 Which of these is the best description of the narrator?
Food, on the other hand, is a challenge shipmen face three times a day, so central to their thoughts that a history of sea-faring can be read from a commissary list. Should any groundsman dispute the importance of belly-furniture in history—whether it be exterminating whales, or introducing syphilis to the Fiji Islanders, or settling the Australian littoral with cross-coves from Middlesex and Hampshire—he is referred to the hundred-and-first chapter of Moby Dick , a book spooled in the amusement tanks of all but the smallest spacers. I trust, however, that no Marsman will undertake to review this inventory of refreshment more than a week from groundfall. A catalogue of sides of beef and heads of Leyden cheese and ankers of good Geneva would prove heavy reading for a man condemned to snack on the Chlorella-spawn of cis-Martian space. The earliest men into the vacuum swallowed protein squeezings from aluminum tubes, and were glad enough to drop back to the groundsman's diet of steak and fried potatoes. The Ship's Cook, the man who accomplishes the daily miracle of turning offal into eatables, is in many ways the most vital man aboard a spacer. And for a third footnote to the ancient observation, "God sends food, and the Devil sends cooks," Marsmen will recall what happened aboard my ship the Charles Partlow Sale . Our cargo consisted mostly of Tien-Shen fir seedlings and some tons of an arctic grass-seed—these to be planted in the maria to squeeze out the native blue bugberry vines. It's the Cook's responsibility to see that each man aboard gets each day no less than five pounds of water, two pounds of oxygen, and one-and-a-half pounds of dry food. This isn't just a paragraph from the Spacer Union Contract. By allowing a colony of Chlorella algae to work over our used air, water and other effluvia, though, three tons of metabolites would see us through from Brady Station to Piano West and back. Each molecule of oxygen would be conversant with the alveoli of every man aboard by the end of our trip. We're the one race of men who can't afford the luxury of squeamishness. My duties are to serve as wailing-wall, morale officer, guardian of the medicinal whiskey and frustrator of mutual murder. Generally the man aboard who'd serve as the most popular murder-victim is the Cook. This trip, the-man-you-love-to-hate was our Captain.
 A surgeon who happens to know some things about the history of food
 A doctor who is also a food critic  An angsty crew member who is always present in the mess hall  A mutinous doctor who wants to run the ship himself  A surgeon who happens to know some things about the history of food