The blustering false alarms of the men making the room-to-room search were approaching slowly.
Bee refused to worry about anything. Unk, by taking his place among the recruits, had reduced himself to a cipher. Considering him professionally, Bee saw that Unk’s body was turning blue-green rather than pure blue. This might mean that he had not taken a goofball for several hours — in which case he would soon keel over
To have him keel over would certainly be the most peaceful solution to the problem he presented, and Bee wanted peace above all else.
She didn’t doubt that Unk was the father of her child. Life was like that. She didn’t remember him, and she didn’t bother now to study him in order to recognize him the next time — if there was going to be a next time. She had no use for him.
She noted that Unk’s body was now predominantly green. Her diagnosis had been correct, then. He would keel over at any minute.
Bee daydreamed. She daydreamed of a little girl in a starched white dress and white gloves and white shoes, and with a white pony all her own. Bee envied that little girl who had kept so clean.
Bee wondered who the little girl was.
Unk fell noiselessly, as limp as a bag of eels.
Unk awoke, found himself on his back in a bunk in a space ship. The cabin lights were dazzling. Unk started to yell, but a sick headache shushed him.
He struggled to his feet, clung drunkenly to the pipe supports of the bunk. He was all alone. Someone had put his uniform back on him.
He thought at first that he had been launched into space eternal.
But then he saw that the airlock was open to the outside, and that outside was solid ground.
Unk lurched out through the airlock and threw up. He raised his watering eyes, and saw that he was seemingly still on Mars, or on something a lot like Mars.
It was night time.
The iron plain was studded with ranks and files of space ships.
As Unk watched, a file of ships five miles long arose from the formation, sailed melodiously off into space.
A dog barked, barked with a voice like a great bronze gong.
And out of the night loped the dog — as big and terrible as a tiger.
“Kazak!” cried a man in the dark.
The dog stopped at the command, but he held link at bay, kept Unk flattened against the space ship with the threat of his long, wet fangs.
The dog’s master appeared, the beam of a flashlight dancing before him. When he got within a few yards of Unk, he placed the flashlight under his chin. The contrasting beam and shadows made his face look like the face of a demon.
“Hello, Unk,” he said. He turned the flashlight off, stepped to one side so that he was illuminated by the light spilling from the space ship. He was big, vaguely soft, marvelously self-assured. He wore the bloodred uniform and square-toed boots of a Parachute Ski Marine. He was unarmed save for a black and gold swaggerstick one foot long.
“Long time no see,” he said. He gave a very small, v-shaped smile. His voice was a glottal tenor, a yodel.
Unk had no recollection of the man, but the man obviously knew Unk well — knew him warmly.
“Who am I, Unk?” said the man gayly.
Unk gasped. This had to be Stony Stevenson, had to be Unk’s fearless best friend. “Stony?” he whispered.
“Stony?” said the man. He laughed. “Oh, God — ” he said, “many’s the time I’ve wished I was Stony, and many’s the time I’ll wish it again.”
The ground shook. There was a whirlwind rush in the air. Neighboring space ships on all sides had leaped into the air, were gone.
Unk’s ship now had its sector of the iron plain all to itself. The nearest ships on the ground were perhaps half a mile away.
“There goes your regiment, Unk,” said the man, “and you not with them. Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Who are you?” said Unk.
“What do names matter in wartime?” said the man. He put his big hand on Unk’s shoulder. “Oh, Unk, Unk, Unk,” he said, “what a time you’ve had.”