 What was Winkelmann's greatest insult to Bailey?
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. 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. Long before I was a boy in Med School, itching to look at black sky through a view-port, galley science had fulfilled the disgusting exordium of Isaiah 36:12, to feed the Slimeheads for breakfast today what was day-before-yesterday's table-scraps and jakes-water. The Japanese vessel staggered to her pad at Piano West after a twenty-week drunk: the alien yeast had got into the stomach of every man aboard, where it fermented each subsequent bite he ate to a superior grade of sake . Twelve tons of water, oxygen, and food would have filled the cargo compartments to bursting, and left a small ship like the C. P. Sale no reason to reach for Mars. 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. Though I'm signed aboard as Ship's Surgeon, I seldom lift a knife in space. This trip, the-man-you-love-to-hate was our Captain. If the Prussians had a Marine Corps, Winkelmann would have done splendidly as Drill Instructor for their boot camp. The planet Earth was hardly large enough to accommodate a wart as annoying as Willy Winkelmann. It was Winkelmann who saw humorous possibilities in the entry, "Bailey, Robert," on Ship's Articles. And it was Captain Willy Winkelmann who never referred to the ship's head by any other name than The Kitchen Cabinet. Bailey stared across the dining-cubby toward Winkelmann, silently imploring the Captain's ratification of his masterpiece. "Only good food," Winkelmann mumbled through his mouthful of disguised algae. You understand me, Belly-Robber?" Bailey, his hands fisted at his sides, nodded. "Yes, sir," Bailey said, his face a picture of that offense the British term Dumb Insolence. "You accuse me of driving a man to make bricks without straw," Winkelmann said.
 Slathering ketchup on Bailey's most proud concoction
 Slathering ketchup on Bailey's most proud concoction  Reducing his compensation  Refusing to eat the steaks that Bailey innovated  Remarking that the food in which he invested the least effort in making was the most delicious