Robert Silverberg - Hi Diddle Diddle

The day that Hydroponics Technician Al Mason got his big idea started out just like any other at Lunar Base Threethat is, with a bunch of bloodshot and fuzzy-brained scientists and engineers going through the motions of eating breakfast.

The first meal of the day at Lunar Base Three was never a pleasant proposition. Lunar Base Three was manned entirely by a bachelor staff of American researchers. With no women around at present, and with no stringent curfew laws, the men of Lunar Base Three thought nothing of staging lively bull-sessions that lasted far into the nightas late as two or three in the morning, by their arbitrary time-scale.

But there was a very definite reveille bell at half past seven in the morning on that same time-scale, and a very definite time during which the mess contingent served breakfast. So, each morning, several dozen men gathered, bleary-eyed, after only three or four or sometimes five hours of sleep. Conversation was rarely inspired at the breakfast table of Lunar Base Three; largely a matter of muttered grunts and yawns, pass-me-the-sugar, and vague complaints about the traditional lack of quality of the synthetic food served on the Moon.

Hydroponics Technician Al Mason had been up past three the night before, jawing with a visiting astronomer from Lunar Base One. Just now Mason was as red-eyed and as sleep-befogged as the rest of the men in Lunar Base Three. But an idea was beginning to blossom in his skull, forcing its way upward through the murkiness of fatigue.

Powdered milk, Mason grumbled, sourly. Every morning, powdered milk I Thin anemic stuff that no self-respecting calf would sniff twice. He poured himself a glassful and sipped at it glumly.

If youd drink coffee in the morning, commented Biochemist Maury Roberts in a waspish tone, you wouldnt have to grouse about the milk all the time.

I like milk, Mason replied stolidly. I dont like coffee.

Retarded maturity, remarked Sam Brewster, an Electronics man. Delayed adolescence. Thats why you still drink milk!

Hydroponics Technician Mason was six feet three and weighed two hundred pounds under Earth gravity. It was unlikely that he suffered from any such fixations. He chuckled grimly at Brewsters comment and took another swig of milk. Go ahead, psychoanalyze me if you want to! But I still like milk, real milk, not this ersatz stuff.

The milk pitcher passed round the table. Some of the men were having dry cereal; others liked milk in their coffee. And one thing was evident to all: the synthetic milk was getting wearisome. As were all the other synthetic foods, the vegeburgers and the yeast-cakes and the rest. But there was no helping the situation; at this stage of Lunar exploration, space travel was a costly proposition. It was more important to devote precious cargo space to vital instruments than to steaks and chops. The synthetics werent as tasty, but they were just as nutritious as the real goodsand they took up only a tenth as much space as real food on each Moonbound cargo ship from Earth.

Al Mason leaned Sleepily forward, thinking bleakly of how pleasant it would be to have real food at the basenot just at Christmas time, when the budget-happy appropriators in Congress relented for the sake of sentiment, but all the blessed year round. Real food. Good honest homogenized Grade A.

Mason downed the last of his milk and blinked as the idea that had been forming all morning suddenly erupted into the conscious levels of his mind. He started to laugh. It was a preposterous idea, sure. But he liked it.

Mason looked cautiously over his shoulder at the other table, where the top brass were breakfasting. Base Commander Henderson was shoveling a synthetic omelet into his mouth and was thumbing through the early-morning news bulletins off the Washington ticker, simultaneously. But Commander Henderson had notoriously sharp ears. And the C.O. might not care too much for the project Mason had just conceived. The bases budget was too skimpy to permit horseplay.

In a low voice Mason said, I just had a notionabout synthetic milk, and all.

Well? Maury Roberts said. What is it?

Not here, Mason murmured. Brass might down thumb it. Ill tell you tonight, after hours. I think were going to have some fun.

Al Mason said nothing about his great idea all day. He let it ripen in his mind. He moved busily and efficiently through the ponies chamber, tending to his chores. The hydroponics work had to come before anything else, and Mason knew it.

Eight small domed bases dotted the face of the Moon in that year of 1995. Three of the bases were American, three Russian, one Chinese, one Indian. Although the cold war had long since relaxed, assuming the nature of a perpetual stalemate rather than a helter-skelter scramble for destruction, the rivalry among the Moon bases remained keen. American science vied with Russian science for supremacy, and the men of the Lunar bases knew they had to work at top productivity all the time.

Americas Lunar Base One was a gigantic astronomical observatory. Lunar Base Two, like its Russian counterpart, was a military installation, complete with a dusty stockpile of fission-fusion-fission bombs and missiles. Most civilized peoples of the world preferred not to think much about Americas Lunar Base Two and the Russian equivalent, known as Outpost Lenin.

Lunar Base Three was devoted to basic scientific research. It had been hard to ram the concept of a Base Three through the minds of the members of the various Appropriations Committees, and even now Base Three did not have all the money it needed. But it carried on valuable research despite the annual harrying it received at budget time.

The Moon is a natural place for cryogenics research; cryogenics, therefore, was a major feature of Base Three. Hydroponics was another important project; as Mans dominion extended outward into space, it would be increasingly more important to find ways of maintaining a Terrestrial ecology. Also carried on at Base Three were high-and low-pressure physics, solid-state work, advanced chemical research into atmosphere purification, and several dozen other things. There was remarkably little supervision, and no quota of practical results was demandedthough the men of Base Three were aware that their base would continue to exist only so long as the United States Government remained in a free-spending mood.

The ambition of every bright young science student in the United States was to qualify for acceptance as a researcher in Lunar Base Three. While in Russia, the cream of the cream was chosen for similar work at Outpost Kapitza in Ptolemaeus Crater.

The working day at Lunar Base Three theoretically ended at 1700 hours. In practice, the men were under their own supervision. They were free to knock off at noon when they wanted to, and were equally free to work clear through till morning reveille if the urge smote them. Responsible-minded people rarely take advantage of such setups. The average work-week among the men of Lunar Base Three was in the vicinity of eighty or ninety hours a week. Occasionally Commander Henderson had to order a man to take some time off, for the sake of health.

But there were several recreation-sheds for the benefit of men who wanted to relax for after-hours bull sessions and the like. Hydroponics Technician Mason entered Recreation Shed B about 1900 hours that night, after shutting up shop at the ponies chambers.

None of the bases administrative officials happened to be in the shed, for which Mason was grateful. But five of his fellow workers were thereSam Brewster, Maury Roberts, Len Garfield of Cryogenics, Dave Herst of Chemistry, and Nat Bryan of the Solid-State team.

When Mason walked into the recreation shed he was humming an old nursery rhyme, singing a little of it in an erring basso: