Oxwork

Then feed thy oxen in the house with hay; / Which he that wants with ease enough will say, / "Let me, alike, thy wain and oxen use." / Which 'tis as easy for thee to refuse, / And say thy oxword then importunes much.

The diary carefully records the soil of the different localities passed under homely but intelligible farm terms. It was "emplastado, prieta or migajon," heavy, dark or friable, and the amount of water supply was carefully estimated, as a Mallorca farmer would count it by inches, yards or "oxwork."

The shuttle reached the IPL satellite in only a few hours. Inter-Planetary Launch was a city of three thousand inhabitants, breathing oxygen from the plants that also fed them, drinking water that had already passed through their bodies ten thousand times, living only to service the tugs that did all the oxwork in the solar system and the shuttles that took their cargos and passengers back to the Earth or the Moon.