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The day that Hydroponics Technician Al Mason got his big idea started out just like any other at Lunar Base Three—that 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 “night”—as 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.

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