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Space Tug by [pseud.] Murray Leinster
page 64 of 215 (29%)
middle. It remained red at its ends, but in the very center it glowed
with splendid flame. Then a golden ball appeared, and swam up and
detached itself from the Earth, and the on-lookers saw the breath-taking
spectacle of all of Earth's surface seemingly being born of the night.

As if new-created before their eyes, seas and lands unfolded in the
sunlight. They watched flecks of cloud and the long shadows of
mountains, and the strangely different colorings of its fields and
forests.

As Brent had told them, it was good to watch.

It was half an hour later when they gathered in the kitchen of the
Platform. The man who had been loading launching tubes now briskly
worked to prepare a meal on the extremely unusual cooking-devices of a
human outpost in interplanetary space.

The food smelled good. But Joe noticed that he could smell growing
things. Green stuff. It was absurd--until he remembered that there was a
hydroponic garden here. Plants grew in it under sunlamps which were
turned on for a certain number of hours every day. The plants purified
the Platform's air, and of course provided some fresh and nourishing
food for the crew.

They ate. The food was served in plastic bowls, with elastic thread
covers through which they could see and choose the particular morsels
they fancied next. The threads stretched to let through the forks they
ate with. But Brent used a rather more practical pair of tongs in a
businesslike manner.

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