INT. SERENITY - DINING ROOM - LATER

Book and Kaylee have made dinner. People are gathering, sitting, helping themselves to things -- everybody's moving and talking over each other and everyone's there save Wash and Inara.

ZOE

Oh, this is incredible.

BOOK

It's not much -- I had a garden at the Abbey, thought I should bring what I could.

SIMON

It's very kind of you to share with all of us.

ZOE

I'm gonna make a plate for Wash...

BOOK

(to Simon)

Well, it won't last, and they're never the same when they're frozen. The important thing is the spices. A man can live on packaged food from

here 'til Judgment Day if he's got enough rosemary.

DOBSON

(over this, to Jayne)

Can you pass me the tomatoes? He does, after taking several slices. People settle.

BOOK

Captain, you mind if I say grace?

MAL

Only if you say it out loud.

A beat -- Mal has broken the mood. He starts eating, others follow. Book lowers his head a moment, as do Kaylee, Dobson, and Jayne, then they eat as well.

SIMON

So, does it happen a lot? Government commandeering your ship, telling you where to go?

MAL

That's what governments are for -- get in a man's way.

DOBSON

Well, it's good, if the supplies are needed.

JAYNE

We're just happy to be doing good works.

DOBSON

I hear a lot of the border moons are in bad shape. Plagues, and famine...

ZOE

Well, some of that's exaggerated, and some of it ain't. All those moons -- just like the central planets, they're as close to Earth-That-Was as

we could make 'em: gravity, atmosphere, and such, but...

MAL

Once they're terraformed, they'll dump settlers on there with nothing but blankets, hatchets, maybe a herd. Some of them make it, some of them...

SIMON

Then I guess it's good we're helping.

KAYLEE

(to Simon)

You're a Doctor, right?

SIMON

Oh. Uh, yes. Yes, I was a trauma surgeon on Osiris, in Capital City.

MAL

Long way from here.

KAYLEE

(to Simon)

You seem so young. To be a doctor.

SIMON

(changing the subject)

Yeah. You're pretty young to be a ship's mechanic.

KAYLEE

No ho