"Not particularly. Why?"

"The entire for'ard half of the deck beneath our feet — a storage hold, really — is given up mainly to that. Seems an awful lot, I know, but then a hundred men can get through an awful lot of food in three months, which is the minimum time we must be prepared to stay at sea if the need arises. We'll pass up the inspection of the stores, the sight of all that food just makes me feel I'm fighting a losing battle all the time, and have a look at where the food's cooked."

He led the way for'ard into the galley, a small square room all tiles and glittering stainless steel. A tall, burly whitecoated cook turned at our entrance and grinned at Benson. "Come to sample today's lunch, Doc?"

"I have not," Benson said coldly. "Dr. Carpenter, the chief cook and my arch enemy, Sam MacGuire. What form does the excess of calories take that you are proposing to thrust down the throats of the crew today?"

"No thrusting required," said MacGuire happily. "Cream soup, sirloin of beef no less, roast potatoes and as much apple pie as a man can cope with. All good, nourishing food."

Benson shuddered. He was just about to leave the galley when he stopped and pointed at a heavy bronze ten-inch tube that stood about four feet above the deck of the galley. It had a heavy hinged lid and screwed clamps to keep the lid in position. "This might interest you, Dr. Carpenter. Guess what?"

"A pressure cooker?"

"Looks like it, doesn't it? This is our garbage-disposal unit. In the old days, when a submarine had to surface every few hours, garbage disposal was no problem: you just tipped the stuff over the side. But when you spend weeks on end cruising at three hundred feet, you can't just walk up to the upper deck and tip the waste over the side: garbage disposal becomes quite a problem.