“What are you doing?” Bill asked.
“Gee-just seeing what time it was.”
“How can you tell what time it is when you have the inside of your wrist toward your face and the watch is on the outside?”
Footsteps echoed far down the long gun deck, and they remembered the sign on the outside of the door. In an instant they had slipped back through it, and Bill pressed it quietly shut. When he turned around Eager Beager had gone so that he had to make his way back to their quarters by himself. Eager had returned first and was busy shining boots for his buddies and didn’t look up when Bill came in.
But what had he been doing with his watch?
IV
This question kept bugging Bill all the time during the days of their training as they painfully learned the drill of fuse tending. It was an exacting, technical job that demanded all their attention, but in spare moments Bill worried. He worried when they stood in line for chow, and he worried during the few moments every night between the time the lights were turned off and sleep descended heavily upon his fatiguedrugged body. He worried whenever he had the time to do it, and he lost weight.
He lost weight not because he was worrying, but for the same reason everyone else lost weight. The shipboard rations. They were designed to sustain life, and that they did, but no mention was made of what kind of life it was to be. It was a dreary, underweight, hungry one. Yet Bill took no notice of this. He had a bigger problem, and he needed help: After Sunday drill at the end of their second week, he stayed to talk to First Class Spleen instead of joining the others in their tottering run toward the mess hall.
“I have a problem, sir …”
“You ain’t the only one, but one shot cures it and you ain’t a man until you’ve had it.”
“It’s not that kind of a problem. I’d like to … see the … chaplain …”
Spleen turned white and sank back against the bulkhead. “Now I heard everything,” he said weakly. “Get down to chow, and if you don’t tell anyone about this I won’t either.”
Bill blushed. “I’m sorry about this, First Class Spleen, but I can’t help it. It’s not my fault I have to see, him, it could have happened to anyone …” His voice trailed away, and he looked down at his feet, rubbing one boot against another. The silence stretched out until Spleen finally spoke, but all the comradeliness was gone from his voice.
“All right, trooper-if that’s the way you want it. But I hope none of the rest of the boys hear about it. Skip chow and get up there nowhere’s a pass.” He scrawled on a scrap of paper then threw it contemptuously to the floor, turning and walking away as Bill bent humbly to pick it up.
Bill went down dropchutes, along corridors, through passageways, and up ladders. In the ship’s directory the chaplain was listed as being in compartment 362-B on the 89th deck, and Bill finally found this, a plain metal door set with rivets. He raised his hand to knock, while sweat stood out in great beads from his face and his throat was dry. His knuckles boomed hollowly on the panel, and after an endlcss period a muffled voice sounded from the other side.
“Yeah, yeah-c’mon in-it’s open.”
Bill stepped through and snapped to attention when he saw the officer behind the single desk that almost filled the tiny room. The officer, a fourth lieutenant, though still young was balding rapidly. There were black circles under his eyes, and he needed a shave. His tie was knotted crookedly and badly crumpled. He continued to scratch among the stacks of paper that littered the desk, picking them up, changing piles with them, scrawling notes on some and throwing others into an overflowing wastebasket. When he moved one of the stacks Bill saw a sign on the desk that read LAUNDRY OFFICER.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I am in the wrong office. I was looking for the chaplain.”