“At ease, Sergeant,” Donovan said as he returned the salute. He was a fit sixty, more or less, with blue eyes and the map of Ireland on his face. He had a couple of cans’ worth of fruit salad on his chest. One of those ribbons was blue, with white stars. Yeager’s eyes widened slightly. You didn’t pick up a Congressional Medal of Honor for playing jacks. Before he got over that surprise, Donovan gave him another one, saying in fluent Lizard talk, “I greet you, Tosevite male who so well understands the males of the Race.”
“I greet you, superior sir,” Yeager answered automatically, using the same language. He dropped back into English to continue, “I didn’t know you knew their lingo, sir.”
“I’m supposed to know everything. That’s my job,” Donovan answered, without the slightest hint he was joking. He made a wry face. “Can’t be done, of course. It’s still my job. Which is why I sent for you.”
“Sir?” Yeager said.
Donovan shuffled through papers on his desk. When he found the one he wanted, he peered at it through the bottoms of his bifocals. “You were transferred here from Denver, along with your wife and the two Lizards Ullhass and Ristin. That right?” Without waiting for Yeager’s answer, he went on, “That was before you started making an infielder out of Ristin, hey?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Sam said. Maybe Donovan
“I don’t know about
“You’re not only allowed to, you’re ordered to-by me,” Donovan answered. “But I’m glad to see you concerned with security, Sergeant, because I’m going to tell you something you are absolutely forbidden to mention outside this room, except as I may later direct. Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said. By the way the base commandant spoke, he’d get a blindfold if he messed that one up; nobody’d bother wasting a cigarette on him.
“Okay,” Donovan repeated. “By now, you’re probably wondering what the hell is going on and why I dragged you in here. That right?” No answer seemed necessary. Donovan charged ahead: “Reason’s real simple-we just got one of these atomic bombs delivered here, and I want to know as much about it as I can find out.”
“That’s what I told you. It set out from Denver before the cease-fire was announced, and after that it just kept going. Makes sense when you think about it, hey? Thing must have come on one devil of a roundabout route to get here at all. They weren’t about to stop it halfway, leave it somewhere in no-man’s-land for the Lizards to find if they got lucky. It’s our baby now.”
“Okay, sir, I see that, I guess,” Yeager answered. “But didn’t some people from Denver come with it, people who know all about it?”
“They did like hell,” Donovan said. “Security again-you don’t want people like that captured. Thing came with typed instructions on how to arm it, a timer, and a radio transmitter. That’s it. Orders boiled down to get it to a target, back away, run like hell, and fire when ready, Gridley.”
Donovan would have been just about starting to shave when that Spanish-American War slang entered the language; Sam hadn’t heard anybody use it for years. He said, “I’ll tell you whatever I can, sir, but like I said before-uh, as I said before” (which was what he got for being married to Barbara) “I don’t know everything there is to know.”
“And as I told you, Sergeant, that’s
Sam told him everything he knew about the theory and practice of atomic bombs. Some of that was gleaned from science articles in the regretted
Donovan took no notes. At first, that irked Yeager. Then he realized the general didn’t want to put anything in writing anywhere. That told him how seriously Donovan was taking the whole business.
When he ran down, Donovan nodded thoughtfully and said, “Okay, Sergeant, thanks very much. That clears up one of my major worries: I don’t have to worry about the damn thing going off under my feet, any more than I do with any other piece of ordnance. I didn’t
“That makes sense to me, sir,” Yeager agreed.
