"Like a company clerk," I explained. "I mean I kept records and cut orders and made out reports and all like that." "Company clerk!" The eyes in the long horsy face gleamed. "Ah, you're mistaken, Dunlap! Why, that's _just_ what we need. Our morning reports are in foul shape. Foul! Come over to HQ. Lieutenant Bankhead will give you a lift." "Lieutenant Bankhead?" I got an elbow in my ribs for that. It was that girl Amy, standing alongside me. "I," she said, "am Lieutenant Bankhead." Well, I went along with her, leaving Engdahl and Arthur behind. But I must admit I wasn't sure of my reception. Out in front of the hotel was a whole fleet of cars--three or four of them, at least. There was a big old Cadillac that looked like a gangsters' car--thick glass in the windows, tires that looked like they belonged on a truck. I was willing to bet it was bulletproof and also that it belonged to the Major. I was right both times. There was a little MG with the top down, and a couple of light trucks. Every one of them was painted bright orange, and every one of them had the star-and-bar of the good old United States Army on its side. It took me back to old times--all but the unmilitary color. Amy led me to the MG and pointed. "Sit," she said. I sat. She got in the other side and we were off. It was a little uncomfortable on account of I wasn't just sure whether I ought to apologize for making her take her clothes off. And then she tramped on the gas of that little car and I didn't think much about being embarrassed or about her black lace lingerie. I was only thinking about one thing--how to stay alive long enough to get out of that car. IV See, what we really wanted was an ocean liner. The rest of us probably would have been happy enough to stay in Lehigh County, but Arthur was getting restless. He was a terrible responsibility, in a way. I suppose there were a hundred thousand people or so left in the country, and not more than forty or fifty of them were like Arthur--I mean if you want to call a man in a prosthetic tank a "person." But we all did. We'd got pretty used to him. We'd shipped together in the war--and survived together, as a few of the actual fighters did, those who were lucky enough to be underwater or high in the air when the ICBMs landed--and as few civilians did. I mean there wasn't much chance for surviving, for anybody who happened to be breathing the open air when it happened. I mean you can do just so much about making a "clean" H-bomb, and if you cut out the long-life fission products, the short-life ones get pretty deadly. Anyway, there wasn't much damage, except of course that everybody was dead. All the surface vessels lost their crews. All the population of the cities were gone. And so then, when Arthur slipped on the gangplank coming into Newport News and broke his fool neck, why, we had the whole staff of the _Sea Sprite_ to work on him. I mean what else did the surgeons have to do?