A Fire on the Moon

by Norman Mailer

The food came in plastic bags. Some of it was hard like bread cubes or cereal cubes, cocoanut cubes, peanut cubes, or cheese cracker cubes. Some of the food was wet pack and could be eaten out of the bag, some was freeze-dried, and water had to be inserted through a one-way valve, the bag then kneaded to make cream of chicken soup, or Canadian bacon and applesauce, a species of pot roast, or beef and vegetables, or ham and potatoes. The mash could then be squirted through another valve into the mouth. Obviously most of the chow had a consistency like baby food. Any attempt to eat in other fashion required much care, for in the weightless space of the cabin, food lifted to the mouth by a fork or spoon was in danger of taking off from any sudden move and floating through the air, later to enmesh itself in the smallest apertures of the instruments, or be inhaled to irritate the lungs. Eating in such valve-and-mash fashion, they were obliged to drink that way as well. Water ran from a dispenser through a seventy-two-inch coiled hose which abutted in a pistol placed between the lips, a button-actuated pistol – one pressed the button and water shot through the barrel into the mouth. A miserable mode by which to eat and drink, yet the food was a considerable improvement over early space flights when there had been nothing but bricks of processed nutrient and water: that original space food had been designed to produce the lowest fecal content. Now the food was better – as a corol...