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 how. Machines just got workings, and they talk to me. BOOK That's a rare gift. KAYLEE Oh, not like being a doctor, savin’ lives, that's important. SIMON (Forgetting himself for a moment) You saved our lives. KAYLEE (Quizzical) Huh? SIMON (Realizing what he’s just said aloud, thinking fast) …....all our lives. The air that we’re breathing, the heater that keeps us from freezing out here, even the gravity that helps us balance....you did all that. This ship is one big life support system. It’s incredible. It’s much more important to keep things alive, than to just fix things when they break.That’s all surgeons do. JAYNE Little Kaylee here just wishes you was a gynecologist. Jayne cackles. Kaylee, visibly humiliated, looks down. MAL (hard) Jayne. You'll keep a civil tongue in that mouth or I will sew it shut, is there an understanding between us? JAYNE You don't pay me to talk pretty. Just because Kaylee gets lubed-up over some big city dandy -- MAL Walk away from this table. Right now. A beat. Jayne doesn't believe it, but Mal's expression is stony. Jayne goes, grabbing a bunch of food as he does. Everyone is silent a moment. SIMON How could he have done that? MAL He’s a mindless thug is how. Not hard to piece together. Don’t think twice bout others ‘cause he don’t think period. SIMON No, I mean how did he even know the word gynecologist? He...used it correctly in a sentence and everything. MAL We’re full of surprises. Keeps life interesting out here.