Titanium Texicans by Alan Black

cook?”
    “I wouldn’t trust Freddy’s cooking any farther than I can spit upwind in a Texas twister. He’ll grab something already fixed in the galley. I can’t cook either.”
    Tasso frowned, “You and your brother can’t cook?”
    Anisa shook her head. “No and no. No, he isn’t my brother, he’s a cousin, third cousin actually. And no, I haven’t had galley section training yet, not for cooking anyway. I have done duty washing dishes, bussing tables, and some prep work, but not in the kitchen. Why, can you cook?” Without waiting for a response, she continued. “That’s great. Maybe they’ll start you on galley training first and get that out of the way.” She plopped into the chair next to his. She propped an elbow on the armrest and rested her chin in her hand. She stared into his eyes. “So what can you cook, greenhorn?”
    Tasso blushed. He hadn’t been this close to anyone other than his grandfather in years. “Um …, oh. This.” He pulled out his dataport. He called up a picture of a yapikino from a reference text on Saronno fauna and turned the display so she could see the picture. “I had some of this for lunch … um, yesterday. I think that was the last time I ate.”
    Anisa made a gagging noise and backed away from the picture on the dataport. “Great guns, greenhorn! What is that thing? You ate that?”
    Tasso shrugged. “I hunted it, killed it, skinned it, boiled it up with some potatoes, and yes, I ate it. Why? How else can you eat a yapikino? Besides, it doesn’t taste as bad as it looks.”
    Anisa made a gagging noise again. “As bad as it looks? It looks like a radiated mutant zombie rat on steroids. I’m sure our galley can do something better than your last meal.”
    Tasso said, “Well, I did boil up some potatoes with it.”
    Anisa shook her head, “I’d hope you boiled up some hatch chilies to cover up the taste.”
    “I know a hatch is like a doorway on a ship. We had one on our shuttle at home, but what is a chili?”
    Anisa said, “What? No. It’s not that kind of a hatch. We had these chilies before we had spaceships. They’re call hatch because … I don’t know where the name comes from. You don’t know what a chili is?”
    Tasso shook his head.
    “You really are a greenhorn, aren’t you?” Before he could answer, she continued. “So, you have some experience on spaceships? Is that where you know about hatches?”
    Tasso said, “No. We have a small farm shuttle. We don’t take it out of the atmosphere. Can I ask you a question?”
    Anisa nodded. “Sure. That’s what I’m here for.”
    “I thought spaceships were made out of steel, but the floors and walls aren’t metal.”
    Anisa laughed. “They are metal, of a sort, but they aren’t steel. Most ships, especially those owned by the Rojo’s, are all a blend of titanium and ceramics. Steel becomes too brittle after extended periods in deep space. And we don’t have floors and walls. We have decks and bulkheads. They’re configured to look like something other than naked metal.”
    “Why would you bother to make the titanium and ceramics look any different than they normally would?”
    She pointed at the back door, ignoring his question. “Freddy is back from the kitchen. I hope they had something good.”
    The boy slid to a stop in front of the pair. “Hold this, Anisa,” he said. He dropped a box in her lap before she could answer. He grabbed a nearby table and dragged it over to them.
    Tasso watched the boy set the table, check its position, jostle it a bit, and flip a switch under the tabletop. He gave the table a quick hip-check, but it didn’t move. He took the box from Anisa and placed it on the table.
    Freddy grinned, and with a flourish, he pointed at the box. “Ta da! We lucked out. They had tacos.” He sat in the chair next to Tasso. The pair had him bracketed.
    Anisa laughed, “Great! I was afraid this close to take off all we were going to get would be leftover rice and