"You lived there?"

He nodded.

"Was it just the same as all the other places?"

"So it seems," he said heavily. "They didn't say much in the report, just the readings of the radioactivity. They were pretty bad. They got right up to the base, to their own dock that they left from. It must have been kind of funny going back like that, but there was nothing much about it in the report. Most of the officers and the enlisted men, they must have been very near their homes. There was nothing they could do, of course. They just stayed there a while, and then went out and went on with the mission. The captain said in his report they had some kind of a religious service in the ship. It must have been painful."

In the warm, rosy glow of the sunset there was still beauty in the world. "I wonder they went in there," she observed.

"I wondered about that, just at first," he said. "I'd have passed it by, myself, I think. Although… well, I don't know. But thinking it over, I'd say they had to go in there. It was the only place they had the key chart for-that, and Delaware Bay. They were the only two places that they could get into safely. They just had to take advantage of the knowledge of the minefields that they had."

She nodded. "You lived there?"

"Not in New London itself," he said quietly. "The base is on the other side of the river, the east side. I've got a home about fifteen miles away, up the coast from the river entrance. Little place called West Mystic."

She said, "Don't talk about it if you'd rather not."

He glanced at her. "I don't mind talking, not to some people. But I wouldn't want to bore you." He smiled gently. "Nor to start crying, because I'd seen the baby."

She flushed a little. "When you let me use your cabin to change in," she said, "I saw your photographs. Are those your family?"

He nodded. "That's my wife and our two kids," he said a little proudly. "Sharon. Dwight goes to grade school, and Helen, she'll be going next fall. She goes to a little kindergarten right now, just up the street."

She had known for some time that his wife and family were very real to him, more real by far than the half-life in a far corner of the world that had been forced upon him since the war. The devastation of the Northern Hemisphere was not real to him, as it was not real to her. He had seen nothing of the destruction of the war, as she had not; in thinking of his wife and of his home it was impossible for him to visualize them in any other circumstances than those in which he had left them. He had little imagination, and that formed a solid core for his contentment in Australia.

She knew that she was treading upon very dangerous ground. She wanted to be kind to him, and she had to say something. She asked a little timidly, "What's Dwight going to be when he grows up?"

"I'd like him to go to the Academy," he said. "The Naval Academy. Go into the navy, like I did. It's a good life for a boy-I don't know any better. Whether he can make the grade or not, well, that's another thing. His mathematics aren't so hot, but it's too early yet to say. He won't be ten years old till next July. But I'd like to see him get into the Academy. I think he wants it, too."

"Is he keen on the sea?" she asked.

He nodded. "We live right near the shore. He's on the water, swimming and running the outboard motor, most of the summer." He paused thoughtfully. "They get so brown," he said. "All kids seem to be the same. I sometimes think that kids get browner than we do, with the same amount of exposure."

"They get very brown here," she remarked. "You haven't started him sailing yet?"

"Not yet," he said. "I'm going to get a sailboat when I'm home on my next leave."

^He raised himself from the rail that they had been sitting on, and stood for a moment looking at the sunset glow.

"I guess that'll be next September," he said quietly. "Kind of late in the season to start sailing, up at Mystic."

She was silent, not knowing what to say.

He turned to her. "I suppose you think I'm nuts," he said heavily. "But that's the way I see it, and I can't seem to think about it any other way. At any rate, I don't cry over babies."

She rose and turned to walk with him down the jetty.

"I don't think you're nuts," she said.

They walked together in silence to the beach.