He had only to think about it for a moment for Korean War memories to come roaring back, with the deck of the Flat Top awash in the dawn and the big bombing planes warming up. Not as big as the jets of today but big enough. "If I live through this one, Commander, I won't just phone Maizie. It's six dolls for me, if I have to burn up the wires and run into debt getting them on long distance and paying their fares on a Borling Special. How about you, Commander? I'll bet you've got a dozen cuties from Miami to Tahiti you're keeping mum about. I don't blame you--with brunettes at a premium and blondes and redheads so scarce you've got to dazzle them with at least seven wound stripes. How about it Commander? I'm sort of curious." "That's my business." "Oh, sure, sure. You could get sore and pull rank on me. But you won't. You're too human a guy. Why don't we form a pool and trade a few phone numbers? We could make it a party to end all parties. A real bang-up night. This time tomorrow we may be pushing up daisies--or sea anemones. How do the jokers put it? The daisies hammer you home. And when you're in a pine box, Commander, you'll sure as hell wish you hadn't let a single day go by." "You're right about that, Lieutenant," Clegman could hear himself replying, even though it wasn't strictly true in his case. "I can't complain exactly. But there was a girl in Paris--well, if I'd dated her properly I might have been less worried than I am right now about being blown apart." "Real curves, eh, Commander?" "Real curves. And not just curves alone. There was a sultry-eyed something about her--" "Commander, how many dames do you figure there are in the world? Ever stop to count them? I've been too busy myself to add up the sum total of the really special ones I've just missed meeting." "I know what you're trying to say. There'll be plenty of choices ahead for both of us if we're lucky enough to be alive this time tomorrow. You don't have to draw me a diagram. I've been thinking along the same lines." It hadn't been true, of course. There was such a thing as loyalty, and when you've met the one and only girl and married her at an early age it kept your far-roaming Casanova impulses from making you even want to talk like that. But you had no right to think only of yourself. A sternly straight-laced Commander could weaken the fighting strength of even a big Flat Top, with twenty planes serving for the moment as a kind of woman-substitute. Clegman wasn't Puritanic, of course. In fact, he was the exact opposite of a blue-nosed kill-joy.... But you didn't need a hundred blondes if there was just one you thought of night and day. People could laugh if they wished, but he considered himself a very lucky guy. He had then, and he still did, because he'd been married for fourteen years to the same blonde, and every time he met her she seemed like a new woman to him, because she was always making adorable little changes in herself.