Amy saw a gangplank still up, and with cries of girlish glee ran aboard. I plucked at Vern's sleeve. "You," I said. "What's this about what the _Major_ won't settle for less than?" He said: "Aw, Sam, I had to tell her something, didn't I?" "But what about the Major--" He said patiently: "You don't understand. It's all part of my plan, see? The Major is the big thing here and he's got a birthday coming up next month. Well, the way I put it to Amy, we'll fix him up with a yacht as a birthday present, see? And, of course, when it's all fixed up and ready to lift anchor--" I said doubtfully: "That's the hard way, Vern. Why couldn't we just sort of get steam up and take off?" He shook his head. "_That_ is the hard way. This way we get all the help and supplies we need, understand?" I shrugged. That was the way it was, so what was the use of arguing? But there was one thing more on my mind. I said: "How come Amy's so interested in making the Major happy?" Vern chortled. "Jealous, eh?" "I asked a question!" "Calm down, boy. It's just that he's in charge of things here so naturally she wants to keep in good with him." I scowled. "I keep hearing stories about how the Major's chief interest in life is women. You sure she isn't ambitious to be one of them?" He said: "The reason she wants to keep him happy is so she _won't_ be one of them." V The name of the place was Bayonne. Vern said: "One of them's _got_ to have oil, Sam. It _has_ to." "Sure," I said. "There's no question about it. Look, this is where the tankers came to discharge oil. They'd come in here, pump the oil into the refinery tanks and--" "Vern," I said. "Let's look, shall we?" He shrugged, and we hopped off the little outboard motorboat onto a landing stage. The tankers towered over us, rusty and screeching as the waves rubbed them against each other. There were fifty of them there at least, and we poked around them for hours. The hatches were rusted shut and unmanageable, but you could tell a lot by sniffing. Gasoline odor was out; smell of seaweed and dead fish was out; but the heavy, rank smell of fuel oil, that was what we were sniffing for. Crews had been aboard these ships when the missiles came, and crews were still aboard. Beyond the two-part superstructures of the tankers, the skyline of New York was visible. I looked up, sweating, and saw the Empire State Building and imagined Amy up there, looking out toward us. She knew we were here. It was her idea. She had scrounged up a naval engineer, or what she called a naval engineer--he had once been a stoker on a ferryboat. But he claimed he knew what he was talking about when he said the only thing the _Queen_ needed to make 'er go was oil. And so we left him aboard to tinker and polish, with a couple of helpers Amy detached from the police force, and we tackled the oil problem. Which meant Bayonne. Which was where we were.