 Why wasn't the narrator's compartment clean during blastoff?
Illustrated by WOOD My agent was the one who got me the job of going along to write up the first trip to Mars. "It'll be the biggest break a writer ever got," he told me, two days before blastoff. A you-are-there type of report? A pilot, co-pilot, navigator and biochemist. I've met all but the pilot (he's very busy today), and they seem friendly enough. Dwight Kroger, the biochemist, is rather old to take the "rigors of the journey," as he puts it, but the government had a choice between sending a green scientist who could stand the trip or an accomplished man who would probably not survive, so they picked Kroger. We've blasted off, though, and he's still with us. He's kind of balding, and very iron-gray-haired and skinny, but his skin is tan as an Indian's, and right now he's telling jokes in the washroom with the co-pilot. Jones (that's the co-pilot; I didn't quite catch his first name) is scarlet-faced, barrel-chested and gives the general appearance of belonging under the spreading chestnut tree, not in a metal bullet flinging itself out into airless space. He has a little cubicle behind the pilot's compartment, with all kinds of maps and rulers and things. He keeps bent low over a welded-to-the-wall (they call it the bulkhead, for some reason or other) table, scratching away with a ballpoint pen on the maps, and now and then calling numbers over a microphone to the pilot. So far, he's still Captain Desmond to me. He was already on board when I got here, with my typewriter and ream of paper, so we didn't meet. It wasn't during blastoff. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as the gyroscopic spin they put on the ship so we have a sort of artificial gravity to hold us against the curved floor. Jones (I still haven't learned his first name) has been up with the pilot all day. He passed my room on the way to the galley (the kitchen) for a cup of dark brown coffee (they like it thick) and told me that we were almost past the Moon. I asked to look, but he said not yet; the instrument panel is Top Secret.
 The gyroscopic spin caused the narrator to vomit.
 The crew ransacked the narrator's room. They were not happy to have a journalist forced upon them for this journey.  The narrator forgot to secure his belongings when they boarded the ship. The gyroscopic spin knocked unsecured items all around the room.  The force of the inertial gravities knocked unsecured items all around the room. The narrator did not secure his belongings when he boarded the ship.  The gyroscopic spin caused the narrator to vomit.