Rod Kyzik looked in his dinner tray. Instead of the expected protein glop, a small gold ingot was firmly stuck to the bottom.

 

What the hell--!

 

He poked it with his finger. It remained a wafer of gold.

 

Hunh.

 

He popped another into the warmer. That held shiny metal too. So did the next eight.

 

It was clear to him what had happened: Someone had been using the hard-sided ration packs to smuggle refined metal past the tax man. Somehow he'd gotten a case by mistake. Earth was eager for contraband, and price controls combined with the Company's refining monopoly made for a thriving black market.

 

A few bricks of high-grade gold would be a pleasant windfall. But Kyzik was irritated, and a bit fearful.

 

Can't eat gold.

 

* * *

 

He was three weeks into a nine-week prospecting jaunt, matching course with a cluster of Earth-orbit Trojan rocks. He'd allowed three weeks for mining and three for the trip home. If he had to turn back now, he'd take a huge loss on the trip, even counting the gold.

 

He'd packed extra rations on general principle, but you couldn't see inside the little sealed packets before cooking, not without spoiling them. He had no idea how many held gold bricks. He scowled.

 

Okay. First, try weighing the cases. See if there's a difference. He dragged all five out of cold storage and checked each on his assaying scale. Identical.

 

Which made sense: smugglers would want them hidden, and extra mass would be a giveaway.

 

Maybe some sort of marking on the cases? ...Nope. Same lot number, even.

 

Dammit! He'd be at the Trojans in another eighteen hours, after which this mess would cut into his mining time. There had to be something he was missing. This'd be a lot easier if I had a partner to bounce ideas off.

 

Whenever Kyzik had partnered up in the past, it had been a disaster. He'd had one shipmate try to strangle him and another who embezzled. Then there was the time he brought his wife along — Ex-wife, and good riddance!

 

Even as he thought that, he regretted it. Bess hadn't been a bad girl. It was just that she loved to chatter and he didn't. On station that hadn't mattered because she'd had her friends, but their expedition together had been hell.

 

This is just the kind of puzzle she loves. Too bad...

 

With an effort, he put Bess out of his mind. He didn't need the distraction.

 

Can't eat memories either.

 

* * *

 

Kyzik dragged out the current case and tried to figure how many meals had been food. Let's see... ten ingots, and each tray is fifteen millimeters... Eight good meals on the top, in two layers. Makes sense. There'd have been some in case of customs inspection.

 

Eight meals per case, and five cases. Forty meals in six weeks is... uh...

 

He pulled out his tablet and opened the calculator. One meal a day -- not starvation, but close. Assuming nothing else went wrong. Kyzik gnawed on his lower lip. Was it worth risking?

 

He checked the rest of that case, one pack at a time. There were over a dozen empty packs scattered through the bottom layers, plus two meals randomly in the middle. Apart from that it was all gold bars.

 

This means something.

 

But he was too tired to figure out what. After half an hour muzzily flipping over an empty ration packet, he gave up and sacked out.

 

* * *

 

The next morning was busy. His target asteroids were where they were supposed to be — never guaranteed — but he had some fiddly piloting to do in order to intercept them.

 

At noon he ate one ration of hot protein glop (chili-cheese flavored) and puzzled over the food problem. I should check each case. If they're identical... but would they be? Dare he risk his life on it?

 

It wasn't until afternoon, when he was in the middle of assaying core samples, that he realized the obvious. I'll just weigh each meal! But he had days of work ahead of him, and now was the worst possible time to take a break.

 

Testing a claim is hard work. Over the next three days he ate seven meals. He needed the calories.

 

* * *

 

He'd finished marking his claim, and the four most profitable rocks were webbed together. Next he needed a nearby ice rock to use as reaction mass for the robot drive.

 

The computer could find one.

 

While it took the wheel, he hauled out the remaining food cases and his scale. There were empty ration packs, he reasoned, because even small gold bars must mass more than the average meal.

 

Unfortunately for Kyzik, weighing small objects while maneuvering under variable thrust is not easy. It's actually past hard and in the realm of frustratingly impossible. But he couldn't stop maneuvering; the whole problem was a lack of time.

 

He sat and brooded until the answer came to him. He'd only just begun to set up his new apparatus when the computer beeped. It had found an ice rock.

 

* * *

 

Two days (and four meals) later, jetting back with the ice, he tried again. This time he took a can of water and dropped meal packs into it. Some floated; others sank. The sinkers must be the densest — gold. He popped one into the warmer to be sure.

 

He was right.

 

Eureka!

 

* * *

 

It took thirty hours to rig the ice-powered robot drive onto his webbed asteroids. It would autopilot to the Company refinery. By the time he made it home, he'd have a nice deposit waiting in his account.

 

He looked fondly at the stack of gold, almost four hundred ingots. Then he sighed. His expedition cut short. Three weeks to home, and one meal every day and a half. Not ideal.

 

What the hell. It's a living.

 

* * *

 

Dear Bess,

Sorry I haven't written. You know me, not much to say. But this trip I ran into a puzzle I think you'd enjoy...