SIZZLE—CRACKLE!
Thick, golden-brown mutton grease dripped onto a bed of red-hot star-coals, sending up a cloud of spicy white smoke that smelled so good even the iron rivets on the train walls seemed to drool.
On the wide open flatbed of Kitchen Car No. 8, Old Guo stood on a wooden step-stool, wielding a basting brush the size of a pine tree. In front of him, turning slowly on a thirty-yard Star-Iron spit, was a whole fifty-ton Void-Whale Lamb—a plump, tender space-grazer raised on the clover pastures of Moon Four. Its crispy golden skin was scored in neat diamond patterns, brushed with seven layers of wild clover honey and garlic oil, and its belly was stuffed tighter than a tax collector’s purse with five hundred burlap sacks of pickled Red-Star Chili Peppers.
“More cumin on the left rump, Little Nine!” Old Guo bellowed to his head apprentice, tossing a twenty-pound scoop of crushed toasted cumin and fennel seeds across the sizzling meat. “Lord Ao Ming likes his crust crunchy enough to hear from three miles away! If the skin isn’t crisp, he gets grumpy and blows cold water up the bathhouse pipes!”
Right behind Kitchen Car No. 8 sat Car No. 9—a colossal, reinforced tank-car painted to look like an old-fashioned stone village well, complete with a tiled roof and a wooden bucket hanging from the eaves.
