Gogarty shook his head reprovingly. "Not 'sir,' Tom. Save that for the office. Call me Sam." He beamed. "You want to know what it was like here during the war? You can ask the girls. They were here all through. Especially Susan--she was with the Company's branch here, even before I took over. Right, Susan?" "Right, Sam," she said obediently. Gogarty nodded. "Not that Rena missed much either, but she was out of town when the Sicilians came over. Weren't you?" he demanded, curiously intent. Rena nodded silently. "Naples sure took a pasting," Gogarty went on. "It was pretty tough for a while. Did you know that the Sicilians actually made a landing right down the coast at Pompeii?" "I saw the radioactivity," I said. "That's right. They got clobbered, all right. Soon's the barges were in, the Neapolitans let them have it. But it cost them. The Company only allowed them five A-bombs each, and they had to use two more to knock out Palermo. And--well, they don't like to tell this on themselves, but one of the others was a dud. Probably the only dud A-bomb in history, I guess." He grinned at Rena. Astonishingly, Rena smiled back. She was, I thought, a girl of many astonishing moments; I had not thought that she would be amused at Gogarty's heavy-handed needling. * * * * * Gogarty went on and on. I was interested enough--I had followed the Naples-Sicily war in the papers and, of course, I'd been briefed at the Home Office before coming over--but the girls seemed to find it pretty dull. By the time Gogarty finished telling me about the Sicilian attempt to trigger Mt. Vesuvius by dropping an A-bomb into its crater, Rena was frankly bored and even Susan was yawning behind her palm. We finally wound up under the marquee of the restaurant. Gogarty and the blonde politely said good night, and disappeared into a cab. It was clearly up to me to take Rena home. I hailed a cab. When I made up my new insurance schedule at the Home Office before coming over, I splurged heavily on transportation coverage. Perhaps I was making up for the luxuries of travel that life with Marianna hadn't allowed me. Anyway, I'd taken out Class AA policies. And as the cab driver clipped my coupons he was extremely polite. Rena lived a long way from the hotel. I tried to make small talk, but she seemed to have something on her mind. I was in the middle of telling her about the terrible "accident" I had seen that evening at the station--suitably censored, of course--when I observed she was staring out the window. She hadn't been paying attention while I talked, but she noticed the silence when I stopped. She gave a little shake of the head and looked at me. "I'm sorry, Mr. Wills," she said. "I am being rude." "Not at all," I said gallantly. "Yes." She nodded and smiled, but it was a thoughtful, almost a sad, smile. "You are too polite, you gentlemen of the Company. Is that part of your training?"