“All depends on how you look at things,” Sam said.

Crack!The guy up behind him hit a bouncer to short. Sam lit out for second full tilt. In a pickup game like this, you couldn’t be sure the shortstop would make the play. But he did. He shoveled the ball to second, smooth as you please.

Ristin, who was playing second base, brushed the bag with one foot, then got it between him and the oncoming Yeager. The Lizard dropped down sidearm for the throw to first, giving Sam the choice between sliding and taking the ball right between the eyes. Sam hit the dirt. The ball thumped into Grabowski’s mitt when the GI who’d hit the grounder was still a stride from the bag. “Yer out!” yelled the dogface making like an ump.

Yeager got up and brushed off his chinos. “Pretty double play,” he told Ristin before he trotted off the field. “Can’t turn ’em any better than that.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Ristin answered in his own language. “This is a good game you Tosevites play.”

When Sam got back to the bench, he grabbed for a towel and wiped his sweaty face. You played ball in Hot Springs in summertime, you might as well have playedin the hot springs.

“Yeager! Sergeant Sam Yeager!” somebody called from the stands. It didn’t sound like somebody from the crowd-if you called three, four dozen people a crowd. It sounded like somebody looking for him.

He stuck his head out of the dugout. “Yeah? What is it?”

A fellow with a first lieutenant’s silver bar on each shoulder said, “Sergeant, I have orders to fetch you back to the hospital right away.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said, glad the lieutenant wasn’t getting shirty about the casual way he’d answered. “Let me get out of my spikes and into street shoes.” He did that in a hurry, telling his teammates, “You’ll have to find somebody else for left now.” He took off his baseball cap and stuck his service cap on his head. He wished his pants weren’t dirty, but he couldn’t do anything about that now.

“Shall I come, too?” Barbara asked as he climbed up into the stands and headed toward the lieutenant. She shifted Jonathan from her lap to her shoulder and started to get up.

But Yeager shook his head. “You may as well stay, hon,” he answered. “They wouldn’t be looking for me like this if they didn’t have some kind of duty in mind.” He saw the officer had his hands on his hips, a bad sign. “I better get moving,” he said, and did just that.

They went back to the Army and Navy General Hospital at a fast walk that was close to a trot. Ban Johnson Field was in Whittington Park, out at the west end of Whittington Avenue. They went past the old Catholic school on Whittington, down past Bathhouse Row on Central, and over Reserve to the hospital.

“What’s gone wrong, anyhow?” Yeager asked as they went inside.

The lieutenant didn’t answer, but hustled him along to the offices reserved for top brass. Sam didn’t like that. He wondered if he was in trouble and, if he was, how much trouble he was in. The farther down the row of fancy offices they got, the bigger he figured the trouble might be.

A door with a frosted glass windowpane had a cardboard sign taped to it: BASE COMMANDANT’S OFFICE. Yeager gulped. He couldn’t help it. “Hawkins, sir,” the lieutenant said, saluting a captain sitting at a desk full of papers. “Reporting with Sergeant Yeager as ordered.”

“Thank you, Hawkins.” The captain got up from his desk. “I’ll tell Major General Donovan he’s here.” He ducked into the office behind the antechamber. When he emerged a moment later, he held the door open. “Go on in, Sergeant”

“Yes, sir.” Yeager wished to high heaven the lieutenant had given him a chance to clean up a little before he presented himself to a two-star general. Even if they did call Donovan “Wild Bill,” he wasn’t likely to appreciate sweat and grime and an aroma that clearly announced Yeager had been running around in hot, muggy weather.

No help for that now, though. Sam walked through the door, which the adjutant closed behind him. Saluting, he said, “Sergeant Samuel Yeager, sir, reporting as ordered.”

“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.I don’t know from nothin’.

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 Donovandid know everything. “Okay,” the general said. “You were attached to that Denver project for a good long while, weren’t you? Even when they were back in Chicago. That right?” This time, he did let Sam nod before continuing, “Which means you probably know more about atomic bombs than anybody else in Arkansas. That right?”

“I don’t know aboutthat, sir,” Yeager said. “I’m no physicist or anything like that. Uh, sir, am I allowed to talk about this stuff with you? They worked real hard on keeping it a secret.”

“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.”

“Here,sir?” Sam stared.

“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.”