“You’re missing something. Believe me, lady, you’re missing something. The first course is a kind of light, fast movement, all herbs from Aldebaran IV mixed with a spicy vinegar from Aldebaran IX. The second course, Consomme Grand, is a lot slower and kind of majestic. Oehele bases it all on a broth made from the white chund, a native rabbity animal they have on Aldebaran IV. See, he uses only native Aldebaranian foods to suggest a Martian dish. Get it? The same thing Kratzmeier did in A Long, Long Dessert on Deimos and Phobos, only it’s a lot better. More modern-like, if you know what I mean. Now in the third course, Oehele really takes off. He—”

“Please, Mr. Winthrop!” Mrs. Brucks begged. “Enough! Too much! I don’t want to hear any more.” She glared at him, trying to restrain her lips from curling in contempt. She’d had far too much of this sort of thing from her son, Julius, years ago, when he’d been running around with a crazy art crowd from City College and been spouting hours of incomprehensible trash at her that he’d picked up from the daily newspaper’s musical reviews and the printed notes in record albums. One thing she’d learned the hard way was how to recognize an esthetic phony.

Winthrop shrugged. “Okay, okay. But you’d think you’d at least want to try it. The others at least tried it. They took a bite of classical Kratzmeier or Gura-Hok, they didn’t like it, they spat it out—fine. But you’ve been living on nothing but that damn twentieth century grub since we arrived. After the first day, you haven’t set foot outside your room. And the way you asked the room to decorate itself—Keerist! It’s so old-fashioned, it makes me sick. You’re living in the twenty-fifth century, lady; wake up!”

“Mr. Winthrop,” she said sternly. “Yes or no? You’re going to be nice or not?”

“You’re in your fifties,” he pointed out.