Like an oven it was in that cabin. In a shower stall big enough for a
midget I splashed away until I got a mouthful of water. Salt. I
paddled out of there in a hurry and spent the next two hours trying to
get interested in a year-old House and Home. Hours? I spent three
solid days looking at that same issue, and others like it. All the
sailors on the ship must have had hydroponics or its equivalent on the
brain. In between times it cost me thirteen dollars I didn't have to
play gin with Stein. Then--
* * * * *
I never did find out his real name. Neither his name, nor his job, nor
what his job had to do with me, but he must have been important, from
the salutes and attention he got. Maybe he'd just gotten there, maybe
he'd been there all the time. He told me, when I bluntly asked him his
name and what he did, that his name was Smith, and I still think of
him as Smith. When he tapped on the door and stepped into that airless
cabin I could smell the fans and the generals and the Federal Building
all over again.
"Hello, Mr. Miller," he smiled. "Nice trip?"
"Swell trip," I told him. "Join the Navy and see the world through a
piece of plywood nailed over a porthole."
When he sat down on the edge of the chair he was fussy about the
crease in his pants. "Mr. Miller, whenever you are above decks, day or
night, you will please keep your face concealed with that helmet, or
its equivalent, no matter how uncomfortable the weather. Please."
"Since when have I been above decks? Since when have I been out of
this two-by-four shack?"
"The shack," he said, "could be smaller, and the weather could be
hotter. We'll see that while you're aboard you'll have the freedom of
the deck after sunset. And you won't if things go right, be aboard
much longer."