Tembo clashed his heels and stood at rigid attention in front of the board. Stretching away on both sides of him were the fuses, white ceramic cylinders capped on both ends with metal, each one a foot in diameter, five feet high, and weighing ninety pounds. There was a red band around the midriff of each fuse. First Class Spleen tapped one of these bands.
“Every fuse has one of these red bands, which is called a fuseband and is of the color red. When the fuse burns out this band turns black. I don’t expect you to remember all this now, but it’s in your manual and you are going to be letter-perfect before I am done with you, or else. Now I will show you what will happen when a fuse burns out. Tembo-that is a burned-out fuse! Go!”
“Unggh!” Tembo shouted, and leaped at the fuse and grasped it with both hands. “Unggh!” he said again, as he pulled it from the clips, and again “Unggh!” when he dropped it into the fuseway. Then, still Ungghing, be pulled a new fuse from the storage rack and clipped it into place and with a final Unggh! snapped back to attention.
“And that’s the way it is done, by the count, by the numbers, the trooper way, and you are going to learn it or else.” A dull buzzing sounded, grumbling through the air like a stifled eructation. “There’s the chow call, so I’ll let you break now, and while you’re eating, think about what you are going to have to learn. Fall out.”
Other troopers were going by in the corridor, and they followed them into the bowels of the ship.
“Gee—do you think the food might be any better than it was back in camp?” Eager asked, smacking his lips excitedly.
“It is completely impossible that it could be any worse,” Bill said as they joined a line leading to a door labeled CONSOLIDATED MESS NUMBER Two. “Any change will have to make it better. After all-aren’t we fighting troopers now? We have to go into combat fit, the manual says.”
The line moved forward with painful slowness, but within an hour they were at the door. Inside the room a tired looking KP in soap-stained, . greasy fatigues handed Bill a yellow plastic cup from a rack before him. Bill moved on, and when the trooper in front of him stepped away, he faced a blank wall from which there emerged a single, handleless spigot. A fat cook standing next to it, wearing a large white chef’s hat and a soiled undershirt, waved him forward with the soup ladle in his hand.
“C’mon, c’mon, ain’t you never et before? Cup under the spout, dog tag in the slot, snap it up!”
Bill held the cup as he had been advised and noticed a narrow slit in the metal wall just at eye level. His dog tags were hanging around his neck, and he pushed one of them into the slot. Something went bzzzzz, and a thin stream of yellow fluid gushed out, filling the cup halfway.
“Next man!” the cook shouted, and pulled Bill away so that Eager could take his place. “What is this?” Bill asked, peering into the cup.
“What is this! What is this!” the cook raged, growing bright red. “This is your dinner, you stupid bowbl This is absolutely chemically pure water in which are dissolved eighteen amino acids, sixteen vitamins, eleven mineral salts, a fatty acid ester, and glucose. What else did you expect?”
“Dinner … ?” Bill said hopefully, then saw red as the soup ladle crashed down on his head. “Could I have it without the fatty acid ester?” he asked hopefully, but be was pushed out into the corridor where Eager joined him.
“Gee,” Eager said. “This has all the food elements necessary to sustain life indefinitely. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Bill sipped at his cup, then sighed tremulously.
“Look at that,” Tembo said, and when Bill turned, a projected image appeared on the corridor wall. It showed a misty firmament, in which tiny figures seemed to be riding on clouds. “Hell awaits you, my boy, unless you are saved. Turn your back on your superstitious ways, for the First Reformed Voodoo Church welcomes you with open arms; come unto her bosom, and find your place in heaven at Samedi’s right hand. Sit there with Mondonguc and Bakalou and Zandor, who will welcome you.”