Roger and Sally Baxley were sitting at a table in the Sargasso Restaurant, looking at the menus a waiter had just brought them, when half a dozen of the ship's security men, all with guns on their hips, came in and pushed their way through to the kitchen area. Two of them were pushing large laundry hampers.

"What's going on?" said Sally, looking concerned.

"No idea," Roger replied. He rose from his table and made his way over to the door to the kitchen area. Looking through, he saw that the security men were issuing instructions to the head chef, who was staring back in disbelief. "You can't do that," he heard the chef saying. "I own the franchise. Everything here belongs to me, including the food."

"The Captain's going to explain everything," the lead security man told him. "The food has to be rationed. All fresh fruit and vegetables are to be taken to the walk-in chiller room on Deck Five, for safe keeping. From now on, all food is to be rationed. No main meals larger than a thousand calories. Breakfast and lunch, three hundred calories maximum."

"But this is outrageous!" the cook exclaimed, his face going red with anger. "This food doesn't belong to the ship. It belongs to me. I own the franchise to run this restaurant any way I see fit."

"Not any more, I'm afraid," the security man told him. "Anything that'll grow if it's put in the ground has to be put aside, as feed stock for the farm that'll be set up on the mainland. It's too precious to be just eaten."

Listening to this, Roger felt himself becoming very afraid. "We're not going home, then?" he said, stepping forward to where the guards could see him. Other diners followed him in until the kitchen was getting crowded.

"We have to plan for the possibility that we're here to stay," the security man said to Roger. He turned back to the chef. "Please show us where the vegetables are stored."

"But what will we eat?" the chef protested.

"There's plenty of other food," the security man replied. "Canned food. Frozen food. You'll have to make do with that."

"People will suspect that you're keeping the food for yourselves," Roger told him.

"You have my word that's not the case."

"Your word?" said Roger. "We don't know you. We don't know if you're a man of your word."

"I'm sure the Captain will allow inspections of the stockpile," the security man said. He and the other security men were looking intimidated by the crowd that was gathering around him. Roger saw one man's hand moving towards the gun on his belt. He felt a hand on his arm and looked round to see that Sally had followed him in. She was looking scared.

"Better let them take it," Roger said to the chef. "We don't want any trouble."

"It's theft, pure and simple " said the chef, though. "It's against the law."

"The Captain's the law on this ship," the security man said. His hand was on the holster of his own gun now, telling everyone present what the law really was. "Now show us where the vegetables are stored, or we'll just search for it."

The chef glared at him, but then he looked at the gun on the other man's hip and showed them the way to the larder. The shelves inside were piled high with carrots, potatoes and other vegetables, but there were also empty shelves showing that there had once been much more of them. For security men pushed their way in and began loading it all into the laundry baskets.

"We also need to search your waste bins," the security man said. "We need the heads of root vegetables. The potato peelings. I'm told it'll still grow if the eyes are undamaged and the peeling is thick enough."

"We don't waste food by peeling potaties thickly," the chef replied indignantly, "but if you want to look, it's out there. Just the waste from today. Everything older has already been disposed of."

He led two of the security men back into the main kitchen area, and while they were gone Roger went to stand closer to their leader. "Surely we can't have given up hope of being rescued already," he said. "It's been less than a day. It's possible that the search for us hasn't even started yet."

"The Captain will explain everything," the security man told him. "He's preparing a message for the whole ship. We just need to gather up all the vegetables that are left before these guys chop them all up."

"But the Captain must know we can't create a farm," said Roger incredulously. "We don't have the equipment, the resources, the expertise..."

"We'll have to figure it out," the security man told him, "or we'll starve. Do you want to starve? Because I don't."

Roger felt his fear growing as he watched the men filling the laundry baskets, and when he felt his wife slipping her hand into his, he could feel the nervous sweat and the tremble in her body. "It'll be all right," he told her. "It's all going to be all right."

Sally was facing the security man, though. "You're doing this to every restaurant on the ship?" she asked him.

"All twenty," he told her. "As fast as possible, before they have he chance to hide vegetables from us. Which would be stupid," he added, raising his voice to he heard by the kitchen staff. "Anyone caught hiding vegetables that might grow in a farm will be subject to a range of new penalties that are even now being considered by the officers."

"What kind of penalties?" asked Roger. "Imprisonment? Do you have any idea how much manpower a farm requires when you don't have tractors and stuff? You'll need every able bodied man you can get your hands on."

"I imagine the penalties will be in the form of reduced food rations," the security man replied. He saw that his men had finished loading up the laundry hampers. "Come on," he said to them. "Let's get it down to Deck Five."

"What about all the other restaurants?" asked Roger. "Word will get around fast. They'll have time to hide some of their stock before you can get there."

"Not as fast as you think," the security man told him. "The ship's telephone service has been temporarily shut down, and the officers are organising stewards to watch the other restaurants. Anyone trying to hide anything will be persuaded not to."

"My lawyers will hear of this," the chef promised him. "I'll be calling them the moment we're back in contact with the outside world."

"You do that," the security man told him. He then paid the chef no further attention and led the way back out into the corridor, followed by the men pushing the hampers.

"But... But..." one of the other diners was saying, looking around at the equally horrified and confused people around him. "We're just having a communications blackout, aren't we? Why are they acting like we're about to be shipwrecked?"

