me from thinking over what a swell opportunity I had for being a good little girl. By the way, Lonny, do you think there's a Hereafter, here on Uranus?"
"Why not?" asked Lonny with a grimace as he laid thick white slices of whirl-ray in the skillet and turned on an electric grid. "I suppose they'd picture there as some sort of a glorified place where mud just couldn't exist."
"Yeh, probably with green fields, waterfalls, and mountains," returned Lana, leaning on her fist with a reminiscent sigh, "Gosh, sometimes I wonder why I ever left those good things, and then again—what's the diff?"