Who was Thompson who was Bromfield who was the half-wit in the cave… cave, where is the cave where the children… children… no, it was children’s… where the children’s… clothes, that’s it! Clothes, old, torn, rags; but that’s how he…

Janie… You will be killed. Just lie down and die.

His eyeballs rolled up, his tensions left him in a creeping lethargy. It was not a good thing but it was more welcome than feeling. Someone said, ‘Up forty or better on your right quadrant, corp’r’l, or the pixies’ll degauss your fuses.’ Who said that?

He, Hip Barrows. He said it.

Who’d he say it to?

Janie with her clever hand on the ack-ack prototype.

He snorted faintly. Janie wasn’t a corporal,’ Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.’

Who said that? Oh – Bromfield. The jerk! He should know better than to try to talk engineering to an engineer. ‘Cap’n Bromfield’ (tiredly, the twenty damn thousandth time), ‘if I wasn’t an engineer I wouldn’t’ve found it, I wouldn’t’ve recognized it, and I wouldn’t give a damn now.’ Ah, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter. Just curl up and as long as Thompson don’t show his face. Just curl up and … ‘No, by God,’ roared Hip Barrows. He sprang off the bed, stood quaking in the middle of the room. He clapped his hands over his eyes and rocked like a storm-blown sapling. He might be all mixed up, Bromfield’s voice, Thompson’s face, a cave full of children’s clothes, Janie who wanted him killed; but there was one thing he was sure of, one thing he knew. Thompson wasn’t going to make him curl up and die. Janie had rid him of that one!

He whimpered as he rocked, ‘Janie…?’

Janie didn’t want him to die.

Janie didn’t want him killed; what’s the matter here? Janie just wants… go back. Take time.

He looked at the brightening window.

Take time? Why, maybe today he could get that address and see those children and find the half-wit and… well, find him anyway; that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? Today. Then by God he’d show Bromfield who had an obsession!

If he lived, he’d show Bromfield.

But no; what Janie wanted was to go the other way, go back. For how long? More hungry years, nobody believes you, no one helps, you hunt and hunt, starve and freeze, for a little clue and another to fit it: the address that came from the house with the porte-cochere which came from the piece of paper in the children’s clothes which were… in the…

‘Cave,’ he said aloud. He stopped rocking, straightened.

He had found the cave. And in the cave were children’s clothes, and among them was the dirty little scrawled-up piece of paper and that had led him to the porte-cochere house, right here in town.

Another step backward, a big one too; he was deeply certain of that. Because it was the discovery in the cave that had really proved he had seen what Bromfield claimed he had not seen; he had a piece of it! He snatched it up and bent it and squeezed it: silvery, light, curiously woven – the piece of tubing. Of course, of course! The piece of tubing had come from the cave too. Now he had it.

A deep excitement began to grow within him. She’d said ‘Go back,’ and he had said no, it takes too long. How long for this step, this rediscovery of the cave and its treasures?

He glanced at the window. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes – forty at the outside. Yes, and while he was all messed up, exhausted, angry, guilty, hurt. Suppose he tried this going-back business head-on, rested, fed, with all his wits about him, with – with Janie to help?

He ran to the door, threw it open, bounded across the hall, shoved the opposite door open. ‘Janie, listen,’ he said, wildly excited. ‘Oh, Janie – ‘ and his voice was cut off in a sharp gasp. He skidded to a stop six feet into the room, his feet scurrying and slipping, trying to get him back out into the hall again, shut the door. ‘I beg your – excuse me’ he bleated out of the shock which filled him. His back struck the door, slammed it; he turned hysterically, pawed it open, and dove outside. God, he thought, I wish she’d told me! He stumbled across the hall to his own room, feeling like a gong which had just been struck. He closed and locked his door and leaned against it. Somewhere he found a creaky burst of embarrassed laughter which helped. He half turned to look at the panels of his locked door, drawn to them against his will. He tried to prevent his mind’s eye from going back across the hall and through the other door; he failed; he saw the picture of it again, vividly, and again he laughed, hot-faced and uncomfortable. ‘She should’ve told me,’ he muttered.

His bit of tubing caught his eye and he picked it up and sat down in the big chair. It drove the embarrassing moment away; brought back the greater urgency. He had to see Janie. Talk with hen Maybe it was crazy but she’d know: maybe they could do the going-back thing fast, really fast, so fast that he could go find that half-wit today after all. Ah… it was probably hopeless; but Janie, Janie’d know. Wait then. She’d come when she was ready; she had to.

He lay back, shoved his feet as far out as they would go, tilted his head back until the back of the chair snugged into the nape of his neck. Fatigue drifted and grew within him like a fragrant smoke, clouding his eyes and filling his nostrils.

His hands went limp, his eyes closed. Once he laughed, a small foolish snicker; but the picture didn’t come clear enough or stay long enough to divert him from his deep healthy plunge into sleep.

Bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup.

(Fifties, he thought, way off in the hills. Lifelong ambition of every red-blooded boy: get a machine gun and make like a garden hose with it.)

Wham-wham-wham-wham!

(Oerlikons! Where’d they dredge those things up from? Is this an ack-ack station or is it a museum?)

‘Hip! Hip Barrows!’

(For Pete’s sake, when is that corporal going to learn to say ‘ Lieutenant’? Not that I give a whistle, one way or another, but one of these days he’ll do it in front of some teen-age Air Force Colonel and get us both bounced for it.)

Wham! Wham! ‘Oh… Hip!’

He sat up palming his eyes, and the guns were knuckles on a door and the corporal was Janie, calling somewhere, and the anti-aircraft base shattered and misted and blew away to the dream factory.

‘Hip!’

‘Come on,’ he croaked. ‘Come on in.’

‘It’s locked.’

He grunted and got numbly to his feet. Sunlight poured in through the curtains. He reeled to the door and opened it. His eyes wouldn’t track and his teeth felt like a row of cigar butts.

‘Oh, Hip!’

Over her shoulder he saw the other door and he remembered. He drew her inside and shut his door. ‘Listen, I’m awful sorry about what happened. I feel like a damn fool.’

‘Hip – don’t,’ she said softly.’ It doesn’t matter, you know that. Are you all right?’

‘A little churned up,’ he admitted and was annoyed by the reappearance of his embarrassed laugh. ‘Wait till I put some cold water on my face and wake up some.’ From the bathroom he called, ‘Where you been?’

‘Walking. I had to think. Then… I waited outside. I was afraid you might – you know. I wanted to follow you, be with you. I thought I might help… You really are all right?

‘Oh sure. And I’m not going anywhere without talking to you first. But about the other thing – I hope she’s all right.’