"Maybe you do, suh." Thurman spoke with the soft drawl of the old south.
"One of the new people appeared in your plane and saved your life!" Zen
burst out.
"Yes, suh. That's right, suh."
"But you deserted!"
"Put it another way, suh, let's say I joined the right side."
"How did you find this place?"
"I just kept thinking and kept trying. Eventually we found each other.
The psychos tried to make me believe I was nuts. But I knew better. I
knew what had happened. And I knew there had to be a reason for it. I
kept hunting until I found that reason. The big part of the battle,
where I had an advantage over most everybody else, was that I knew from
experience that something was going on. Knowing this much, all I had to
do was keep looking." The man's voice drawled the explanation. His eyes
smiled. "At your service, suh."
"Do you know that going with me may mean death?"
"What's death, suh?" Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman grinned. "I died over the
North Pole, suh."
"Spike Larson," another man said.
"You were in a sub," Zen challenged. A glow was coming up inside of him
like nothing he had ever experienced before. He was getting fighting
men to stand beside him.
"Yes," Larson answered. "And I will consider it a privilege to stand
beside you."
Like soldiers, they passed in review before him, the fat boy, the
tall, lean, brown-skinned youths. Somehow he thought there ought to be
another one. He looked around for him. Grant was talking to West.
Grant was the man whose face had looked out of thin air in the middle
of the room.
Seeing that Zen was staring at him, he left off his talk with the
craggy man and came over and saluted.
"How was it up in that satellite?" Zen asked.
"Lonely, as hell, colonel," Grant answered.
"Do you want to go with me to Asia?"
"There's no place on Earth I'd rather go. And, the way things stand now
I don't have much choice. If they get that bomb into the air--" He left
the sentence unfinished.
Then Nedra was standing in front of Zen. At the sight of her, it seemed
to him that the world stood still. He shook his head.
"Why?" she challenged.
"Because I love you," he answered.
"Then that is the real reason why you should take me with you," she
answered.
"I don't follow," he said.
"If you fail, there will be no tomorrow," she answered. To her, the
statement had no answer. "Besides, I am a nurse," she continued. "If
there are wounded, I can help with them."
"But--"
"The fact that you love me does not enter into this situation. It is
a thing apart. It is a very wonderful thing," she added hastily, the
star light shining in her eyes. "And I wish we could bring it to fruit
the ways it used to be. But those days are gone. And I am going to Asia
with you."
Watching, West smiled. Zen spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. He
turned to the craggy man. "This sleep thing: I don't know how you do
it and don't much care, but you obviously have a portable generator of
some kind that you used to put the lieutenant out in the ghost town."
"Yes," West agreed.
"I'd like to borrow the unit," Zen said.
"Gladly, colonel. I wish we had other weapons."
"We'll make do with what we have," Zen answered.