"They think we're out of contact with the rest of the world permanently," said Roger, looking at his wife, who was staring back at him with wide, scared eyes. "They think we're all alone in the world," he added. "All we have left of the modern world is what we've got here on the ship with us."

"But that's ridiculous!" the other diner protested. "What do they think happened to the rest of the world? Has there been a war or something?"

"I don't know," Roger admitted. "They said the Captain's going to give us some more information later. Until then, I think we should just remaim calm." He turned to face his wife. "Whatever's happened," he said, "we'll get through it if we all just keep our heads. And share what food we have fairly."

He was looking at another pair of diners as he said this. They had been served earlier, and were halfway through a full sized dinner. "We paid for this," the diner said as the other customers gathered around him. "It's ours."

"Those guards were right," Roger told him. "If we really are cut off from the rest of the world, we have to ration what food we have. One thousand calories each, they said. You must have eaten that much already."

The diner and his wife watched helplessly as their plates were taken away from them and the remaining food divided onto four new plates. "That looks like a thousand calories on each plate," Roger said, trying to ignore the betrayed shock on the faces of the food's previous owners. "You four, take a plate each. I'm afraid this is all you get to eat for the rest of today."

"I can't live on just that," one of the four said. He was heavily overweight, his stomach drooping over the belt of his trousers. "You can't expect us to live on just that."

"We're all in the same boat," Roger told him, though. "Both literally and figuratively. Our meals, my wife and I, will be no bigger. You understand, darling?" His wife nodded, looking shell-shocked.

"You've decided to collaborate with the security men, then?" said the fat man accusingly.

"It's not about collaborating," Roger told him. "It's about survival. You look as though you could benefit from smaller meals, anyway."

"How dare you!"

Roger turned away from him and went back to see the chef, who was staring at the empty shelves in the larder in dismay. "So, what have you got left to eat?" he asked. He saw some tins on the other side of the larder, and went to examine them. "Tinned peaches and custard, darling?"

"Who could resist an offer like that?" she replied drily.

☆☆☆

At that same moment, another group of six security men was pushing their way through to the kitchen area of the Mermaid's Feast restaurant. This restaurant didn't have a Roger Baxley to keep the other customers in line with his force of personality, though, and as the security men began loading the fresh vegetables into their laundry hampers, the customers came pressing in, demanding that they stop. "You have no right to do this," one elderly woman declared, raising herself to her full height with the aid of her fashionably-red rollator. "Until it's sold, this food is private property."

"No such thing as private property any more," Jeff Bannerman, the leading security guard, told her. "It's a matter of what's best for everyone."

"And who decides what's best for everyone?" another customer asked angrily.

"The Captain does. Like a plane in flight, the Captain of a ship under way has ultimate authority over everyone aboard."

"That doesn't give him the right ro steal personal possessions."

"Yes, it does. Now stand aside. This is going to happen whether you like it or not."

The passengers, helped by some of the kitchen staff, moved to block his way to the larder, though. Bannerman pulled his gun and pointed it at the passenger directly in front of him. "Out of my way," he demanded, "by authority of the Captain."

The passenger, a Scotsmen with fiery red hair, just laughed at him. "You actually going to shoot me?" he asked. "You haven't got the balls."

"I'll shoot you in the leg," Bannerman told him, looking him firmly in the eye. "You'll be limping back to the..."

The Scotsman lunged suddenly forward, though, reaching for the gun with the intention of wresting it out of his hand. The security man's finger was on the trigger, and as the gun was pulled forward, the trigger was pulled back. The gun went off with a thunderous detonation, and blood sprayed the white-painted wall of the kitchen behind the Scotsman. The Scotsman stared in astonishment, then slumped to the ground.

Men stared in shock and women screamed. The customers fled the kitchen, running all the way out to the corridor, where they shouted what had happened to everyone within earshot. Bannerman could only stare in horror, smoke rising from his gun, as a young, female kitchen worked fell to her knees beside the Scotsman and pressed her hands to the injury. "Fetch a doctor!" she shouted to the terrified onlookers. "Now!"

"It wasn't my fault," said Bannerman, his face suddenly white. He was staring at the fallen Scotsman, who was staring at the ceiling while his hands moved weakly by his sides. "You saw what happened. It wasn't my fault." His finger was tightening on the trigger again, apparently without his knowledge.

The other security men were also staring, unable to believe what had happened, but one of them stepped forward and put a gentle hand on the arm of his superior. "Perhaps you'd better let me have that, Jeff."

Bannerman turned to look blankly at him, his eyes looking right through those of the other man. The second man reached slowly and carefully down to Bannerman's hand, though, and let his hand rest there, letting his superior feel the touch of human skin on the back of his fingers. "It's okay," he said softly. "It was an accident. We all know that, but you have to let me have the gun."

Bannerman nodded slowly, although seemingly without comprehension. When the younger man took hold of the gun and gave it a gentle pull, though, Bannerman released it. Etveryone breathed a sigh of relief as he tucked it into the waistband of his trousers.

"Look what happened!" the chef shouted madly. "This is your fault! If you hadn't come charging in here..."

"Shut up," the young woman told him. Her arms were red with blood up to the elbows. "Everyone just shut up. Where's the bloody doctor?"

"On his way," one of the other security men told her, his phone in his hand.